Marv Miami & St Barths

Aaahh…. that was a luvverly week away. Miami as ever living up to its full promise for shopping nirvana and swanky bars & cocktails bliss.

The attempt at not hoovering everything lardy in sight was immediately blown out of the water upon spotting a new arrival in the Lincoln Road area – the enticingly named '5 Napkin Burger' … how could we resist? Apparently its how many napkins (actually serviettes, these Americans just don't know their table linen) you need to wipe the slobber off your chops when consuming one. Imagine my chagrin as we sat in there with no burgers and just a worthy trail of sushi to consume, while all around us scoffed big cow. Sigh….

Shopping rocked, the pool was fab, Mustang Sally drove us all over nicely and the Sagamore Hotel staff even managed not to pilfer anything from our stored luggage, unlike last time when they nicked half of Janine's bag.

And then off on our travels to St Barths…

OK, so my 'travel wisdom after the fact' this time is that its an arse to take three flights to get to your destination. Clearly, something that should be obvious, but made even more so when we'd waited 2 hours in St Marten for our tiny little 3rd plane to its neighbouring island St Barts, then finally got on board a baked bean can with rusted wings, for the 10 minute flight across.

Took off in full sunshine, looking forwad to being picked up by nice resort people – then suddenly rain started lashing the windows, plane bucking a bit – and the dire words 'we're going back to St Marten' were heard.

Cue getting back into the first airport, no idea where the bags were (apparently terrorism hasn't reached this bit of tropical paradise and they still send bags without you, so they might have been on an earlier plane and already there – or just lost somewhere in the St Marten system). Then a crazy journey in lashing rain in a cab for an hour round to the other side of the island, where there 'might still be the last ferry' over to St Barths. Driving through tropical flashflood puddles that almost came into the car, driver not too sure if we'd make it and seemingly unable to call ahead to ask the ferry to wait, despite all 15 pasengers from the flight all being desperate to get onboard…

Anyway – we made it, got fleeced $80 each for a single trip across the choppy waters, with the words 'everyone is sick on this boat, you need to take something'. Like what? No luggage, no time to find a pharmacy, would a chewing gum from our hand luggage do the trick???' So arrived 4 hours late, soaked through with no clean clothes, but at least we made it. And didn't puke! Bags came in the morning, upgrade to an even nicer room, all very la la la.

And then I stuck my finger in the plug socket.

Which was a bad idea. Who knew that this French island would need European plug adaptors?? Yes I know it makes sense NOW, but we had UK and US and normally that sorts you out for the Caribbean. So I cunningly inserted one pinky into the hole for some reason, to see if that would work and promptly howled the place down. What a wuss. Janine came rushing through thinking I'd seen a rat, but no, just a smoking fingertip was there to behold.

Rest of week though – lovely. Some fab beaches, perfect waters and good French nosh, but its a pricey island (yes even more than most Caribbean places – 6 Euros for chips is almost enough to even put me off! Let alone the 66 Euros for a blooming piece of steak, enough to make you go veggie.)

And now home again – though tonight we are off to France I think at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night. Another one of Hawksey's beloved 'overnight sails', involving getting up at 3am (that's if we get to bed at all beforehand, as it's Pam's birthday and she ain't no 'bye byes at 10pm' kind of gal). I must, must, must be mad to have said yes…..

More when / if we return from the high seas of the English Channel, bonne weekends one and all, S x