St. Martin

Trip Report: 3/4 - 3/11, 2011

This was our fourth trip to St. Martin. The first was in February, 1997, the second was in February, 1999, and the third was in February, 2005.

General Impressions:

St. Martin is again more crowded now than it was six years ago. The roads, especially, were busier.  The road heading east from the airport through Simpson Bay takes 40-45 minutes at a slow crawl just to get to the roundabout that forks to Philipsburg or Marigot.  I know on the map it looks shorter go this way to get to Marigot, but I would recommend going the longer way heading west from the airport.  We never even went to Phillipsburg this trip because we wanted to avoid the traffic.

Orient beach was more crowded too. Many of the beach bars had expanded further and there were more of them. One day there were so many 'boat people' (cruise ship passengers that were dumped onto the beach and were loud and obnoxious and never seemed to know how to relax) that we went to Friar's Bay for the afternoon.  Orient Village had more restaurants and shops than on our previous visits.  There were also more beach vendors than in the past, and although not nearly as agressive and annoying as other location (e.g. Cabo), it's a disturbing trend. 

Flights:

Both flights went well and were on time.  A couple of negatives about Sun Country:

  1. Pricing when purchasing on the website.  The initial price is low compared with other carriers, but then as you go through the purchasing process, they ask if you want a reserved seat and that costs extra.  A reserved seat in the aisle costs even more.  Then you get prompted about prepaying your checked baggage.  After we added all these options, the price was closer to the other carriers.  However, since this was a direct flight it turned out to be the best option, it just feels like you're being nickel & dimed.
  2. Running out of food & water.  We were seated in the middle of the plane and they served drinks/food starting from the front and back.  On both flights by the time they got to our row, they had run out of many items.  Unless you are in the front or back, don't rely on them for food.  On the return flight they ran out of water just over half way back.  They put hand sanitizers in the restrooms, but there was no drinking water and no way to make coffee.

Hotel:

We stayed at Alamanda Resort right in the middle of Orient Beach for 7 nights. We had a nice second floor room with a balcony overlooking the pool and the beach in the distance. There was a little problem a couple of weeks after we booked via Orbitz.  We received an email from Orbitz saying they didn't have the "Ocean View" room type we booked and instead were booked into "Garden View" room (at the same price).  After some back and forth with Orbitz, they said the hotel was giving us a complementary upgrade to the "Ocean View".  Since all the rooms faced in, we figure that the difference was getting the upper floor which could see the ocean where the ground floor view would have obstructed view.  Note that the upper floors also had an "attic" above it that they told us was intended for children.  It could sleep 2-3 and had it's own bathroom.

To get to the beach you do have to cross a dirt parking lot, but it wasn't far.  The hotel is located in the middle of the two-mile beach, so getting to any one of the Orient Village establishments or beach bars was easy. The extras that the room had were as follows: small refrigerator, hair dryer, microwave, two burner range, and a room safe.

The one extra that was great about the hotel was two free beach chairs, umbrella, and table at Kakao's beach. That saved us about $20 a day. The only catch was you couldn't use the first row of chairs unless you paid.  Another great extra was the free continental breakfast (coffee, juice, fruit, & baked goods).  This saved us about another $30 a day.  You could order extras (e.g. pancakes, french toast, omelet, etc.) for a price.

We thought the rooms were very clean and quiet and the service was great.  We enjoyed the balcony when we wanted to get out of the sun completely.

Car Rental:

We rented a Hyundai i10 from Dollar Rent a Car for $217.83 for 1 week (including taxes & fees). Everything worked out fine with the car and the service.  Note that you should make sure to bring the car back with a full tank of gas as I thought I overheard them about to charge someone who didn't $15 a gallon.  We only used a half a tank during the week and it cost us 21 EUR to fill up a Cadisco station in Orient Bay.  One weird thing about the gas gauge in this car is that it didn't appear to move after the fill.  It took at least 15 minutes of driving before it slowly got to "Full".  I'm not sure what would have happened if we filled up right near the rental company.

Bars and Restaurants:

In general we found that food prices seem to be high although drink prices were reasonable.

Orient Beach:

Other Restaurants:

Grocery Stores (they all took credit cards):

Beaches:

Links:

Questions? Contact Paul, or Edna,

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