St Martin 2019

This large iguana was sunning by the hotel pool, oblivious to nosy guests like me. We spent a good chunk of the day soaking up the sun right there, watching plane after plane come in for landing. After spending a long time floating in the warm water directly in front of the end of the runway, with planes landing literally over our heads, we got into position to experience our first "full thrust experience" with the 1:30PM JetBlue Airbus A321 departure to Boston.  What a rush! Early this afternoon, we set out in our rental car to explore the southwest part of the island.  It's the only island in the Caribbean where you can pass the border freely from one country's territory to another.  (Haiti and Dominican Republic share the same island, but the border is controlled.) The island was whallopped by hurricane Luis in 1995, Lenny in 1999, Gonzalo in 2014 and Irma's Category 5 in 2017.  We were actually surprised to see how much of the infrastructure ha...

The morning rush-hour at Newark’s Liberty Airport was brutal. 30 airplanes ahead of us, waiting to take off.  It took 55 minutes!  The only consolation was a great view of Manhattan in the distance as we waited. It must be hard to live in the shadow of Manhattan. Newark is often overlooked as insignificant, but in fact, it has quite a large city center. That is Red Bull Arena in the bottom right hand corner, and the Passaic River runs through the city.  So where exactly is Saint Martin? The airplane icon, taken from the United seat back map, shows its proximity in relation to the other Caribbean islands. That’s a view of our hotel, a few seconds before landing. If I told you there was a marching band to greet Pam‘s arrival out of the back of the United Airline Boeing 737–700 upon landing at Princess Juliana International  Airport, would you believe me? I wouldn’t either. For years I have wanted to stand in this very spot! What airplane aficionado would not? This is ...

Our annual Remembrance Day weekend trip south is finally here. October has been particularly intense this year, so this annual “escape”  to warmer climates has been something we look forward to, prior to the Christmas rush. And when you live with a musician, trust me when I say that the pre-Christmas season is anything but tranquil.  This year’s destination is Saint Maarten - or Sint Martin or Saint Martin - your choice!  We were originally supposed to fly Halifax-Toronto-St Martin tomorrow morning, but Westjet inflicted a nasty schedule change, requiring us to cobble another way to the Caribbean. Flight frequencies were so sporadic out of North America to the island that we ended up flying Halifax-Montreal-Newark, overnighting there, and Newark-St Martin tomorrow morning.  We both got home from work literally 100 minutes before flight departure time. So by the time we made it through security at Halifax airport, we felt very frazzled. The flight to Montreal was on ...