Today we were finally going to see land. We arrived at St. Maarten with an ashore time of 8am. Matt and I were not on an excursion so we kind of took our time. All aboard time was 6pm and we were planning to just have a beach day so we didn’t need to be off the ship right at 8am.
Ronaldo was serving breakfast at Enchanted Garden so we decided we’d hunt him down and enjoy breakfast with Ronaldo. He was as fun as ever. He brought his cell phone so he could show me his now 2 year old “mini Ronaldo”. The picture was of mini Ronaldo sleeping but he was covered in yellow & green warpaint. Ronaldo told us how one of his hobbies is painting on his son when he’s sleeping and then watch him freak out when he wakes up.
He’s too much. Enchanted Garden is a buffet for breakfast just like Cabanas but you order eggs from your waiter. Matt ordered an omelet while I secretly sulked and filled up on donuts, potatoes, sausage & bacon. 
We got off the ship right around 10am. It was very easy to get a cab to the beach. They have a cab stand set up with a spot for each popular place that most likely you’re going. We were headed to Orient Beach. We sat on the bench waiting for more people to arrive so that we could get a cheaper rate. After about 5 minutes another couple showed up and were were off. 2-5 people was $7/per person each way plus tip. The ride wasn’t too long and if you’ve been to many caribbean islands you find that they all look the same driving thru town...pretty crappy. Once we arrived at Orient Beach our driver pointed out where the nude side was, to the right, and set up a time for us to be picked up. We all agreed upon 4pm, that gave us 5 hours on the beach. For whatever reason I decided to not bring my iphone which I’m really disappointed about as all the restaurants that rent out the beach chairs and umbrellas off wifi with the rental. Ugh! 
Oh, well. The place he dropped us at was “Sexy Fruits” 
The guy there offered two cushioned chairs, an umbrella, wifi & two drinks for $14. It was a really good deal, but me being the prima donna that I am, I wanted to go to the “fancier” side of the beach, to the left. We told him he wanted to walk around and check it out first. So we headed left and ended up almost at the end to a much nicer looking restaurant that at the moment I can’t really remember the name of. Something like Kaliki Kaluki. 
It was much nicer, they offered two chairs & an umbrella for $14 but no drinks. The restaurant was a lot better looking. In theory we could have stayed at the other place, then just walked to a nicer restaurant for lunch but, primma donna here, 
and I’m on vacation. I don’t want to walk up and down the beach with all my stuff to go get lunch, so we stayed at there. We had a nice day on the beach. For lunch we ordered a pizza and chicken caesar salad. They both were very good and very large. They served it with a basket of French bread and everything. The total was $30 something. I charged it on my Visa and there was no where to tip, so I assumed since it was the French side that there was no tipping. Hope I didn’t mess up there. 
It was so nice to sit in such comfortable chairs and have your lunch brought right to you. We had carried our bottles of water from Matt’s gift basket, so we didn’t buy drinks. At 3ish we started to get our stuff together and head back to “Sexy Fruits”, seriously, that’s what the guy decided to name his place. We got there early and were waiting at 3:30pm. The owner of “Sexy Fruits” (the more I type that the more ridiculous it sounds) saw us sitting and waiting and asked us who we were waiting for. We told him and then he said you can wait or just take another taxi & pointed to the taxi about to leave. So we said how we didn’t know if we should do that since our guy was coming back for us & that we didn’t mind waiting. Then I don’t know what happened but the next thing I know they owner is telling the taxi that’d we’re coming and that he’s let our taxi driver know that we got another ride. Oookay. Then as the owner is calling our guy he starts giving us this speech about how people screw over taxi drivers and tell them a time and then leave earlier and make the taxi driver take the trip for nothing. He was really angry at us. So I said that we were fine with waiting, again. This guy was nuts. He came to us, pushing us to take another taxi driver and then when we finally, reluctantly said okay, he flipped out on us. 
This guy was getting on my nerves. So we head back towards the beach and after a little bit our driver shows up. He lets us know he’s there and tells us we’ll wait a little for the other couple and if they don’t show, we’ll head out. So Matt and I were just hanging out and then we can see that the owner is now heading to our taxi driver, arms flailing, yelling. Matt & I look at each other and we knew this guy was now trashing us, when we were the ones who kept saying we’d just wait. So my wise guy Matt starts walking over and Mr Sexy Fruits (false advertisement) 
suddenly changes his tune and starts praising us and telling our driver that he’s not talking about us and that we’re a good couple who waits. What a whacko. The couple never showed up but we lucked out and got a family of four so our price went down to, I think, $6 per person. The ride back is a lot faster, I guess they use different roads. Once we were back on the ship, Matt went to play basketball while I took a nap in the room since tonight was pirate night and I wanted to be able to stay up past 9pm.
Oh, well. The place he dropped us at was “Sexy Fruits” The guy there offered two cushioned chairs, an umbrella, wifi & two drinks for $14. It was a really good deal, but me being the prima donna that I am, I wanted to go to the “fancier” side of the beach, to the left. We told him he wanted to walk around and check it out first. So we headed left and ended up almost at the end to a much nicer looking restaurant that at the moment I can’t really remember the name of. Something like Kaliki Kaluki. It was much nicer, they offered two chairs & an umbrella for $14 but no drinks. The restaurant was a lot better looking. In theory we could have stayed at the other place, then just walked to a nicer restaurant for lunch but, primma donna here, and I’m on vacation. I don’t want to walk up and down the beach with all my stuff to go get lunch, so we stayed at there. We had a nice day on the beach. For lunch we ordered a pizza and chicken caesar salad. They both were very good and very large. They served it with a basket of French bread and everything. The total was $30 something. I charged it on my Visa and there was no where to tip, so I assumed since it was the French side that there was no tipping. Hope I didn’t mess up there. It was so nice to sit in such comfortable chairs and have your lunch brought right to you. We had carried our bottles of water from Matt’s gift basket, so we didn’t buy drinks. At 3ish we started to get our stuff together and head back to “Sexy Fruits”, seriously, that’s what the guy decided to name his place. We got there early and were waiting at 3:30pm. The owner of “Sexy Fruits” (the more I type that the more ridiculous it sounds) saw us sitting and waiting and asked us who we were waiting for. We told him and then he said you can wait or just take another taxi & pointed to the taxi about to leave. So we said how we didn’t know if we should do that since our guy was coming back for us & that we didn’t mind waiting. Then I don’t know what happened but the next thing I know they owner is telling the taxi that’d we’re coming and that he’s let our taxi driver know that we got another ride. Oookay. Then as the owner is calling our guy he starts giving us this speech about how people screw over taxi drivers and tell them a time and then leave earlier and make the taxi driver take the trip for nothing. He was really angry at us. So I said that we were fine with waiting, again. This guy was nuts. He came to us, pushing us to take another taxi driver and then when we finally, reluctantly said okay, he flipped out on us. This guy was getting on my nerves. So we head back towards the beach and after a little bit our driver shows up. He lets us know he’s there and tells us we’ll wait a little for the other couple and if they don’t show, we’ll head out. So Matt and I were just hanging out and then we can see that the owner is now heading to our taxi driver, arms flailing, yelling. Matt & I look at each other and we knew this guy was now trashing us, when we were the ones who kept saying we’d just wait. So my wise guy Matt starts walking over and Mr Sexy Fruits (false advertisement) suddenly changes his tune and starts praising us and telling our driver that he’s not talking about us and that we’re a good couple who waits. What a whacko. The couple never showed up but we lucked out and got a family of four so our price went down to, I think, $6 per person. The ride back is a lot faster, I guess they use different roads. Once we were back on the ship, Matt went to play basketball while I took a nap in the room since tonight was pirate night and I wanted to be able to stay up past 9pm.
We got ready in our pirate t-shirts, which were a big hit.Who doesn’t love the Goonies? If you’d like to see them, there’s a pic in my PTR. I won’t be posting pictures until I get home, so if you don’t want to wait, head on over there. Our servers Nicole, from Trinidad & Tobago, & Angela from Serbia, did a great job at getting us out of dinner in an hour so we could head up and get a great spot for the fireworks. We got an awesome spot and sat there on towels for over an hour. They had Muppet Treasure Island on the Funnel Vision (the giant screen by the pool) so it went quick and we got to watch all the people in their pirate gear. People REALLY get into it. It was impressive and a little creepy all rolled into one. 
The show wasn’t as good as the old ships, but apparently you could see that version earlier in the night, minus Mickey on the zip line. The later show was for an older crowd which was good but it was a miss in my book. It was basically a bunch of pirates chasing Capt Jack around a tiny stage. The fireworks were better than I remembered actually. We watched the fireworks and then headed to the Pirate Buffet. We both were feeling really fat, so we didn‘t want to eat anymore. We, instead headed to bed since we had to be up really early for our excursion tomorrow in St. Thomas. I was trying my hand at snorkeling again. Fingers crossed it’s a lot better than my awful experience on our honeymoon.
They had Muppet Treasure Island on the Funnel Vision (the giant screen by the pool) so it went quick and we got to watch all the people in their pirate gear. People REALLY get into it. It was impressive and a little creepy all rolled into one. The show wasn’t as good as the old ships, but apparently you could see that version earlier in the night, minus Mickey on the zip line. The later show was for an older crowd which was good but it was a miss in my book. It was basically a bunch of pirates chasing Capt Jack around a tiny stage. The fireworks were better than I remembered actually. We watched the fireworks and then headed to the Pirate Buffet. We both were feeling really fat, so we didn‘t want to eat anymore. We, instead headed to bed since we had to be up really early for our excursion tomorrow in St. Thomas. I was trying my hand at snorkeling again. Fingers crossed it’s a lot better than my awful experience on our honeymoon. 
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