St. Bart's

We made it to St. Barththelemy (St. Barts) yesterday at around 2:00.  We  actually left from Tintamare, which is a small island off the northeast side of St. Martin.  It was about 17 miles across and I still have a tough time with those open water crossings where it’s so rough you can’t do much of anything other than sit it out (going to the bathroom isn’t even an option when it’s so rough).  The wind is usually around 20 knots and whips up the open water pretty good.  But it makes it so worth while once you get into a nice quiet bay on another beautiful island.  

St. Barts is so different from any other island we've visited.  It’s French like St. Martin, but it is very upscale and you can tell that it’s mainly for the rich and famous.  We blew our whole eating out allowance for the week in one night on tapas and drinks.  I don’t even dare go into any of the shops because I can’t afford to even look at the stuff.   It’s really nice how the harbor of Gustavia, which is the main port, has a walkway around the whole place and is full of shops and restaurants.  We were walking around last night trying to figure out where we wanted to eat and I heard these two girls behind us talking in english so I asked them where they would recommend to eat and they gave us a few good places and when we asked them where they were from-ok your not going to believe this-but the one was from Fort Collins.  Yeah, crazy huh?    

We rented a scooter today and toured the island, which was an awesome way to see whole island.  They have some amazing beaches here and each one is so different.    I still can’t get used to how the woman have no problem going around topless.  At least we didn’t run into any nude beaches here like Orient Bay on St Martin so that was good.  We really liked Nikki Beach the best.  Even though the bar on the beach was a much younger crowd, it has a really nice beach and a very cool place to hang out for an hour or so.  

St. Bart’s is not very dog friendly though.  It seems every beach has a sign “No Dogs” but we are anchored outside of the main port and there is a small beach there that doesn’t have a lot of people visit it and we are able to take the dogs over there to run.  I don’t know what they would do if they weren’t able to have a couple of walks on the beach every day.  

Tomorrow we are going to head over to Anse de Colombier which is a nice bay on the North tip of St. Barts.  

Sorry- I will post pictures later of St Bart's because I couldn't get them to download. But I will. It's a beautiful island.