ST MARTIN ’02: Day 3

Monday: Monday! Things are open on Mondays. We headed in the counter clockwise direction again and went to The Talk of the Town in Grand Case for lunch. This little restaurant, called a lolo, has bbq chicken, ribs, shrimpies and fish (though the shrimpies left a lot to be desired) the bbq barnyard variety animals were pretty dang good. Lolo’s are apparently the way to go in St. Maarten/St. Martin. They are fairly cheap and don’t have tons of obnoxious tourists lolling around eating up the good food.
After lunch we moved on over to Marigot to see what they were like when they were actually open for business. None of the towns on the French side are very big. A few streets and many junk stores interspersed with obscenely expensive jewelry stores (I don’t understand the allure of all those badly designed rings and necklaces-except maybe resale value…not my style anyway. And those Lladro statues are tasteless. Yarg.) We dropped by to get another brioche and headed off to finish the circuit of the island.
It seems that we’re only allowed to go in one direction around the island…heh.
We stopped in Phillipsburg to get a week’s worth of dialup access, the web is rather popular around here. I counted about 3 or 4 internet companies here just roving around the island. That’s promising. Even Kentucky Fried, a major player here on the island, has a website (www.KFC-SXM.com). That I simply find surreal.
We wandered up and down Front street (the local row of shops for the cruise ships when they drop by for a visit) and found a tshirt for me, a sweatshirt that I couldn’t even conceive of wearing at that point, but intellectually I knew I’d wear it back home and some miscellaneous stuff to remind us of the trip. The Phillipsburg Liquor Company was the final destination for the day. The rums around here are cheap and plentiful. They range from sickly sweet (www.guavaberry.com) to the amazing RumJumbie. I’m not a big rum fan, but that stuff smells pretty dang good.
We trundled home after an exhausting day and decided to drop by another place recommended to us by a pal of a pal. The shack next door to a swanky, and rather lame restaurant, had great food and cheap beer for happy hour. We sweated out of every pore for about an hour and a half before we left. The little bar is the hangout for the local yahties and you have to trust the locals.
We decided to go swimming after the sauna of a meal and watched the stars come up over the lights on the horizon from St. Bart’s.
Mmmmm…beautimous.