{"id":10722,"date":"2021-12-10T10:39:26","date_gmt":"2021-12-10T15:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=10722"},"modified":"2022-01-24T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T17:00:00","slug":"pcl2-day-5-st-maarten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/10\/pcl2-day-5-st-maarten\/","title":{"rendered":"PCL2 Day 5: St Maarten"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sky Princess<\/em>, docked in St Maarten<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We docked near Phillipsburg but we never made it into the city so I will just say that we visited St Maarten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had no excursions planned for St Maarten (or anywhere else) so we weren’t affected by the cancellation of all cruise excursions to the French side of the island. We later learned that some of the French residents were upset about mask mandates imposed from France and were striking – with some minor violence – in protest. The real risk, we were told, was that the border between the French and Dutch halves of the island would be closed and excursions could be trapped in the French area, unable to return to the ship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The port area in St Maarten<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Getting buzzed in St Maarten<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

But all we did was wander around the port shops, consuming some tropical drinks. Carl got a bit buzzed so I let him sit while I went in search of some duty-free alcohol. I found a 1-liter bottle of Absolut vodka for $18. I think that is about half the price of the same bottle in Florida. Now I have to find a way to use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Two of the other ships in port, as we departed<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The port area was busy. No surprise as 6 very large cruise ships were docked there. Phillipsburg probably would have been wall-to-wall tourists. I don’t think I missed anything by not going into town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The highlight of dinner was a porcini mushroom soup. Delicious. And for lunch – after I reboarded the ship – was a Serbian bean soup that was just spectacular. Whoever does the soups on the Sky Princess<\/em> really knows his craft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not so spectacular – at least in a good way – was the trivia, where we again did poorly, or the casino where we both lost money. I am now down $150. So much for my wish of paying for the cruise with my gambling winnings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We docked near Phillipsburg but we never made it into the city so I will just say that we visited St Maarten. We had no excursions planned for St Maarten (or anywhere else) so we weren’t affected by the cancellation of all cruise excursions to the French side of the island. We later learned that … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[50,62,100,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-caribbean","category-food","category-pcl2","category-places"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-2MW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10722"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10908,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10722\/revisions\/10908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}