Our little Trip To Paradise - Exploring The Island

The girls have never rented a car on St. Maarten, but we did so on Saturday, and as the driver, I now know why they hadn’t.  If you’ve ever driven in Italy or Spain, they are super courteous, drive-by-the-rules folks compared to the drivers there.  As best I could determine, there are no rules for the narrow little roads that are all that exist and the right-away belongs to the most aggressive driver – motorcycles often ride down the middle of the road between the cars.

There is one main road around the island and our primary stop was the open air market in Marigot, the French side capital, which included fish and produce on Saturday.  Here are a few shots of the market following the Boubainvillea at the resort.

 

Lots of cars and bad drivers.

Bev bought a couple of wind chimes made with bamboo, coconut, and palm to use on our boat dock.

While the ladies shopped, I made my only purchase of six bottles of various flavors of scotch bonnet hot sauce and hung out at a little snack bar called the Fruits and Roots.  I drank a couple of Caribbean beers and sampled their bull’s foot soup, which was actually made from close-to-the-hoof beef shanks and included yams – not sweet potatoes which we often call yams, but the very different tuber that is actually a yam and is white and not as flavorful or sweet.  The soup was very good and here is a shot of the Jamaican born owner and her place.

My six bottles of hot sauce were mango, curry, balsamic, exotic, tamarind, plain.

We had lunch in Grand Case which is supposedly home to many good French restaurants, but you wouldn’t know from the looks of the main street.

We ended up eating at LoLo Bar & Restaurant and had meals of BBQ ribs (actually grilled), chicken, creole shrimp, and Bev had grilled eggplant stuffed with chicken breast and Vienna Sausage – yep, you read that right.

It doesn't take a fancy cooker to turn out good food.

It looked like they took babyback ribs and cut them in half lengthwise.

It just looks like I got blue box Kraft.

It was all good, but not great and I couldn’t taste the Vienna sausage in the eggplant – major disappointment, plus my shot of it was a bust.  It began sprinkling as we left Grand Case and we were only able to get pictures of the famous Orient Beach before the serious rain came in.  Note the cruiser moored on the leeward side of the rocks.

We finished the day at the resort restaurant where the girls ordered from the lunch menu and I had the Seafood Linguini which had several types of seafood in a garlic white wine cream sauce.  It’s not impressive looking but it was delicious and had the same sauce as the stuffed grouper I had the first time and also enjoyed.

All-in-all a nice day in paradise.

All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

One year ago:  Reheated Smoked Chicken and Orzo Salad

Two years ago: Living High On The Hog In St. Maarten

Larry

4/14/12  event date