Caribbean Cruise vs. St Marteen vacation

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have been trying to plan a vacation for late 2006/early 2007. I will be taking my GF, my 11 y.o. son and my 14 y.o. daughter. I have done a southern Caribbean cruise (solo) a few years ago, and an Alaskan cruise last summer with my son.

My initial choices were between a western and southern Caribbean cruise. Last night my GF added another wrinkle to the equation. Turns out her husband (don’t ask ;)) was gonna use their St Maarten time share, but now he cannot. So my GF suggested we go to St Maarten for 1 - 2 weeks.

Anybody able to offer some help here? First hand experience appreciated. The choices are:

  1. Southern Caribbean Cruise
  2. Western Caribbean Cruise
  3. St Maarten condo
2

I can’t speak about the cruises, but I just spent 8 days down in St Martin/St Maarten.

I stayed over in the Terres Basses (French side) and was with some rather unadventurous folks, so I didn’t get to see a lot. We went into Marigot a couple times, they have a touristy market there for souvenirs (cough crap cough). And did a tour around the island in a rental car. (The tip is to go out of the airport and rent from a smaller rental company for a better deal. We got a Suzuki SUV for the week for $200 american).

If you’re a foodie, it’s an excellent island to go to. Tons of restaurants. There are activities like horseback riding, jet skiing, hanging at the beach, etc, but I’m not sure if there’d be enough to keep the kids entertained for long. One word of advice, this is not an island I’d recommend renting scooters on. Traffic moves at a clip and is a bit aggressive.

Prices are a little more expensive on foods and supplies than in the states except for cigarettes. About $12 a carton, almost made me want to start up smoking. Speaking of which, there’s a cigar shop at the airport where you can buy cubans. I wasn’t sure if they were still illegal to take back to the US so I asked the woman behind the counter who told me to just slip off the decal. I chose not to.

What else? Hmm, the island is run by two countries. The Netherlands on the south, most likely where you’ll fly into, and France on the North. There are no border patrols so you can cross back and forth freely.

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If you happen to be an aircraft buff, there is one extra incentive for St. Maarten:

:smiley:

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stpauler thanks for the info. When I was in Jamaica, a cigar shop offered a service where they would remove the Cuban bands and replace them with Jamaican bands, all while you watched. I declined.
Dorjän…yep, my gf has been to that location. She saw people hanging on to a chain link fence and being blown horizontal. If we end up choosing St Maarten, that beach is one place my kids wanna check out.

5

I’d go with staying on St. Maarten. On a cruise, you’ll only have short visits to islands, shared with hundreds of your fellow passengers.

St. Maarten is both French and Dutch, so you can experience a little of both there.

You can also take a short ferry to Anguilla, which has better beaches than St. Maarten, or a ferry to St. Barts, which is very tres chic. You can also take a ferry to Saba, which has some of the best diving in the Caribbean.

So, you can get a multi-island experience without the cruise there.

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^Cool. I think St Maarten will win hands down. The fact that it would be waaay cheaper is gonna figure in also.:wink:

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I’d recommend a cruise. We just took one which called at St. Maarten a few months ago. We took a bus tour around and it was nice, but I don’t know that there was enough to occupy me for a whole week. The other thing, of course, is that on the islands you’re constantly going to be accosted by people hawking stuff (in St Maarten, it was mostly people who wanted us to buy timeshares, interestingly enough), which can get tiresome after a while.

–Cliffy

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I’m with Cliffy. I would have appreciated maybe 2-3 days down there, but not 1-2 weeks. However, I’m cheap, and I’d go with the cheaper option and make due.

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My wife and I went to St. Martin last February and had a wonderful time. We stayed on the French side, where the food is heavenly. This thread includes my request for recommendations, and my final report.

Mmm. Sunset Cafe in Grand Case. Mmm.

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I’m leaving myself wide open to charges of racism, but I’ll chance it.

Some years back, I won a trip to St. Martin in a trivia contest, and had a good time there. The beaches and the water are beautiful. There are some great places to shop and to eat on the French side (which is infinitely nicer than the Dutch side in almost every respect). BUT…

The weird thing about St. Martin is, it’s the one place in the world where you HOPE the restaurant you’re eating at is staffed by French waiters! Seriously, whenever I went to a shop or restaurant where I was waited on by French people, I was treated like royalty. On the other hand, if you require service from a black islander… well, in my experience, you’re out of luck.

I’ve never been to any other tourist destination where service personnel were so BLATANTLY lazy and contemptuous of their customers. Ask a black casino employee to make some change, and he’ll roll his eyes, cast a heavy sigh, and act like he was having a great day until YOU showed up. Ask a black waiter for a refill of your drink, and he’ll stare at you scornfully. Try to rent a car, and a black clerk will treat you like a major nuisance.

Look, I don’t idealize American tourists. I know we can be a major pain in the backside. And I can understand why impoverished black islanders may be resentful about having to wait on rich white foreigners. But given that they RELY on us white foreigners for their living, couldn’t they wait until we’re gone and then flip us the bird and mock us or curse us behind our backs? Or just spit in our drinks surreptitiously?

There is, however, one plus side to the disdainful attitude of black islanders on St. Martin. Once you KNOW that black islanders hate you, you know that when a black islander approaches you with a smile on his face, you should run as fast as possible in the other direction, because it can mean only one thing: he’s going to try to sell you a time share!!!

Did I encounter ANY nice black people on the island? One. Exactly one. He was so friendly, so helpful, so courteous, my then-girlfriend asked him, "Are you from St. Martin? “No,” he replied, “I moved here from Haiti.”

Ahhhhhh… that made sense.

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In fact, (this is a pet peeve of mine even though I don’t smoke) it is illegal for any American to purchase Cuban cigars and smoke them in foreign countries. Cite. (small pdf)

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Uhoh, KRM. I broke the law. Then again, while in Jamaica I did far worse.:wink: