The "Gettin' Psyched" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Adding another item to the list of things that Carol and I want to do while on vacation in St. Martin this spring.  

The island of Pinel

First of all, we can hardly wait to escape the cold of the northeast and feel the warmth of the Caribbean sun on our skin.  "Won't be long now," we keep saying to each other.  Items on our list include: visit to the butterfly farm, have lunch at the Sunset Bar and Grill while watching and photographing the planes as they land on the nearby runway, have breakfast crepes at Paradise View and an American breakfast at The Sint Maarten Yacht Club, have gelato at the Carousel Gelatorium, visit the Tijon Parfumerie to make our own scented perfume, and spend some time with our new friend Barbara and her gardener who happens to also be her husband.  

Caribbean colors from Paradise View.

Sounds easy enough to do, but more and more we suffer from sand gravity while visiting St. Martin and very little on our list gets accomplished.  Last year we had every intention of visiting the small island of Pinel to swim, watch the iguanas and have lunch, but that never happened.  

Watching the planes land at Sunset Bar and Grill 

We also had a visit on our list to nearby Anguilla to visit the beach at Shoal Bay East, but that never happened.  So, we made our list this year more realistic.  The two at the top of our list are the visit to the Tijon Parfumerie in Grand Case to make our own personal body scent and a visit with Barbara and husband Diedrick to visit their garden and talk about life on the island of St. Martin.  

Breakfast on the island.

If we get no more than those two items accomplished, we will still have had a good time, for you see our main reason for our vacation is to sit in a lounge chair with a book in one hand and at times a drink in the other while listening to the waves lap at the nearby shore.  Oh yeah, we will probably have a beach umbrella closeby in case the sun gets too intense.  Happy hour begins at 2:30 pm at the Perch Beach Bar and the BBCs are always a treat. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

The Butterfly Farm

Iguana on Pinel Island

Heaven on Earth!