2025 ST MAARTEN LAND VACATION

So, it's land vacation time and now time to pick a place. We had just did a cruise for Spring Break and knew we wanted to go some place and stay this time around that didn't involve a 100 x 100 sq ft room...just saying. I started throwing around idea's and went into complete research mode as I always do because if I didn't do it, there would be no vacation. Man my family really depends on me.

I'm honestly not sure how or why but during my research something came up about St Maarten having an underwater reef sculpture park. Wait, what?!? I LOVE SCULPTURE PARKS. How could I have missed this in the past? Well, because it's fairly new and it's been years since we have been there (2019 was the last time to be exact).

The reef sculpture park is located in Little Bay. The sculptures tell the history of St Maarten with 300 artificial reef sculptures and members from the community were exclusively used. It celebrates the island's heritage while creating a protected habitat for marine life.

After seeing pictures and reading up on it...I knew THIS was the place I needed go this summer. Sign me up! I wanted THIS to be the place we went scuba diving this vacation. We have done sculpture parks at other locations (Grenada and Isla Mujeres) and I knew I needed to add this to my list. More on this later...

Now that we have decided where we are going, it was time to start planning. What all should we do while there? I did notice they had a SeaTrek (and we love to do those) and also Snuba. Of course there's always beaches and snorkeling because I'm not happy unless I'm in the water right? I noticed a bird park, which is Sakari's cup of tea of course. Then also a zipline...and extreme zipline. Time to freak out "Karl" Eek!

But first...there's more! We have done 26 Discover Scuba Dives over the years. We always make sure that we do at least 1 dive on each vacation. We absolutely love it. It is brought up with each dive that we should just get certified. Why haven't we gotten certified yet? Sigh! So, I started checking out this possibility. I checked out a) getting certified on vacation b) getting certified at home or c) getting the first half of the certification completed before vacation and doing the open water check off on vacation. There were so many possibilities.

To see what we decided to do, you have to read my recent review. It will blow your mind. To find that review, click the following button to take you there:

So after all that, we were ready to practice what we have learned.

Sakari was excited and decided for the first time "I'm getting my nails done!" This would be her first time ever having "real" nails put on (not the press on nails that would stay on for a total of 3 hours) and boy did she go L-O-N-G! Yikes. This should be interesting to say the least. I think she got a little of her taste from her big sissy Kendra...cheetah print.

Ok, it's travel day. I don't know what possessed me to book a time that we had to be at the airport so early (according to our email from Spirit 3 hours ahead of time due to increased flights and people flying at our airport now). Oh, that's right, that was the time they offered in order to get us there the same day.

So, we barely had any rest, I worked the day before, and we had to be up by 1am in order to get to the airport by 2am to catch our flight at 5am. Each and every time I do this, I swear "it's not happening ever again" ....and then it does. 🤔But here we are again.

We got up, showered, threw the luggage in our vehicle and was out the door by 1:30am. We arrived at the airport parking lot and the shuttle was pulling right up. Yea, we look tired but we forced a few smiles for picture sake.

Ok, let's get checked in. We walk into the airport and WHERE IS EVERYONE? There was only 1 other family there. Like seriously NO.ONE.AT.ALL! There wasn't even anyone working the counters at the airlines either. Well this was a mistake. I could be sleeping right now! "Karl" (who is not really named Karl but what we call him among other names-which you've learned on my other reviews the history and how this came about) looked up Spirit and it said they don't even open up the desk to check in until 4:30am. According to our tickets, they said we are actually boarding our plane at 4:20am. How is this supposed to work? My anxiety kicked in and once again I mumbled "I will never book this early again" to myself.

We sat around, I visited the restroom probably 5 times, I paced the floor, I looked at the flight boards, I went over to the Spirit's roped off lines thinking it would magically drop and we could get in line. Anything to pass the time by. I hate sitting still. I'm shocked I can sit still long enough to even write these reviews. We (meaning I) anxiously awaited for Spirit's employees to arrive. It was 3:20am and other people flying were starting to arrive...and of course starting to stand at the Spirit line. We jumped up and sprinted toward the line that was about to form. We had a flight to catch!

Finally the ropes dropped and we were off and running. As always, our passports did not want to scan at the kiosk and that meant we would have a longer wait at the counter while they manually did it. This only seems to happen to me and the hubby and not the kids. The next issue is..."Do you guys have your government entry forms filled out?" Um, say what? I did not know anything about this. She states the place we booked to stay at in St Maarten is usually the place that tells you about it and sends you a link. She gives us the link and tells us as long as she can see us physically filling it out she will let us continue to our flight. "But try to get it done asap because they WILL NOT let you board the plane in Ft Lauderdale if they don't have it". Alrighty then. Will do.

Security was a breeze since we are VIP's, I mean we have TSA, and the hubby was pulled out to be scanned because he looks like a shady person I guess. This happens at every single vacation. At least now it's not a bag being pulled because of Sakari's "Really Big Eraser" that she used to bring with her every time. They do not like it for some reason. Now that she uses her ipad, she no longer takes it. We traded one for the other I guess. 🤷‍♀️

On our way to our boarding area we stopped off to grab an airport egg sandwich for a whopping $7.49 and is gone in a mere 3 bites. 🙄

It was time for that Good Luck touch of the plane that Sakari has done since she was little:

We took our too small for people seats and poor "Karl", who is 6' 2" was crammed as always. But I have to admit, the seats felt a little different this time around. Like they had more cushion than others we've been on. Did they remodel their planes?

We were off on time for our 2 hour and 30 minute flight and headed to Ft Lauderdale.

Coming into FLL and we would have a 3 hour layover here.

Well that was an interesting....? hotel ? shaped like a guitar.

Ok, so the 3 bites of the next to nothing sandwich wasn't cutting it and we all needed food. It was only 7:45am but it felt like it was lunch time for us. Don't judge, we've been up since 1am. It's lunch time!!!

Karl was determined to find a Shake Shack and he pulled up the map on his phone and said "this way". Well...."this way" went way and way and way more and we still weren't there after walking what felt like most of the airport. "Ok, maybe I don't need that, let's pick something else". Right in front of us was a Steak and Shake. Yep, that will have to do. Again, don't judge. We are eating cheeseburgers and fries at almost 8am in the morning because it felt like the right thing to do in the moment.

We headed back to our gate to wait out the rest of the time and as we waited I hear our names called over the speaker by Spirit. We went up to the counter and the attendant said "Is there a reason you picked the very last seats on the plane?" Me-"Um, is this a trick question?" Him-"I just need to know if you picked those particular seats ALL the way in the back for a reason and really wanted them" I'm scratching my head at this point like where is he going with this? "Um, no I guess not??? Maybe because they were the cheapest???" He said "This is not a full flight. Is it ok if I move everyone up toward the front with better seats?" me-"Well sure! Be my guest" I mean if we are up toward the front we are quicker off the plane, quicker to step foot in St Maarten and quicker to the fun right? I'm not passing that opportunity up. I did ask him if we would still all be sitting together in the same row as we booked and he assured me we would.

He updated the system, I updated my phone with the new tickets, then it was time to board the plane again...but first...we needed double good luck.

We were now sitting in row 6 on the plane. I felt like VIP status this flight. However, once we boarded there was someone in my seat. Eek. The steward went up to the front, spoke to someone then moved that person in front of us. I'm not sure what had happened.

We had the Go Comfy seats that only allowed 2 people in them with a table in the middle and extra leg room. Yes! Winning! I'm sure Karl appreciated the extra leg room this time around. I will admit, I enjoyed not having the hubby take over the arm rest.

Then off we went and on our way to the beautiful St Maarten.

After a short while, we started noticing the beautiful water below and the little islands. Now those of you that have read my land reviews know that I use an app called MapsMe. You do not need service to use it and I program all the places (book mark) prior to going to an island so that we have our own GPS to get around without having service on our phones. Well, I would discover this trip that it also works in the air and when I pulled it up, it would tell me what islands we were next to. How cool is that? These two pictures were taken prior to me discovering the app worked in the air. So, I have no idea what they were.

We are flying over Freeport (or Grand Bahama).

I look over at Sakari and trying to get her attention to tell her "Bahamas" and point down below. I'm mouthing the words. She has a puzzled look on her face. I'm spelling it out using an over exerted mouth. Still puzzled look. She starts mouthing words back. I have no clue what she was saying and I think she was just messing with me at that point. I start to do sign language to spell out Bahamas...which I honestly don't remember all of them and she's just laughing hysterically at me at this point. So in an attempt to make fun of my made up sign language, her and Karl start playing with their fingers...

The hubby joined in and at that point I gave up.

Look, there's a cruise ship down there!!! I wonder which one it is.

Flying over San Salvador Island:

They started coming around to see if we wanted any drinks or snacks (which you have to pay for on Spirit). BUT...they informed us that since we are in the first few seats we get a drink and a bag of snacks for free. VIP status I tell ya! Bring it on!

The hubby and I decided to purchase the very small itty bitty cheese and cracker tray for the outrageous price they have on the planes BUT...since we are in those VIP seats, it was 25% off PLUS I have a spirit card which gave us another 25% off. The cheese tray is really good, just very small.

Up next was flying over Anegada (never heard of it but that's where we were) in the BVI area.

As we were getting closer to St Maarten, looking down in the water we started to see brown streaks. Hmm, what could this be? We kept seeing lines in the water, then big circles of brown.

Aww crap! I know what that is. It's sargassum! People were constantly asking if any sargassum was on the beaches in the St Maarten facebook groups and now I know why. There seems to be a ton of it out there close to the island. I was really hoping we weren't going to have a bunch on the beaches. Man that stuff smells.

Our arrival time was supposed to be 2pm but we got there a little earlier than that. The flight was 2 hours and 37 minutes total. Man if I lived in Florida, I'd be hoping on a plane to the Caribbean all the time!

Anyone that knows about St Maarten or has been there or is going there and asks "What's the one thing you want to experience in St Maarten that is different than any of the other islands" knows that it is Maho Beach. It has been a tourist attraction to everyone visiting by land or by cruise ship. It's not much of a beach and the water is usually pretty wavy there but the big draw to coming here is to watch the planes land at Princess Juliana International Airport. The planes land right at the edge of the water and they come in landing pretty low...sometimes feeling like they are going to drop right on top of you. We have been there before watching the BIG planes come in and take off (KLM) in the past and it is such a site to see and witness. Then there's the take off as well. People stand on the wall, at the beach, and even hanging onto the fence as the plane takes off and you are blasted with everything that could be on the street and the sand from the street and beach and I'm here to tell you that shit hurts!!! I highly advise against it. I did put up a second fence to keep people from getting as close to the take off area. In 2017, there was actually a lady killed by the jet blast when the jet blast blew her across the street and into the concrete barriers at the beach. So beware and please be careful if you go there. I have witnessed people falling and getting hurt and being thrown across the beach and into the ocean...along with all their belongings.

Here are the links to the other times we were there with pictures of the planes coming in (including a KLM take off that blasted us to death) if interested.

This time around, it would be US landing over top of Maho Beach while others looked on and snapped pictures.

We have officially landed in SXM and it was time to get in line for the face recognition. Of course, even here, the hubby and I would be declined and we had to get in another line to speak with someone and have them look at our passports and ask us questions. The kids zoomed through and it gave them time to gather our luggage. Then I seen that my wheel was almost off. UGH! Luggage just doesn't last very long for us. I feel like we are always having to buy new ones. Or...maybe we just travel too much. But there's no such thing as too much right? After gathering our luggage, there was yet another line to stand in before being released on our own.

Right outside that was several car rental places. Normally we shop for the best prices and highly recommended places by people on the travel groups but this time we ended up booking with Avis because we could use our points from one of our cards which made it cheaper for the 10 days we would be there ($375 for 10 days). Check in was easy and then they told us to head out of the airport and into the shuttle we went...which had absolutely NO A/C and the windows wouldn't open. Eek! Thank goodness we only headed right down the road and it was a 5 minute ride. It was now 2:44pm. That's how quick things went from the airport to the car rental place. It was less than an hour after landing. We were put in our SUV, which was supposed to be a Toyota RAV4 but ended up being some off brand that was similar. (GWM Haval). They went around pointing out any prior damage and they actually took pictures all the way around the car and sent them to my email. I liked that!

It was time to bring up my handy dandy MapsMe app and find our way to the hotel. The place we had decided to stay was....drum roll please...a RESORT! Yikes! We usually ALWAYS stay in a private Airbnb with our own pool in the backyard so this was going to be a little different for us. I wasn't sure if it would work out or not. It was definitely going to be a different experience for sure. I think we've only stayed at a resort in the past maybe 1 or 2 times and that's when Sakari was little. Now that she's older, she needs her own room and space....along with a bathroom of her own. However, this place would have both of those qualifications so I figured why not?

We would be staying at the Hilton Royal Palm this time around. Of course our decision was based on....once again....using our points to book. If you haven't caught on by now, we have learned the "vacation hacks" of vacationing for cheap using points, what cards are best for that, and how to get the most bang for the buck when traveling since we travel a lot. Using our points to book 10 days at the Hyatt would end up only costing us $922.16. You can't beat that and any Airbnb would have been around 3-4k I found after doing my research. There are also not a lot of private Airbnb's that fit our description of the location we wanted and having a private pool. So, this (or the Hyatt Flamingo) was our number one choice.

The resort was not far from the airport and super easy to find, which was an added plus. The people at the check in desk were super nice and very friendly. Now I do have to add that you have to pay a "resort fee" when checking in. Yes, we were aware of this when we booked. This fee would be $236.25 for the 10 days. Check in was easy however our room wasn't ready (check in is actually at 4pm and we were really early). I heard them telling another family "Welcome Home" after they handed them their keys. I immediately mentioned "I wish this was my home I was coming back to and would hear those words said to me".

We decided to head out and explore a little and find a place to buy pop. We stopped at a small store and I immediately noticed it was the same small convenient store we had stopped at in the past when our cruise friend Kia was driving us around the island. About that time the hubby mentioned he needed to use the restroom. I swear he's worse than a kid. We headed back to the resort to find a restroom and then out we went again. I'm pretty sure the security guard at the entrance gate thought we were nuts. This time we headed over toward Maho and Mullet, around the golf course area and then back again. I didn't want to go too far. I mean we had a SUV full of luggage that kept falling on the kids when I almost missed a turn and swung it around really quick. Oops!

It was almost 4pm and we checked to see if our rooms were ready and they were. We were going to be on the 4th floor and all the way at the end. They handed us key cards and informational booklets and said "Welcome Home!" 😍

We got on the VERY SMALL ITTY BITTY ELEVATORS that only fit a max of 6 people so you can imagine what it was like with 4 people and 4 extra large luggage trying to get on there. One gripe I did have about this resort is there is only 2 elevators to go up. It is located in the lobby and services both sides of the hotel. The elevators are SMALL. AND...they have no a/c in them and they were smoldering hot and moved very slow.

Up we went to our room at the very end of the hall. Room 8204. We opened up the door and man was it nice!!!

You walk in and there was a hallway leading to the main area and it was lined with all the cabinet space one could dream of.

Then was the kitchen area. It came equipped with everything you could possibly need...except one thing and we will get into that later.

Then it opened up into the dinning room with a table and chairs and also bar stools at the counter:

Next was the living room with a sofa that pulled out into a bed:

As you could see in the pictures above, it had a wall of windows across the living room. It also had sliding doors onto the balcony, which was a nice size and came with a table and 4 chairs. We spent a lot of time out here on the balcony and also ate many meals out here too. This balcony also had sliding glass doors into the bedroom as well.

The front bedroom and nice walk in shower:

In the front of the unit was another bedroom and private bathroom:

We all started to unpack and put everything in the proper place for the next week+ and made it feel like home. Wait, where's Karl? He done skipped out on us and headed down to the pool bar. He's ready for his first "welcome drink". He would return with drinks for all of us and we did a "cheers" to St Maarten out on the balcony.

We were slurping on strawberry and mango banana daiquiri's and they were good!

As always, Karl was hungry...but then again when isn't he? I guess I'll side with him on this since we pretty much ate our "lunch" at 7:30am. It was definitely time for dinner. We headed out and down the road on foot. We had seen a BBQ place when we were driving and thought that would be a great place to go to. However, once we arrived we would find it wasn't open, along with almost every other dining place along that side. Karl said he seen a place the opposite direction that had a weird name to it like "Nowhere". Yep, that was on my list of places to try out since it came highly recommended on the St Maarten groups.

Nowhere Special-a bar and waterfront restaurant. It was supposed to be a locals place with authentic food and live music 7 days a week. Tonight was supposed to be Old Time Hip Hop but instead there was no live band and they were playing regular music, maybe from the 70's, that you would hear anywhere else. Blah!

We headed to the back of the restaurant and wanted to sit by the water. We were the only one's in there eating. Maybe that's why there was no band? Or was it just too early still?

We had a nice view of the water and boats in the marina and the hills across from us. So pretty.

Here is the menu and pricing:

Tonight's special was 1/2 off the appetizers.

Sakari ordered the Garlic Butter Conch Satay and the Coconut Shrimp:

She said the Coconut Shrimp was terrific and the Conch was "ok but weird". At first bite, it was good and then after awhile it wasn't as good. She had never had conch (I don't think) and loves to try new things. At least it was half off because she didn't eat it all. I tried it and would have to agree with her. It wouldn't be something I would try again. Of course her ordering this would lead into a story about an excursion we once did in Grand Cayman where the tour operator was diving down to get conch and pulling the little critters out and eating them and then pulling off the "private parts" of the conch and letting people eat it...said it was an aphrodisiac. I will never forget this or that man. He totally grossed me out. (Pictures for reference)

I opted for just a cheeseburger and sweet potato fries. Man it was huge! It was good but I felt that the fries were over cooked and dried out:

The hubby had the ribs and sweet potato fries which came with a small salad and he enjoyed it:

Karl had the Chicken Curry and rice meal, which he said was really good:

The hubby had been eyeballing the desert menu and said that the Banana's Foster with ice cream sounded good. I kinda wanted desert too but instead, since I was so full, asked to share with him. I'm certainly glad I did because I ended up not really liking it. It tasted burnt to me. We didn't realize it until after we walked out that they didn't put any ice cream on there either (that was a spoonful of something that tasted like whipped cream in the picture). I think that would have made it a little better. Still not worth $11 for some banana's in burnt rum sauce.

As I let the hubby finish the desert off, Sakari and I were starring out at the water. She said she was seeing some big tarpon but of course once I got over there to take a picture, there were none.

Our bill came to $134 for the night. They do add an extra 15% service charge automatically, which we would notice is the norm at all places while we were here.

It was time to roll out and back to our little paradise on the ocean.

Along the entire front (on the first floor) of the resort/hotel, there is a bunch of little shops which included a small convenient store/deli. We stopped in because Karl wanted to buy some water and get some gum.

Back at the room we hung out on the balcony and took pictures as the sun was setting across the ocean.

Whew, it was already going on 8pm and we were all tired from being up so early and traveling that it was shower time and we all crashed and burned and went to bed like we were in our 90's. 💤