Sint Maarten, Netherlands Antilles

Ah the Caribbean. The Dutch were smaart to snaatch up this island. The French as well. It's the smallest island to be shared by two countries. Makes for some pretty interesting dynamics, with a multitude of nationalities, currencies and cultures swirling about. Thankfully the European types speak perfect English in addition to their home language. I would very much like to say the same about myself someday.

And the creole/Jamaican sounding African folk ... I can listen to them all day long.

Sint Maarten aka Saint Martin is a decent sized, fairly developed tourist hub just east of Puerto Rico. Pretty pimp if the MegaYacht scene is your scene. I do have a boat fetish, but this place makes me just feel inferior ... all the boats here are so huge and seven digit affairs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Martin

We're staying at my man Philippe's house on the Dutch side ... it's a sunny lovely house on the hill overlooking Cole Bay.

The beaches are superfly. Pristine white sand ... clear blue water (70 degrees) ... mega gorgeous boats ... and fly peoples including lots of topless French ladies (sorry, no photos).

And you can get a rhoom punch and a chee pizza for only $10!

There's a beach (w/ beach bars flanking) that's right at the end of the runway at SXM ... so cool to sit there and watch all kinds of planes landing and taking off. For some unknown reason ... people line up right behind the plane when it's taking off and get blasted w/ the jet wake ... from a pretty close distance. On a plane this big it's enough to blow your clothes off and half a mile into the ocean. Why people do this is unclear.

The illustrious Philippe ... at a dinner party at his house.

Really fun to be in a really multicultural multilingual scene.

And the sunsets are to die for, dahlink. :)