From St-Maarten.com:"St. Maarten is the smallest Island in the world to be shared by two sovereign governments-namely the Dutch and French. The Dutch side, with Philipsburg as its capital occupies the southern 17 square miles of this 37-square-mile island; St. Martin, a French dependency, occupies the northern half. The dual nationality adds variety to this most unique of island gems in the Caribbean Sea. Both Dutch St. Maarten and French St. Martin have maintained a peaceful coexistence for over 350 years, the longest of any two bordering nations. The two territories have enjoyed harmonious relations through their history and have shared the prosperity of many years without dispute. The Treaty of Concordia executed on March 23rd 1648 established this coexistence and has the unique distinction of being the oldest Treaty still in force today.
The island is in the Caribbean Sea, 150 miles southeast of Puerto Rico. It covers 37 square miles, with Dutch St. Maarten on the South spanning 16 square miles and French Saint Martin on the North covering 21.
As a part of the Netherlands Antilles and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, St. Maarten boasts 140 different nationalities. Saint Martin is a commune of Guadeloupe, an overseas territory of France.
English is spoken everywhere, but Dutch is the official language of St.Maarten, and French the official language of Saint Martin. On the Dutch side, you can also hear Spanish, Papiamentu, Italian, Hindi, Chinese, and other languages. On the French side, Creole Patois is also spoken. 41,000 people live on St.Maarten and 36,000 on Saint Martin."
We enjoyed St. Thomas Tuesday but were really eager to see St. Maarten as we'd heard it was the prettier island of the two. Our alarm went off this day at 6 AM - this gave us plenty of time to shower, dress and eat before meeting our tour guide at 8:20 AM. This tour was much larger than the one on Tuesday. We met on the dock - surrounded by the huge cruise-ships on either side of us - and were led to a large bus. Our guide was great - very informative, personable and interesting. He took us from the Dutch side of the island to the French side, stopped at The Butterfly Farm in Marigot and a flea market area before he drove us back to the Dutch side and the harbor. We loved this tour - it afforded us the opportunity to see the entire island and was a great introduction to this beautiful piece of land. Like St. Thomas, we saw areas of extreme poverty and decay and then areas that were incredibly picturesque and full of color and beauty.
We were back on the ship for lunch by 12:30 PM and the kids, again, opted to spend time in the Kids' Camp while T and I disembarked on our own to do a little shopping by the dock. We were back on the ship by 3 PM, sent a few e-mails through one of the three computers in the library (not realizing that there was an entire internet cafe on the ship as well!) and reunited with our kids at 4 PM.
Like the evening before, we collected our drinks from the bar and headed up to our room to enjoy the Sail Away on our balcony. A number of announcements were made about the departure - there were delays, initially, because of some passengers who were late getting back onboard and then, later, because an ill passenger had to be transported back to St. Maarten (before we'd left the harbor). Once we were on our way, we dressed for dinner in the Coral dining room at our usual 6 PM time. T had the rack of lamb and I enjoyed Alaskan king crab legs. We promised (bribed!) the kids that we'd go to one of the hot tubs after dinner if they behaved themselves. They did so, after dinner, we ran to the room to don our bathing suits and then headed up to the hot tub near Morgan's Bar and the Splash Pool in the aft of the ship. It was very quiet and empty but for the adorable couple we enjoyed the Coral World Aquarium tour with the day before. The 6 of us visited and shared stories about our day. We all noticed that the ship was moving at quite a clip - because of the delay leaving the harbor, we surmised. Water was sloshing back and forth in the pools and we all found it difficult to walk (up on deck 16, at least) without holding onto something. Later, in the room, we saw on the television That the seas were "moderate" for the first time all week with swells from 4-7'. We were exhausted from another busy (but wonderful) day and were in bed and asleep by 9 PM.
No comments:
Post a Comment