St. Martin

First thought: Nice looking place.

Second thought: Why is there always so much waiting involved? They know you're coming, you'd think they could pretty much just hand over the keys to the room, but for some reason I haven't quite figured out, resorts always wait until you show up, then run around like crazy (or stroll casually, this is the islands after all) trying to figure out where you're supposed to be.

I think Le Meridian was rated a 5-star in our brochure. I guess a French 5-star is really more like a North-American 3 1/2 star, because while nice enough, it was no 5-star hotel. One of the problems, apparently, was that the staff were quite disgruntled with the management, and it showed.

The beach here is excellent. Because the resort is quite far from the towns, even though the beach is public it tends to be mostly resort patrons who use it. It wasn't at all crowded, the water was always calm due to the resort location in a bay (see the map).

There was one problem, however. Even though we were theoretically on what they called an "all-inclusive" package, here "all-inclusive" meant "except for the fancy restaurant and the bar that delivers drinks to the beach, and oh yeah, drinks with fresh fruit in them, they're not included either". Nice. So getting drinks on the beach and not having to pay extra meant walking to the poolside bar.

True story: I actually got a bloody lip while swimming, due to a fish jumping out of the water and hitting me square in the face. It felt a bit like getting hit by a tennis ball, it smacked me so hard. So watch out for jumping fish.

I should say a very steep hill. The resort is pretty much over a mountain and down the other side. From the road coming down to the Le Meridian is a great view of the entire bay. The other side of the hill goes down into a small town, the name of which escapes me.

For the shoppers, St. Martin offers 2 main towns: Marigot on the French side and Philipsburg on the dutch side. Unfortunately, neither of them are at all close to Le Meridien, so one needs to either take one of the scheduled shuttle busses from the resort, or arrange for a taxi, which can get quite expensive, as it's a good half hour drive to get anywhere.

We went on a snorkeling trip aboard a trimeran named Scoobidoo. I was surprised how far we went, it was actually up around the other side of Anguilla. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great, it was a bit too windy and overcast, so the snorkeling wasn't that good, but it was fun nevertheless.

One of the problems with resorts like this, is that they tend to shuttle you from and back to the airport in little shuttle busses. Try to keep your luggage with you, or at the very least, keep your valuables with you. On this trip, the shuttle bus was only large enough to hold the passengers, and they took all the luggage in a separate bus.

We met a couple whos jewelry went missing on the way there, and on the way back to the airport, even though the luggage van left before us, it arrived at the airport quite a few minutes after us.

Be wary, and even though you can't lock your baggage on the flight, bring a lock so that you can secure it for the shuttle bus.