20241224 Tuesday, December 24, 2024. Christmas Eve in St. Maarten
We awoke to find the ship tied up in St. Maarten. The island is half owned by the Dutch, and half owned by the French.
We booked a 4x4 Safari and Beach adventure, but this excursion turned out to be a disappointment. On a prior ATV excursion in St. Maarten, Janet and Ben got to drive all around the Island visiting both the French and Dutch sides. We got to also drive a bit off road along some trails above the airport, as well as visit more beaches, including a famous nude beach on the French side and the Airplane beach on the Dutch side.
Today’s excursion was pretty much a self drive trip from the vendor’s shop, which was about a 5 minute drive from the cruise port, across Phillipsburg through terrible stop and go traffic, to Maho beach (the airplane beach) where we had an hour to “relax”, followed by a drive back through the same terrible traffic to the cruise ship dock. We did take a slightly different return route, making a single photo stop at the giant flag pole overlooking Phillipsburg, and then through the most congested part of Phillipsburg past the City Courthouse building en route to the ship. People walking on the sidewalk were moving much faster through that part of town, which is the main tourist shopping district, than us. The temperature was in the low to mid 80’s. When we were actually moving in the UTV, it was comfortable, but when we were stopped in traffic, it was a bit unpleasant.
We had wrist bands which supposedly gave us resort privileges at the Maho beach resort, but we got chased out some nice tables on the water because we didn’t purchase lunch in addition to having the wrist bands. John and Price did get down to the beach, but the traffic (both vehicle and foot) was so bad, that they really didn’t have time to get in a swim. There has also been a lot of erosion of the beach since our last visit so that there is really only about 15-20’ of relatively flat sand before it slopes off very steeply into the water. Janet got caught by a big sneaker wave that soaked her shoes, pants and iPhone. She was lucky she didn’t loose the phone or a hearing aid in that episode.
All four of us rode in a 4 passenger UTV, which was spacious and relatively easy to get in and out of. Price drove out to the beach and John drove back.
After our excursion, Price hit the gym to keep up with his marathon training schedule while John walked back into Phillipsburg to do more exploring on foot. It took him less time to walk there than it did to drive that same distance in the UTV. Ben and Janet got in naps and lunch.
We did manage to rally our energy to do the 4PM trivia. We started out with just Janet, Ben and Katherine. John showed up a bit late and Price passed on the trivia altogether, although we could have used his encyclopedic memory. We came in second by 2 points, but the team that won gave us some extra coasters, which we gave to Katherine because we had already won coasters at the Couch Potatos Trivia earlier in the cruise.
Because it was Christmas Eve, we got dressed up and headed to the Capri dining room. They did have filet mignon and lobster as an option, which Janet and Ben both had. John opted for the prime rib option, while Price opted for eggplant parmesan. There was a wide selection of desserts which we availed ourselves of including pecan pie, chocolate mousse cake and pavlova.
The Princess Theater presented something called Barajolka- Sand Duo. This was something that Ben had seen videos on YouTube of where an artist paints on a lighted table top with sand. This is set to music, and the sand creations are dynamic, being manipulated in real time by the artist’s hands. The camera situated above the table top captures what are pretty much shadow images of the light transmitted through the sand on the glass top.
It was really an amazing thing to watch and experience in real time. Being able to see the artist working live on the corner of the stage added a whole new dimension to what you can see on YouTube videos. The artist is a very slight woman with exaggerated facial expressions. The entire show is done with no vocalizations whatsoever. It was a show not to be missed.
Once the sand show finished, we hurried back to the Vista Lounge where something called the Jim Henson’s Inspired Silliness started right away. It turned out to be a nearly full house with only a handful of seats at the extreme corners of the lounge available. We could not really see much of the stage, but fortunately, much of the action was simulcast on screens to either side of the stage. This started with an introduction to the history of Jim Henson’s muppets and recreated some of the early skits from TV well before the Muppets show aired. Then they got the Production singers and dancers involved to do some numbers with muppet characters both as puppets and fully suited characters.
There were a lot of kids in the audience, and the show was clearly tailored for the young audience. Although we had really bad seats, we didn’t think the show warranted sticking around for the next showing to get better seats. But it was impressive to see the Production show team doing the puppetry work. That required special skills and training. Apparently only 3 ships in the Princess fleet have staff trained to do this show.
We did get to do a video FaceTime with Ciara and Tom after the show. The time difference worked out advantageously because it was just dinner time in Chicago while we would normally be winding things down in the Caribbean. We got to hear highlights from Ciara and Tom’s Viking Sky Mediterranean cruise which wrapped up yesterday. They will spend Christmas with Tom’s family in the Chicago condo.
Tomorrow we arrive in Antigua. This is our first time in Antigua, and we have booked a Discovery Channel sanctioned excursion to see “The Best of Antigua”. We’ll be getting an early start tomorrow. We do wish we could have a sea day or two between each port of call for more relaxation, but time marches forward relentlessly.
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