St. Barts

While on vacation to St. Maarten, we decided to check out a few of the neighboring islands on some day trips. Our first day trip was to St. Barthelemy (St. Barts), a vacation island for the rich and famous. We booked our ferry ride to St. Barts with Aqua Mania Adventures. The ferry ride was approximately 55 minutes and extremely rough. Luckily, I didn’t get seasick but I was terrified the entire ride over. The crew was amazing though and reassured me that it was normal for it to be so rough and the ride back would be smooth, thank goodness!

Our ferry brochure describes St. Barts as the St. Tropez of the Caribbean, home to pristine beaches, sidewalk cafes and boutique shopping. As we were pulling up to Gustavia, the port of arrival, we were in awe of the mega yachts we were passing by.

 

Gustavia has several luxury shops along the waterfront, including Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Cartier, Bulgari… all out of our price range, that’s for sure. There were a few souvenir shops and a Quiksilver where we were able to get a little bit of shopping done.

To get a good view of the port, we decided to check out Fort Karl, one of three forts built in Gustavia during the Swedish period (1784-1877). You have to walk up a hill to get to the top, but it wasn’t too bad of a hike.

The views were amazing!

The view below is of Shell Beach.

 

We were starting to work up an appetite, so we decided to head to Le Select for lunch. Le Select is home to THE Cheeseburger in Paradise, yes, the one Jimmy Buffett wrote a song about in 1976. It was delicious.

   

After lunch we headed to Shell Beach to relax for a bit and sip on some drinks from the beach restaurant/bar, Shellona.

 

Before catching our ferry back to St. Maarten, we did a bit more shopping, grabbed some gelato and gawked once again at the insane yachts in the port. We also did some window shopping for vacation rentals at the local real estate office. The cheapest place we found was a rental home for $25,000 a week. Maybe we will be able to afford to come back and stay in it in a few more years…

Our ferry ride back was SO MUCH BETTER than the ferry ride to St. Barts. We were able to sit out on the back dock and admire the views as we sailed away. It was such a great day!

             

CLICK HERE to read about our adventure the following day in Saba!

-Elaine