I am off on a 8-night, 9-day road trip starting Sunday, May 18 and ending Monday, May 26. I will be in at least 10 states, maybe 11, depending on routing.
I decided that I was going to try to take such a trip. I decided to go Bryson’s route, simply because it’s easier. I’d like to follow Theroux (train) and McCarthy (destinations) at some point in the future.
I’ve plotted out a path from St. Louis, where I live, visiting 10 states to the west in 9 days. Most days require less than 6 hours driving, leaving ample time for stops. Unlike the writers, I can’t go without a timeline. So, I have planned out hotel stops with reservations, and I was able to use points for 6 of the 8 nights. I’ve also noted things I want to see along the way and confirmed opening and closing times.
I used Roadtrippers and Trip Advisor to plan things out. The route is below from Google Maps.
Part of my job is to talk with suppliers who want to do business with my company. The ones that intrigue me the most are those that both a) come with a clear message and b) come without PowerPoint slides. Unfortunately, a lot of suppliers can do either a or b, but few can do both. Those that come with slides can tell you that I have a crazy good ability to predict exactly which slides are in their nicely spiralbound booklet, complete with hard plastic cover. That’s how unoriginal most supplier presentations are.
But I digress from the point of this post and the article that spurred it. The sentiments embodied by “Death to PowerPoint!” stem, I suspect, from many of us experiencing Death by PowerPoint.
In 1964, Marshall McLuhan famously wrote, “The medium is the message.” Yet many deliverers of PowerPoint slides believe that the message is the medium and thus fail to deliver a message at all.
I’m in Dallas this weekend for a family event. As I write, the rest of the family is out of the hotel, shopping and seeing friends. If you knew me well, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I’m in the room watching baseball and reading on my iPad.
Over the past month or so, in fact, I’ve made a rather rapid transition to eliminate nearly all paper from my reading. I’m not talking about books; I was an early Kindle adopter. I’m talking about everything else: magazines, newspapers, blogs, web sites.
My reading has changed not because the content has gotten that much better, but because the apps are better and, therefore, the accessibility to the content is better. When you add in the ability to see video and listen to audio alongside the written word, I think digital media in the right app brings a much better experience than a hard copy newspaper or magazine.
It’s an experience that, in my opinion, finally justifies paying the same (or more) for a digital subscription. The days of free digital content have long been over, but now I’m a believer that is willing to pay.
My Sports Illustrated app brings me up-to-date news and tweets alongside the nearly stale article. The Businessweek app includes video and audio and often adds new content mid-week. You don’t have time to read The Economist? No problem. The app comes with a recorded soundtrack, with the articles read by very soothing British voices.
You get none of these with your paper copy. I also get my digital copy before your paper copy arrives in the mail.
Aggregation is huge as well. I use Newsify as my RSS reader. It displays all my feeds in easy-to-read tabloid format. I also dabble a bit with Flipboard, Zite, TrapIt, Pulse, and Daily Planet as news aggregator applications.
Newsify costs $0.99 on the app store. One time cost of $1.99? No problem.
For me, the digitization of media has turned the corner. I’m now able to read more with the iPad that I could ever before. This means that I am willing to pay for more content than ever before. I now understand why The Economist charges the same for a digital subscription and a print+digital subscription. I now understand why The Wall Street Journal charges over double per week to add digital access to print-only access.
When my SI and BW subscriptions are up for renewal, I want digital only. If digital only isn’t available, I’ll pay for the paper, but recycle the paper right away. At least I’m environmentally friendly?
And so launches of my campaign to introduce “Surgical Shopping” into the mix for a future Olympic competition. Frankly, I want a competition I can win. After all, how many people can try on four blue blazers, settle on a $500 model, and buy it with alterations in 15 minutes? I can.
Surgical Shopping is the sport of purchasing an item in a public shopping mall or big box store with the appropriate combination of speed, cost, quality, and intangibles. There are two variations:
“Open” Surgical Shopping: athletes can buy any item they want.
“Targeted” Surgical Shopping: athletes all must buy the same item.
Each of these two can also be further clarified by asking athletes to stay within a specific budget or achieve a specific discount off list price.
While Surgical Shopping has female, male, and pairs competitions, I think this will appeal most to the stereotypical male (thanks Dagwood), who’d rather eat pizza and watch sports than go shopping. Women typically struggle in this sport, due to their inability to focus in a store, especially in a place like Target, where bargains on unneeded items are always in sight.
Once the item is purchased, and the contest returns to the staring line, judges score what we call “the get” based on the following:
Price
Speed
Ability to return the item
Quality (either by experts or carefully pre-calculated tables, as in diving or gymnastics)
Degree of difficulty in buying, based on a number of factors including variety in the category, necessary prep or alterations, need for financing, ability to self-serve or availability of salespeople, body shape and size (for clothing), etc.
For example:
Purchasing a Hamilton Beach drip coffee maker for $19.99 in 5 minutes at Target might not score as high as purchasing DeLonghi espresso maker for $166.73 at Williams Sonoma in 15 minutes. The quality difference is evident and getting the focus of the snooty salesperson in Williams Sonoma is a struggle.
If the category is snacks, buying gourmet chips and salsa for $10 might (or might not) beat out Reese’s peanut butter cups grabbed at the register for $1.75. Depends on the specifics of the competition and the taste buds of the judges.
If two men buy the same suit for the same price at the same store in the same elapsed time, but one requires alterations and the other doesn’t, the one with alterations will win every time.
I compete in Surgical Shopping every time I make a purchase. For example, I bought two pairs of shoes yesterday at Nordstrom in about 20 minutes. It took five minutes to browse and select the shoes I wanted. The salesperson took five minutes to find the shoes (which would have really caused a problem in getting a medal). It took about 7 minutes to find the right pair, as the first size didn’t fit. Lastly, it took about three minutes at the cash register, slowed by a faulty credit card reader and confusion about the price. If this had been the Olympics, my only hope would have been points for the quality of the shoes, the quality of the store, and the returnability and refundability, which isn’t always available with shoes but is at Nordstrom.
If ESPN 8, “The Ocho” really existed, I’m sure this would be in prime time. It would open up competition to a whole new set of athletes, who think they are the only ones that can buy a new car during halftime of a football game or a tuxedo with alterations the day before a wedding.
Just imagine Brent Musburger – “You are looking live at the Mall of America just outside Minneapolis where, despite the freezing temperatures, 100 of the world’s best surgical shoppers are ready for what only can be described as the Surgical Shopping competition from hell. May the best shopper win!”
I’ve applied for and gotten two new credit cards this week. In doing so, I joined the hundreds of thousands of people who play a game called “how many points can I collect by signing up for new credit cards?”
There is an entire sub-culture of people who know how to earn frequent flyer or frequent stayer points to make travel exciting, comfortable, and free. Some of these folks frequent Inside Flyer or Milepoint or FlyerTalk. Others provide free advice on blogs at sites like Boarding Area.
I’ve always ensured that I maximize my points. I try to fly the same airline (Delta) as much as possible. I’ve already achieved Delta Platinum Medallion, which won’t expire until February 2014. Because of three trips to Asia in the past two years, the family and I are going to Hawaii over Christmas, all on frequent flyer tickets. But, I hadn’t, until this week, started playing the frequent flyer credit card bonus game.
Mrs. Spidey and I carry very few cards. We’ve got American Express and a Southwest Airlines Visa. We’ve also got a Best Buy card, a Kohl’s card and a Nordstrom card, because of the specific benefits at those stores, and a Hilton American Express, because when you spend a bucket load of money on a bar mitzvah and a bat mitzvah at a Hilton property, getting 5 frequent stayer points per dollar is just awesome. But, in reality, we only really use the AMEX and the Southwest Airlines Visa.
I’ve know about credit card offers for a while. When each of us got the Southwest Airlines Visa, we got 2 round-trip tickets each as a sign-up bonus. However, I never wanted to expand card use. The tipping point for me was realizing that the lowest fare to visit my parents at Thanksgiving is $344 per person and being frustrated at not having points. Even with my travel, I need more points.
So, this week, I applied for and got instant approval for two new cards, which, based on folks at those blogs above, are the two best cards. You should look yourself.
First, I signed up for a Chase Sapphire Preferred card. For signing up and spending $2,000 in the first three months, I get 40,000 Ultimate Rewards points, which transfer 1:1 to United, Southwest, Hyatt, Marriott and British Airways, among others. The card also gives you a 7% bonus at the end of the year on top of all the points you’ve earned.
Then, I signed up for the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express. With this card, I get 10,000 points after my first purchase and another 20,000 if I spend 5,000 in the first five months. The beauty of SPG points is that they aren’t just for rooms, but, like AMEX’s Membership Rewards and Chase’s Ultimate Rewards, you can transfer to airlines programs 1:1 – and SPG has many more airline partners.
As noted, these two cards are routinely cited at the two best cards for travelers to accumulate points. Approval was easy. And, now, our Southwest Visa will be canceled and cut up.
If you go down this route, don’t forget to have your spouse apply for a separate card and get his or her own card and own bonus. You can actually refer your spouse for the Starwood AMEX, and he/she will get 5,000 extra points. The cards don’t care where you transfer points, so you can combine the points into a single account for maximum use.
And, one last thing – this frequent flyer/frequent stayer sub-culture is endless. Dive in deep and make it a game, and you will end up with some amazing free vacations.
I couldn’t have imagine writing a post about Todd Akin before yesterday. Now, it’s a must.
I moved to Chesterfield, Missouri over 10 years ago, and, candidly, I never really paid attention to who my congressman was/is. Only in the past few years, did I realize that my congressman is a very, very right wing conservative. I voted against him every two years like clockwork, but he got elected anyway.
I knew there was a Republican primary for senator only because of the local television commercials that ran over and over and over for Akin, Dave Spence, and Sarah Steelman. I was out of town when Akin won and didn’t even know for a few days afterward that he did.
Now – everyone knows him. He’s all over the web and television. Heck, he’s even on the front page of the Financial Times’ website. Yes – Akin has made a name for himself globally.
In the end, Todd Akin has done himself harm, the Republicans harm, and the Democrats good. Claire McCaskill ran commercials telling folks how conservative Akin was and helped to get him elected, knowing that he’d make a starker comparison and an easier components. She got what she wanted.
Yes, the Republicans now have a problem in Missouri – a senate seat they hoped to pick up. The real problem, however, may lie with the presumed VP nominee Paul Ryan. Akin’s verbal nightmare opens the door for some questions.
Tell us Mr. Ryan – do you believe that abortion should be allowed in cases of rape? What’s that?
I woke up this morning thinking knowing that it had been a very long time since I had posted to my blog. I thought it might be exactly a year. I was disappointed to learn that it has, in fact, been a year and 11 days. You can see that just below this post.
That’s depressing. I do like writing. Why the gap? Many reasons, I guess.
The regular job takes up a lot of time. It’s difficult to come up with topics. The posts take too much time. Twitter and message boards have replaced the blog for communications. (However, I still don’t use Facebook.)
I’m getting myself organized a bit more these days. My desk at work is free of papers. My personal email only has four in the Inbox. I’m deleting myself from marketing emails and, as soon as I finish this, I’m going to clean off my desk at home.
I’m hopeful that getting organized means more time for writing. Shorter posts, definitely. A more consistent theme, perhaps. I don’t know. My interests haven’t shifted – travel, hockey, organizational behavior, family.
I can only hope that I won’t be writing you again on August 19, 2013 with the same thoughts.
Somewhere around 12:00pm CDT this afternoon, August 8, 2011, our son, our eldest, took the car out by himself for the very first time. I am happy to say he made it to school and back safely, with a stop, of course, at the drive-thru at McDonald’s. Driving makes one hungry, I guess.
I know he made it to school, because I am now able to track him via his mobile phone, for the low, low, low cost of $9.95 per month with AT&T. (Thank goodness your parents couldn’t do that, right?)
As I consider our eldest getting his license and driving away, I’m not going to write about how he was born seemingly yesterday. I’m not going to lament the cost of insurance ($83 per month, if you are interested).
I’m not going to write about how Mrs. Spidey and I now worry minute-by-minute when he’s out, and I’m not going to celebrate that he can now shuttle our 13-year-old around instead of us.
Wait. Yes. I will celebrate/am celebrating that he can now shuttle our 13-year-old around instead of us. I shouldn’t forget that.
Now that I’ve celebrated, I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.
I’m thinking this is a rite of passage that we’ve all been through as 16-year-old kids.
I’m thinking about how my brave, brave mother took me for my license on my birthday and then let me take the car to school that day.
I’m thinking that I survived learning how to drive while making some mistakes.
I’m thinking my mother and father survived four kids getting driver’s licenses and making mistakes.
I’m thinking this is an exciting time for our son and for Mrs. Spidey and me. In many ways, we both get freedom.
The primary difference is that his freedom is trackable on my iPhone via AT&T.
After our three days in St. Martin/Sint Maarten, we journeyed over to Anguilla for a wonderful seven-days on that island. For the first time in many summer trips, we’re talking about returning to our destination.
If you are considering Anguilla, you should know a few things before you book. First, if you are looking for either a massive party spot or a bevy of activity, stay away. This place is for those that want to rest and rest hard. There is one golf course and some tennis courts, but the primary focus of tourists is eating, sleeping, and sunning at the beach/pool. Second, it ain’t cheap. You’ve probably already seen the hotel rates, but restaurants will get you for a minimum of $100 with drink. Our cheapest dinner was at Picante, the local Mexican spot, and that was $78 including tip, but without alcohol. So again, if you want a cheap, party spot, you won’t find it in Anguilla.
Disclaimers aside – we loved Anguilla. It was fabulous. We wanted rest, and we got rest.
Travel
We took a ferry operated by GB Express to get from Sint Maarten to Anguilla. This was based on many of the comments over at Trip Advisor. We’re glad we took the recommendation. The public ferry that leaves from Marigot looked very hectic and crowded. GB Express boats seat maybe 12, and it is just a better operation. We made our reservations in advance and had no problems. (I should mention that we left our rental car at the dock in Sint Maarten, and Lesley from Kenny’s went there to pick it up.) I know there is a flight from SXM to AXA. It is about double the cost of the ferry and is all of 10 minutes. Maybe next time we’ll try that.
On Anguilla, we rented a car for four of the days. This was well worth it. We got to explore the island a bit, but it also gave us flexibility. We didn’t have to worry about calling a taxi ahead of time. It was also exciting to drive on the left for the first time in my life. I was disappointed, however, to get a car with left-hand drive. Next time, I’ll ask for a right-hand drive car. We used Island Rentals, solely because the concierge at the hotel arranged it. We got another white Toyota Corolla, but in much better shape than the one on Sint Maarten.
The Hotel
We stayed at the CuisinArt Resort in a Luxury Junior Suite. For those interested, we stayed in room 1007, which is the building farthest to the left, as you stand facing the beach from the lobby. We loved it. The resort is the perfect size for us, the service was generally good, and the amenities were great. It wasn’t perfect, and I’ll note below a few things that could be improved.
The Villas at CuisinArt Resort Shot from the Beach (#10, where we stayed, is farthest to the right)
We took a taxi from the Blowing Point Ferry Terminal to the hotel. It was $18 for that trip. We were met at the entrance by Stephane, the manager. He was somewhat ubiquitous at the resort, as was the #2 man, Fabio. Both were very pleasant and were helpful. As we checked in, we received our vouchers and our welcome drink. We were escorted to our room and the bags arrived shortly afterward.
The video below showcases the room, so I won’t go into massive detail here. It was more than comfortable, and the view was just amazing. I’ve never stayed anywhere before with views like that.
We never had trouble getting a seat at the beach or a seat at the pool. Attendants were omnipresent to “make-up” the chairs with towels and offer free bottles of cold water. There were also free floats for use in both the ocean and the pool. Each set of lounges, both at the beach and at the pool, came with a cooling umbrella. Mrs. Spidey and I commented multiple times about how nice it was not to have to get up at 6am to claim our chair. And to say that the beach was quiet is an understatement. Although all beaches in Anguilla are public, there really wasn’t anyone else on the beach but CuisinArt guests. Well, there was Mike the bracelet guy who came by every morning, but that’s about it. It was just pure, utter relaxation.
For some flavor of the grounds and the lobby, I shot two more videos below.
I would be remiss, if I didn’t mention the Beach Bar and Sam the bartender. I would be further remiss, if I didn’t recommend the frozen mojitos that he makes with fresh, hydroponically grown mint. They are crazy good. I’d be even more remiss, if I didn’t tell everyone that there is happy hour from five to six where all of Sam’s drinks are two-for-one. The beach bar at the CuisinArt from 5pm to 6pm is about as crazy as that place gets.
So, as crazy good as the place is, it could improve in a few areas:
1. Internet Access. I know we were on vacation, but we needed access to check email and see photos of our kids at camp. Internet in the room was wired and didn’t work for the last three days. WiFi was available only in the lobby and part of the pool. They have to get WiFi in the rooms. Stephane says they plan to do this in the next few months, when the hotel closes for hurricane season.
2. Coffee. Seriously. The in-room coffee maker was too upscale for us. It had these very small, individual demitasse coffee cups, and only the first two were free. At breakfast time, the only way to get coffee was by going to breakfast or ordering room service. Give us normal coffee makers and perhaps a few coffee urns in the lobby. That would be great.
3. Service oddities. We asked for several extra pillows upon check-in, which arrived right away. I sleep with two pillows under my knees for my back. I’ve done that for years. However, each morning, like clockwork, the extra pillows were moved to the closet up on top of an armoire. I then pulled them out each night. Turn down service was also nice, but we never used the slippers and never used the bathrobes on the bed. I’m just nitpicking here.
The Food
We purchased the Sea of Love package from CuisinArt. This included three lunches at Mediterraneo, three dinners at Santorini’s, including the Chef’s Table, one-day car rental, a wine tasting, and a spa package. We’re undecided whether to do this again next year. I need to do the math. All-in-all, I can tell you that we ate way too much while in Anguilla. It was great food, but there was just so much.
Mediterraneo
Mediterraneo is the restaurant where you eat breakfast, and it is then open for lunch. Breakfast was very, very acceptable. It was not spectacular. There is a buffet that includes many varieties of fruit, cereal, pastries, pancakes/waffles/French Toast, and some local salt fish, which I enjoyed. You can also order omelets. Coffee is European strong. That means stronger than Starbucks.
(I should note that guests also have an option to take a continental breakfast in the room. We did this twice and were able to eat on the balcony once. They delivered right on time, exactly as promised.)
Without a voucher, my guess is that lunch will easily set you back $50+ for two. That’s a lot, if you plan to eat lunch every day. We didn’t. We ate our three lunches and went without the other days. We just didn’t need it after a big breakfast and in anticipation of a large dinner.
Lunch there was very good. We recommend several things. Salad is made to order by selecting what vegetables and dressing you want. They have the same for pasta and pizza. Mrs. Spidey had the salad each lunch and said it was very good. I had a pepperoni/sausage pizza one lunch, and it was quite good. We can also recommend the lobster curry, the cheeseburger, and the grilled lobster. With a voucher, you get appetizer, main course, and dessert, and, in reality, that was just too much food.
Santorini’s
We ate at Santorini’s three times, including the Chef’s Table. The Chef’s Table was $195 per person, which includes five courses, each paired with wine. We agreed that, had we not bought the package, we would not have paid for it. The food and wine were good but, again, it was too much. Notable was some fried calamari on saffron rice for the second course. I like the foie gras for the first course as well. I will write, however, that we were a bit disappointed by the Chef’s Table, as it really wasn’t a chef’s table. We were the only people who ate the meal that night, and we were not given a seat in the kitchen. In fact, the chef never came out to talk to us. We never asked why or insisted, but we should have.
Our two other dinners at Santorini’s were ok. I’m not going to say they were the best ever. We each had grilled lobster once, which was very good. Again, with the voucher you got appetizer, main course, and dessert, and it was just too much food. I will say that I highly recommend the beef lasagna. It was outstanding. We had a bit of a service goof our last night there. We had an 8:00 reservation, but, when we arrived they did not have a table. We learned that they had seated too many walk-ups. After 20 minutes of waiting, we were given a seat inside (all others were on the veranda) and could see dirty dishes piling up. We were told we’d be moved as soon as a table became available, but then the first available table went to another group. We were eventually moved, and Fabio did wipe all charges for us. Nonetheless it was frustrating.
Off-Property
We ate at three restaurants off-property.
We had a drink and some small plates at Spice, which is at Cap Juluca. We had wanted to see what Cap Juluca looked like. Spice is in a building at the far end of the Cap Juluca resort, to the left as you look at the water. We sat at a table right overlooking the water, right where it lapped on some rocks. The restaurant web site just about shows where we sat. In the dark, however, there really wasn’t a view. Spice occupies the same building as a wine bar called Flights and the Pimms restaurant. Mrs. Spidey had some fried calamari, and I had something called tuna four-ways, which was outstanding. I also had a flight of red wine that was very good.
A few nights later, we ate at Blanchards. I had read about Blanchards in the book “A Trip to the Beach,” written by Melinda Blanchard. The food there was very good, especially the corn chowder. We also had their famous Cracked Coconut dessert, which was better than anticipated. The Cracked Coconut is a chocolate shell with coconut ice cream and rum on the inside. It’s unreal. This time of year, Blanchards has a $49 price fixe meal, which we both took, although we paid extra for the dessert. When we got there, we surprised to see Samaro working there, as works at CuisinArt as well. Turns out that Blanchards is his primary job. Who knew?
The Cracked Coconut from Blanchards Restaurant
As noted above, we also ate at the lone Mexican restaurant on the island, Picante. Picante is located down on the end of the Island past Viceroy and past Cap Juluca. It seats perhaps 30 at small tables on a broad veranda. Mrs. Spidey had fish tacos, and I had chicken fajitas. They were both good. If you go, however, watch out for the hot sauce. Fortunately, I tasted a bit on the end of my knife before putting it on a fajita. It is H-O-T, hot.
Our trip also overlapped (not intentionally) with the annual celebration of Anguilla’s emancipation at their Summer Festival. We avoided crowds by heading down to Sandy Ground on the Sunday before the August Monday celebration. On Sunday, we saw the beginnings of what we assume happened on Monday. We saw local sailboats lined up at anchor ready for a race. We saw some larger power boats lined up in a row (literal touching) forming a mini party cove. We also saw many food and drink tents being set up. The pictures of the wall-to-wall crowds expected on Monday kept us away, but it looked like the younger set was ready to have a good time.
As I’ve told friends and co-workers about our trip, I’ve come to say that it’s the best trip we’ve taken since our honeymoon. It’s probably also the most expensive. However, it was worth it and, I think there is a good chance, once we figure out schedules, that we’ll go back again.
We have just returned from a 10-day vacation, the first three of were spent at the Westin Dawn Beach Resort and Spa on the island of Sint Maarten. The other 7 days were spent a 25-minute ferry ride away on Anguilla. More on that in a later post.
(For specificity, I’ll use St. Martin when referring to the French-side of the island and Sint Maarten, when referring to the Dutch side. The airport is on the Dutch side, and so was our hotel.)
We arrived into St. Martin via US Airways through Charlotte. The trip from CLT is just under four hours. Thankfully, we had some frequent flyer tickets in first class. They made all the difference. We arrived in a rain storm, which was the last rain we would see on St. Martin/Sint Maarten, but not the last on our trip overall. We breezed through passport control, but waited over 30 minutes for our bags. As we stood by the carousel, the lost baggage desks were conspicuously over our shoulder. Our bags were nearly the last off the plane, but they made it.
Based on some advice on Trip Advisor, we rented a car through Kenny’s. As promised via email, Lesley was there to meet us. He took us over to our white Toyota Corolla in the parking lot, where we did the paperwork. The Corolla will never be confused with a luxury rental. We came to call it the “golf cart” because pressing the gas got you about the same acceleration as would a regular golf cart. This was particularly challenging around the hills near our hotel. That much said, Lesley was very efficient, and the car ($40/day) worked great.
Our drive to the hotel through Simpson Bay took forever. The road out of the airport through Simpson Bay is one-lane and very crowded. It moved faster once we got out of that general area and headed up into the hills. Our porter at the Westin later told us that it’s faster to go the other direction, all the way through Marigot and Grand Case. We later traveled through there and now believe him.
We got to the Westin fine. If you go (and we do recommend it), beware of the last hill to the hotel. The hotel is at the bottom of the steepest hill down which I’ve ever driven. It’s worse than anything I’ve seen in San Francisco. The roads on the island go up and down as the landscape does, and we were constantly challenged to see over the hill at oncoming traffic.
The Hotel
Check-in went well. We asked about an upgrade to oceanfront and were told it was available for $100 per night. Knowing we were headed to Anguilla with an oceanfront room reserved there, we passed. After checking-in, I parked the car in the free garage, and we headed up. To our dismay (and the porter’s), our room had not yet been cleaned. That was frustrating to say the least. He was really embarrassed. The hotel found us a room relatively quickly, and we got our oceanfront room for free! I’ll give the hotel credit for recovering nicely.
Our Oceanfront View at the Westin Dawn Beach (looking left)
Our Oceanfront View at the Westin Dawn Beach (looking right)
The room was standard. King size bed and a sitting chair. A desk with wired and wireless Internet. Cable TV. Separate shower and tub. Oddly, our sink was cracked, something Mrs. Spidey thought had to happen upon installation. Internet was $14.95 per day per device. We plugged in Mrs. Spidey’s laptop, but elected not to use wireless for our iPhones and my iPad.
Our Room at the Westin Dawn Beach, Shot with My Back to the Balcony
Our Bathroom Shower and Sink at the Westin Dawn Beach Resort
The pool and beach area was quite nice. The hotel is tucked into a little cove on Dawn Beach near Oyster Pond and is unreachable, except through the hotel. That made it very quiet. We had no trouble finding lounge chairs on the beach. Towels were readily available, and waitresses came by to take drink orders. The water was warm in both pool and ocean, and the ocean wasn’t too rough. Granted, this was low season, but the quiet and serenity was quite nice. We could envision it more noisy at Easter or Christmas, but even then, the beach was long-enough and secluded enough to find a good spot.
Beach Chairs Looking at the Hotel at the Westin Dawn Beach
There is a casino (a very, very small casino) just off the lobby in the hotel. Although it seemed like some tourists went to the hotel just to gamble, it was never crowded. We probably lost $100 on slots between the two of us, in the three days we were there.
Food
We were on the island for three dinners and three breakfasts. We had one breakfast and all dinners outside the hotel. The hotel has a breakfast buffet in its restaurant that was around $25 per person. It had made-to-order omelets, french toast, cereals, sweets, and lox and bagels.
Our View from Breakfast at Mr. Busby's
Our breakfast outside the hotel was at Mr. Busby’s, which was just back over the hill behind the Coral Beach Club. It was about $25 for the two of us for breakfast right on the beach. The breakfast was the quality of any diner I’ve been to back the U.S. – very sufficient. The view, however, was fantastic.
Our first dinner, the night we arrived, was also in Coral Beach Club at Big Fish. It was very elegant and is recommended. We sat outside on a deck, but there is no view, as it is inside a courtyard. We ate well, although the service was a bit slow. We learned over the next 10 days that the speed at restaurants on both islands is much, much slower than at home. We never really got used to it, but we were accepting. Mrs. Spidey had a dish called Oprah’s Favorite, which was a mixture of different types of seafood. I had a Mahi Mahi dish that was stuffed with crabmeat and covered with lobster sauce. Both were served on incredibly large plates, each with four small sides. We would go back, although we’d be a bit hungrier next time. We were stuffed.
Our second dinner was at a café in Marigot. (IMPORTANT NOTE – Marigot basically shuts down on Sundays. We were lucky to find anything open. When I write that it was a ghost town, I mean it.) Unfortunately, neither of us can remember the name of the restaurant in Marigot, but it was right in a strip of four outdoor restaurants to the left of the ferry terminal, as you face it. The food wasn’t to die for, but was enjoyable. I had the curried conch, and Mrs. Spidey had some coconut shrimp.
Our last dinner, before heading to Anguilla, was in Grand Case. If you are in St. Martin, you must got eat in Grand Case. It is a town of perhaps 3/4 mile in length, but much of it is a one-way strip of Grand Case Boulevard, on which there must be 10 or more restaurants. The proprietors/chefs of the restaurants stand outside beckoning you in. Armed with the Trip Advisor rankings, we chose La Villa for dinner. We were not disappointed. The restaurant offers the first drink free and (if you think ahead) will convert 1 Euro for 1 USD, if you pay in cash. I had an escargot appetizer that was as buttery as one could want. I also had a filet that was cooked very nicely, also with four sides, just like The Big Fish. I wish I could tell you the rest of the meal, but I just can never remember what I eat unless I write it down right away.
Final Thoughts
Here are a few summary points for those of you thinking about going to St. Martin/Sint Maarten:
1. Definitely rent a car. The island is not that big, and renting a car gives you the flexibility you want. Kenny’s worked well for us.
2. Get out of your hotel for meals. Mrs. Spidey told me that Grand Case is considered the culinary center of the Caribbean. I now believe her. We didn’t even stop at any of the outdoor barbecues. Enjoy it.
3. If you want to shop, synchronize your shopping in Marigot or Phillipsburg with the cruise ships. We did neither and didn’t enter a single store. Plus, the stores close at 6:00pm. You need to leave the beach early.
4. Although we didn’t see rain for our three days, rain is prevalent in the low season. However, it never seems to last very long.
I think we would go back to Sint Maarten or St. Martin, but, if you read my next post, you’ll see that we’re more likely to return to Anguilla.
Life With Spidey 