If you have never flown into Berlin, be prepared to go through passport control upon exiting the plane, like, 50 feet after getting off the plane. Interestingly, each gate has it’s own baggage claim and passport area.

Daylight Savings Time occurs later in Europe than it does over here, so when you only have 44 hours in a place, try not to book an early morning flight right after the time changes. So, make that 43 hours.

Apparently, Obama has influenced some things in Berlin, like this “Yes We Can” alcoholic drink featuring Tenneesee Whiskey.

I knew the trip was going to be awesome when we saw our friend’s car…

An orange Audi! Let me tell you, it was never hard to spot where we were parked, especially since most people seem to drive black cars here.

And what was the first thing I consumed in Germany? A beer. Of course.

Our first afternoon in Germany was spent in Potsdam walking through Park Sanssouci. The sun came out for a brief few hours, so we’ll use this as visual evidence that the sun does shine in Germany in March. :)

statues at The New Palace

terraced gardens at Palace Sanssouci

Palace Sanssouci

The New Palace, see a large panorama on Flickr

How lovely is this architecture? The park was very charming in late winter, so I can only imagine how lovely it must be in the summer when all the fruit trees and vines are in bloom.

When I was a child, The Very Hungry Caterpillar was one of my favorite children’s books, along with the popular Goodnight Moon and perhaps less well-known The Story About Ping. Throughout the years I have picked up bits of biographical knowledge about certain children’s authors like Beatrice Potter,  Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum, but this Newsweek article taught me a little more about a man, his illustrations and a book that has been delighting children for 40 years.

Added on March 20:

Look at Google! :)

With a number of bakeries on the island, we picked up pastries for breakfast each morning and some tasty French bread and cheeses for our lunches. That left dinner as the variable meal of the day…

Bistrot Caraibes (Grand Case)—The first time we walked by this little restaurant, the owner came out and mentioned the first drink was on the house. It turns out that a few places attempted to entice potential customers this way. Our online research had mentioned this restaurant was good, and the menu was certainly appetizing, so we took a seat and enjoyed a glass of wine while looking through the menu. I decided on two appetizers for my meal, beef carpaccio and fresh mussels while Eric enjoyed the veal scallopini with blue cheese. I thought the atmosphere and service were very nice. Cars drive down the narrow street right outside the front door, so it can be a little noisy, but the quality of the food makes a visit to this place worthwhile. Others seemed to agree as it was busy the whole time we were there.

Il Nettuno (Grand Case)—We found this Italian place the night before, so we decided in advance to come back for dinner. Il Nettuno is located on the beach, so it’s all covered outdoor seating with a nice breeze and none of the engine noise. I ordered the lobster and Eric gnocchi. While the preparation was attractive, I found Caribbean lobster not as flavorful as Maine lobster. One of the hosts entertained us with his singing and guitar playing, eliciting rounds of applause throughout our meal. Unfortunately, after our order was taken, we barely saw any wait staff again! We both would have ordered another glass of wine, as we ran out just after our food arrived, but no one bothered to come back and ask how anything was. This would have been a better meal if the service hadn’t plummeted halfway through.

Karakter (Simpson Beach)—Our hosts at the Azure Beach Studios suggested this beach bar for dinner. We walked barefoot down to the end of the beach, parked ourselves at a bench overlooking the water and ordered two specialty cocktails, a frozen vodka lemonade and a ginger apple rum drink. I very much enjoyed my fried calamari, sardines, coconut shrimp cocktail, but Eric was expecting something different from his chicken and mango salsa wrap, namely not deli chicken and gigantic chunks of mango. Regardless, it’s hard to not enjoy eating your last meal in St. Martin while your toes are in the sand.

This post would have been about only one place had our return flight not be canceled, but as it turned out, we were given the opportunity to stay at one of the other places we had researched before we left. :)

Bleu Emeraude (Grand Case, $199/night)—This sleek residence is located on the southern end of Grand Case beach, about a 5 minute walk to the main restaurant area. We had a studio apartment on the ground floor that provided us with absolutely incredible views of the Caribbean Sea from our patio.

The view from the second and third floors is probably even better! Our room was very modern and clean. One of our favorite features (besides the patio) was the full kitchen with a selection of sparkling, red, and white wine glasses. Now that is attention to detail.

We never bothered converting our bed back into a sofa as we spent most of our time on the patio. :)

Beach towels were provided, and there was off street parking available… very nice considering the narrow roads and sidewalk parking in most of Grand Case. In the near future they should have underground parking which will help keep a car cool in the tropical sun. We loved the beach access from our room and it was very quiet at night.

We kept the sliding doors open most of the time, which helped ease the smell of fresh paint.  The only downside to the room was the sheer curtains. They offered very little in the way of privacy from the beach and did absolutely nothing to block the sunlight that streamed in at 6am.

Xavier, the owner, was very nice, but not around much, and the receptionist was only sporadically seen. I don’t know who we would have contacted if we had a problem, but thankfully it never became an issue. Presumably this is being worked out as they aren’t fully open yet.

Azure Beach Studios (Simpson Bay, $189/night)—We found Fawnette and Michael to be great hosts, full of helpful information and a good dinner recommendation. One item to note is that they didn’t accept credit cards but there was an ATM a short walk down the road.

Our room was very comfortable and colorful. Once again we had a full kitchen and sitting area and beach towels were provided. Although our room (the Tropical Suite) was located in the courtyard (so no beach view), the sand was literally a matter of steps around the corner.

We didn’t have our computer with us on this trip, but it would have been helpful considering the free wireless internet here, a nice touch. The parking situation seems a bit difficult because the hotel is located at the end of an alley and we saw several folks backing their cars about 300 yards out to the main street.

Azure Beach Studios is situated near the airport, so you could hear the planes flying overhead starting around 7am, but the noise didn’t really bother us. They have a lovely patio for all guests to use right on the beach, so on Monday morning we picked up some baked goods and OJ and had our breakfast overlooking Simpson Bay.

Technically, we were “stuck” in St Martin for this part of our vacation, but we were glad we got the chance to try this place out.

Pic Paradis (Paradise Peak) is the highest point on the island of St Martin at 424 meters. I was dressed for the beach, but thankfully able to complete the short hike in flip flops. :)

The road leading to the top was pretty narrow and parking was a bit precarious, but the views were incredible!

Marigot

Philipsburg

We spent a lot of time on this trip exploring various beaches all over the island. The idea was to hit the recommended snorkeling spots and then do some strolling and people watching at the more crowded beaches in between.

We started off at Dawn Beach where our beach access questions were answered helpfully by a Westin employee who told us we were welcome to use their parking garage and lounges. The beach was powdery white sand with plenty of palm trees for shade. Plus, we had the entire place to ourselves at 10am.

You can see in the photo that there are some close reefs offshore, but the water was pretty rough and the visibility was poor. When other people started spreading toward us, we headed back north to Orient Beach. Orient Beach is very lovely and easily the most crowded beach we experienced during our trip. We saw several people parasailing and even braved the nude beach down at the very end. (We declined to participate, however.)

But probably my favorite part…

Chez Leandra!

We stopped in for a $2 beer and french fries, introduced myself to the friendly owner and we enjoyed a good laugh over having the same name.

At this point, we decided to skip the ferry ride out to Il Pinel because of the rough sea conditions, choosing to head back to our room for a quick lunch, then hit Friar’s Bay Beach. The water was much calmer on the west side of the island, but the coral was damaged and the variety of sea life was lacking.

The random cows in the road were amusing though…

The next day, we visited Mullet Beach on the far south end of the island, enjoying the wide expanse of powdery sand. Although the beach was very steep, which made walking in the water a bit difficult.

Our last beach experience of the trip happened when our flight got canceled and we needed to stay near the airport, on Simpson Bay Beach. The most interesting part about this beach is that it is adjacent to the airport, so you can easily walk down to the end and see planes taking off and landing. Not quite the same experience as Maho Beach, but a lot less sand flying around.

We took advantage of our hotel’s umbrellas and lounges and enjoyed our last night on St Martin watching the sunset and drinking beers on the beach.

The first thing we needed to decide after buying the tickets to St Martin was where on the island we wanted to stay. The northern (French) side of the island is better known for dining and snorkeling, so we settled on a lovely (and brand new) studio residence in Grand Case. Bleu Emeraude has only been open for a little over a month and had no reviews online, but we knew we picked the right place as soon as we arrived and saw the view from our patio.

We were right on the beach, which made the decision to pick up some wine, bread and cheese and relax on the patio both nights a no-brainer.

We spent a lot of time walking along the beach as it was much safer than navigating the narrow (or non-existent) sidewalks into town for dinner.

St Martin is small enough to drive around explore and Grand Case made a great jumping off point.

As it is with most things in life, we often remember the last thing that happened to us on a trip, especially if it’s bad. As the title of this post states, I am determined to not let that happen with our recent trip to St. Martin.  So let’s get it out of the way – what happened on the way home?

Well, upon arrival at the airport for our flight home we found out our return flight was preemptively canceled by Delta (claiming weather, of course) the previous day. After working our way through the line we were booked on to a Continental flight through Newark the following day.

Once we knew we were stuck on the island for the night  the helpful people at the tourism desk were able to put me in touch with Fawnette at Azure Beach Studios, one of the alternate places we had investigated, who fortunately had a room available for the night.

Upon arrival to our room, we flipped on the TV to see what all the fuss was about and nearly cried when we saw that the storms that were messing with Atlanta were heading straight for New York… the new destination the Delta agents had just booked us on for next day. We reacted to this news by changing into our bathing suits,  heading to a local market to buy some beer, and trying to relax on the beach, carefully rationing the small amount of suntan lotion we had left.

The next day we headed back to the airport, three hours before our flight, to discover that the new flight we were booked on was unsurprisingly canceled (again) and Continental had rebooked us on a flight for Wednesday. TWO DAYS LATER!

So we smiled, thanked them kindly, and marched back to Delta to convince them to put us on the flight to Atlanta where we could at least standby for an RDU flight.  Five hours later, we were in the air to Atlanta. After clearing customs we waited till about 1am for our delayed standby flight that finally got us home at 2:30am. All told, a good 28 hours later than originally planned, with about 16 hours spent in the airport.

Whew.

Thankfully, we really did had a lovely time on St. Martin, driving from beach to beach, enjoying French wine and cheese on our patio overlooking the Caribbean Sea, and sampling several restaurants that were always outdoors.

So, I’ll leave you with this photo… photos and a full trip report will follow soon!