MITSUGIRLY has a JEWEL of a time on my 1st RC cruise in years!

I'm looking forward to the St. Maarten review. That hurricane sure did make a mess...

Yes it did. More than what I realized.

I agree with accio_7, that rccl cabin is really nice. I love ccl, but the rccl room looks like a major step up.

It was. It felt a lot bigger than most I've been on (with the exception of NCL Sun).

Ugh, I almost forgot about the Muster Drill. Thanks for reminding me.

 

-F-

Oh but it's so much fun! How could one forget.

We were supposed to go to St Maarten again on our cruise back in the end of March but they completely changed our itinerary due to the hurricane damage. We were looking forward to going there....oh well, next time!

Aww, so sorry. Maybe next time you'll make it.

The newer/bigger ships have the Broadway type shows. I can only account for Mamma Mia, but they did a really good job (seen it 25 times in total so have lots of productions to compare it to). We'll be on Mariner end of summer and I imagine that will be more like Jewel...more cheezy.

 

P.S. - Interesting about the rounded beds at the end. Don't think I would have noticed that...good eye. :-) Maybe its a space issue giving a bit more room as you're walking on the sides?

Yea, the beds kinda shocked me since that's a HUGE issue over on the NCL forum with the Epic. I have never seen it mentioned anywhere else on the boards.

You touched on it but the drill was incredibly long.

 

I have no idea what happened on this drill that caused it to take close to 45 minutes. I have sailed on the JotS before and do not recall the drill being this long. We had multiple "older" guests who were ushered away so they did not have to stand that long and a young lady who became faint while waiting for the drill.

 

The to top it all off, our Steward came by the next day and told me we had to go to another drill, because they thought we missed it. Finally I signed a piece of paper and the Steward left.

 

-F-

Hmmm. We were not there for 45 minutes. Maybe that's why I didn't touch on it too much. We got there maybe 6:35pm and we were let go a few minutes til 7pm, which is normal for a muster drill from most ships I have been on. Maybe you got there extremely early when they first started telling people to go to their stations? I have learned that it will NEVER start on time and not to try to be there early or you'll be standing there forever.

So off we went to explore the island. If you remember correctly, Kia had just informed me that her dad does all the driving in St Maarten and she was going to "attempt" to remember how to get us places. LOL

So after that wonderful reassurance that we knew where we were going and what we were doing...off we went.

On Septmeber 6, 2017, Hurricane Irma struck the island of St Maarten. It was reported that it was a Category 5 hurricane. A Cateogry 5 hurricane is classified as such when the winds consists of at least 156 mph. It was reported the winds reached 185 mph. It was one of the strongest reported Atlantic hurricanes to ever hit (with first place being in 1980 from hurricane Allen with winds of 190 mph). Everyone remembers the devastation that hurricane Katrina caused when it hit NOLA...well Katrina was 175 mph winds. Maybe that puts it into perspective.

So we are now talking 7 months later. Although I watched and looked at a lot of pictures of the aftermath and the rebuilding and clean up had started, there is still so much damage to the island it's unbelievable.

I am going to "attempt" to show you the path we took during our day. I may be wrong on a few things (since I really don't know my way around), but I'm going off the pictures that I have and guessing where we were at any given point. (I'm pulling up Google Earth now for a little consulting with where we are)

We headed toward Philipsburg to start our day, continuing around the Great Salt Pond area on the main road (Walter Nisbeth Rd). You could immediately see damage.

We came across the Air Lekkerbek Bar & Restaurant, which was an airplane that was converted into a restaurant.

History:

It started as a Japanese-made, 45-seat puddlejumper of an airliner for WinAir. But the NAMC YS-11-111 was stripped down at the nearby airport and toted across the bay to its present resting place. Now it’s Air Lekkerbek, a bar and restaurant on the Dutch side of the island of St. Maarten (Saint-Martin on the French side), with additional flag-festooned seating on the outside, because 45 seats just aren’t enough. The jet might be missing part of its tail, but guess what? That’s just a good space to fit another Heineken sign.

Outside the entrance steps, you’re greeted by a very Dutch-looking wooden sign of a bartender serving Heineken. It’s surprisingly airy inside the jet, with white paint, stained wood chairs, and a colorful pattern across the overhead baggage area keeping things light. Thinking about food to accompany your glass of Heineken? Air Lekkerbek offers grilled meat of all kinds, seafood, poultry and lunch platters and sandwiches.

Lekkerbek was closed back in 2014. The owners wrote a letter describing how the government forced them to close. You can find their letter online if interested. Sad sorry.

The plane as it sits today:

Continuing on...

Obviously we seem to be driving a little to the right of the road...either Kia's driving skills were point on with what she told us....or we just needed to get drinks for our adventure and pulled over.

Yea, we needed drinks.

I was enjoying this view.

The Limited yacht.

The Simpson Bay bridge was up and we decided to turn back and head down to the place that Kia likes to stay at when she's here on vacation.

We were going down Billy Folly Rd and came across, what I believe is, The Pelican Resort Club. Only part of the resort was missing. Kia informed me that there is supposed to be an entire building that was 3 stories tall here, only now it's just the foundation and rubble. (Take a good look at the yellow wall).

This is the back side of it from the road above:

So sad. Kia, got out to look at the resort that she stays at and it looked like it was in better shape than this place...it was still standing but problems with the roof and windows was apparent.

However, the building to the left (in picture above) the roof was off and I believe she said it was one of the places they would always to go eat at and loved it there.

Headed back.

This time, the bridge was open.

Tricia's Perfumes seems to have made it out fine, but the Mega Gym next door...no roof and not many windows.

I believe Kia said she worked at one of these places in this building when she first moved to St Maarten.

More buildings in the Simpson Bay area with no walls or roof.

Plenty of rebuilding going on.

And other places...they just sit from the devastation.

While other places...are completely GONE

Wow, it really is incredibly sad to see the devastation from the hurricane. Terrible to think about what those that lost so much (if not all) are are doing to get back on their feet again.

That said, I am loving your review Kim. Keep it coming...

:)

Car's along the airport road that have been abandoned and flipped over. Here's a car that is flipped on its side and leaning against the fence.

Then we decide to stop at a beach at Simpson Bay.

Now prior to this wonderful idea I had of Kia taking us around the island for the day, I had requested info from people here on the boards about what beach to go to. I knew the pickings were scarce because not many of the beaches are back to some-what normal. I was told that

Simpson Bay Beach was the place to head.

I knew that the cruise lines had excursions to Kim Shaw beach, located on Simpson Bay, but others suggested going to Karakter instead and said they were open.

So...here we are in between Karakter and Mary Boon. It was almost unrecognizable from the pictures I have seen online of both places.

The sand was gorgeous. The water was gorgeous.

But, the buildings were in turmoil and the place was pretty much deserted.

Here is Mary Boon's Beach Resort.

At the time, I really didn't realize what Mary Boon's was, otherwise I would have went down and took more pictures of the place

Here's what the place looked like before the hurricane (these are not my pictures and pictures that are obtained from the web).

I did a search to see if I could find anything to show what it looked like right after the hurricane.

I did notice that a "Go Fund Me" account was opened for this place and they tried to raise $50k to rebuild, but only $250 was received. :( I'm thinking it was so devastated that maybe they have not rebuilt and possibly are not open. When going on their website, no matter what date I put in, there's no availability (even after they had a post stating they are giving discounts if you use the code "POSTIRMA" in the booking.

So sad.

But then again, maybe they are. I just noticed in some of my other pictures looking further down, there were some beach chairs.

Looking to the right, this is where Karakter Beach Bar is/was located.

I could not find anything at all that resembled anything I had seen of the place in the pictures.

There seemed to be a small building and some concrete pillars around that area.

They had some yellow beach chairs sat out. But previous pictures I had seen showed the restaurant was a bus and had a deck (not concrete) and just steps (wood) to the beach.

Although pictures show them changing their "roof" often (umbrella's to eat under), I still show nothing online to say what these concrete looking pillars are in the sand.

Here are some pictures (not mine and found on the web) of the place before the hurricane.

Maybe the bus was sitting on the concrete? Maybe the bus was lost in the hurricane? Anyone know the story?

So sad to see Mary’s Boon so destroyed. We were scheduled to go to St Maarten two weeks after Irma hit. Needless to say we didn’t go. Irma came ashore just south of my city, Naples, and it’s amazing all of these months later, the devastation you still see. My heart just breaks. Karakter is up and running, according to their Facebook page, and is one of my favorite spots on the island. I love your reviews. I cannot believe how big Sakari is getting. It seems such a short time ago that you were just graduating from nursing school and she was a little tiny thing. She is an amazing artist. Keep up the great reviews. It keeps me going between vacations.

We didn't stay very long here, even though Sakari was trying her best to "let's just swim!" It really didn't look like an appealing place to be at the moment and it was very deserted. So, we decided to move on as much as Sakari pouted.

So out we went....

Hmm, looks like they lost their "top"...of the building of course. You could see the see in the windows.

We would head out and around the airport. There were boats and yachts everywhere still flipped over.

Something as simple as seeing these leafless palm trees was so sad to me.

Me again, we were at Karakter in February and they are open. The bus is mostly covered with wood now and there are new restrooms. When we were there the owner was in the process of building a new kitchen and said, for them, the hurricane was a blessing because it was allowing them to make long overdue changes. It was different than our last visit but menu and bar were the same.

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I think this big boy was ran aground.

Yea, that's a boat sitting up there where there's no longer a roof.

Pirate ship? I wonder if this is the one that I would always see and take pictures of when we would go to Maho or when we went to Mullet?

There are 3 pelican sculptures at the roundabout near the Princess Juliana International Airport.

The pelican is the "national" bird and has traits that are inherent in the St Maarten personality: grace, resourcefulness, courage and sacrifice (at least that's what an online article says).

Michael Maghiro was the sculptor of the three bronze pelicans.

Here is a picture that I managed to take of a boat that I had actually seen pictures of, that someone else had taken online, after the hurricane. I remember wondering what it was originally because it looked like it had a fish on the top of the smoke stack and I wondered if this a restaurant on the water at one time.

I did a little research and found that this was called Pink Iguana. It was a tugboat (someone said over a 100 years old) that was converted into a bar with 2 stories of seating. It was located right across from the airport.

Thanks for your review! I'm way late to the party and still have a lot of catching up to do, so I'm not sure if anyone has commented regarding NCL's internet yet, but I was just on the Pearl last month and you could absolutely knock the other device off the internet when you log on. It would pop up with a screen that said another device was logged on and did you want to log them off so you could log on? It was hugely helpful. Maybe this was a recent update as I know they've only recently made a lot of changes to their internet packages.

Hmm, looks like they lost their "top"...of the building of course. You could see the see in the windows.

 

So I guess that place truly is a topless bar now then.

I promise you Kia, I was not creeping on you with this pic. I just happen to see a plane coming in.

Then past Maho Beach (I didn't even notice we were near Maho until it was too late to take a picture). But, I did figure out in time to know where we were at and that we were getting ready to go down the street that we had taken before when walking from Mullet to Maho on a previous trip.

We are headed down Rhine Rd.

This is the Sonesta Maho Beach Resort:

To see the other side of this resort (you can google pictures online) is just devastating!

And then there's the Casino Royale....um....Did they tear it completely down and start over?

Here's what it used to look like: (not my picture but a picture from the web).

Here are 2 pictures (from the internet) that shows right after the hurricane hit.

I'm going to St Maarten in January, so very interested in any suggestions from you and Kia. Thank you!

Continuing on down the road to a very familiar place to me because we stopped in this area and ate Subway at the end there and then went into several shops along the way back.

It didn't look like any of those stores were open at the moment. Maybe roof damage or damage to the other side of the building?

Come visit, remodeling "opening soon"....hmmmm ??? Whatever it is, I don't think it will be opening "soon" and I thought that Dunes Casino was in Philipsburg? Was this a different casino at some point and they are just referring everyone to Dunes while they repair?

We were driving for awhile and I was really wrapped up in my thoughts of everything I was witnessing. Kia tells me that we are driving down the middle of the golf course on the road. I hadn't even noticed this was the place where we walked from Mullet until getting onto the main road. We were busy talking that I didn't even take any pictures. I couldn't even believe it was the same golf course. The grass was very tall and sorta dead looking.

Here we have Ocean Club of St Maarten. According to their page, they are "under construction".

Kim...it was so very heart breaking to see your photos of the Island destruction. I am surprised that more hasn't been done to renew it back to the way it was. I have been there so many times and enjoyed how lovely the Island had been.

I want to say at some point we swung a right and ended up on Rue Des Terres Basses Rd and headed toward the other side of the island. For some reason I had absolutely no photo's from the last picture at Ocean Club in the CupeCoy area all the way across to the other side where we would end up at Chez Raymond at Baie Rouge.

Getting in here was a little tricky. We almost missed our turn and Kia pulled a fast and furious whip around and past something that looked like security guards and through these gates.

Parking lot...

Kia was telling us about how the place use to look and how there were trees lined up for shade and now there's just a bunch of brush and trash everywhere from the hurricane.

So there was a little trailer here and I guess that was Chez Raymonds beach restaurant.

I was able to locate some older pictures that showed what this place looked like before (from the internet and not my pictures).

As you can see in this picture, there was some lattice that extended to the side (and you can see the trailer and windows in the picture).

Obviously there used to be a lot more to this place with places to eat in the shade.

Then there's all this...(hopefully these are the right place, but that's what the internet said...I'm sure Kia can confirm since she has been there many times).

The beach and water looked beautiful and at least they did have chairs and umbrellas here.

They even had chairs and umbrella's lined up along the beach.

Someone came out to ask us if we'd like a chair, but after a lot of determination, we decided to move on. I really wanted to see the sites of the entire island. Sakari...not so much. She was still begging for water. A mermaid can only survive out of water for so long.

Hi all!

mitsugirly ~ all caught up on this amazing as usual review!(y)Wish I had found it before page 21!!

The ship looks lovely & reminds me of Serenade of the Seas that I was on a couple of years ago. It even had that same red rose settee.

Yikes, that's so sad to see the destruction of St Maarten.

Looking forward to the rest of your review. You visited some different ports.

~ Jo ~ :)

Hi all!

 

mitsugirly ~ all caught up on this amazing as usual review!(y)Wish I had found it before page 21!!

The ship looks lovely & reminds me of Serenade of the Seas that I was on a couple of years ago. It even had that same red rose settee.

Yikes, that's so sad to see the destruction of St Maarten.

Looking forward to the rest of your review. You visited some different ports.

 

~ Jo ~ :)

They are sisters! Along with Radiance and Brilliance. :D

So awful seeing all that destruction despite how much time has time passed. I'll be going on the Fascination in a few weeks and your reviews have been so helpful!

Well, I made a big boo-boo. I was uploading pics to my smugmug folder for St Maarten and went to delete a picture that didn't belong there. For some reason this time it asked me if I wanted to delete it FOREVER...never to be returned. Before it just deleted and I didn't bother to wonder why it was asking me this.

NOW I know...it deleted the ENTIRE FOLDER!! All of my St Maarten pictures that I have already posted in this review. Every.last.one.of.them! UGH!

So, now I have requested a "Super Hero" to help me with seeing if it can be recovered. But, with it being so late, it might not happen. I know it has to be done within a certain amount of time...just don't remember the time frame. Hopefully my hero will email me back by tomorrow and be able to restore the entire folder. Fingers crossed.

This isn't the first time I have done something wrong and created a blooper...and I'm sure it won't be the last.

So now we wait. I have to put this review on hold until I see if they can recover my pictures.

If you can't see any of the pictures for St Maarten, now you'll know why. I can still see them on my end, but I don't know if it's because they are still in my cache.

What a night. :mad: