Day 5

"We are waiting for WHAT????"

Woke up this morning and guess what?? WE SAW LAND!!!! Yep! there it was, St Maarten Netherlands, Antilles, right there in the flesh. What a beautiful island it is. We were given permission to go ashore 2 hours early, and that we did.

We got to do some duty free shopping, and the first thing I bought was a diet pepsi! LOL I ended up bringing 4 more of them back to the ship with me when we were done too. I cannot drink diet Coke in place of my pepsi, and thats all that Princess cruiselines has, so I had to get imaginative..

Dana and I took an island tour and it was fabulous, we got to see both sides of the island, stopped for photo ops and had lunch on the beach on the French side of the island. We didnt know it then, but it was a nude beach!! Found out quickly though. LOL

The tour was amazing, I am so glad we did it. We learned tons about the island, and since we werent shopping for jewelry, we didnt need to go downtown. There are about 5 jewelry stores for every other store, jewelry is big in St Maartens, and the tourists really feed into it.

The populated areas in St Maarten are very run down and the homes are very much like little shacks. This surprised me because it is such a huge tourist area, I guess thats normal for here.

We went back to the ship about 2:30 (we were due to embark again at 5:30) so we swam in one of the ships pools, we hot tubbed for a while and then went down to the dining room for a great italian dinner. During dinner (and 30 minutes AFTER we were supposed to embark) the captain came on and said we had to hold up embarkation because someone who obviously thought they were the most important people on earth, were going to be late returning to the ship. Like 45 minutes late! WHAT???? this Island isnt that big. I dont know who we waited on but I hope they charge them dearly.

Off to St Thomas tomorrow, we are going on a butterfly tour. I will post pics when we get home!