St. Maarten, May 11, 2014 –Fort Amsterdam & Blue Mall

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Photos for this trip can be found through this link.

Getting back to the Belair last night was not as easy as the normal island attitude. As we rounded the circle, we were surprised to see the road to our hotel was closed, likely washed out from the heavy rains. Ray's mind tried to scramble through old mental maps from previous visits, but when we entered the parking lot of the grocery market where we shopped earlier, he said, "Pull up there," pointing to the entrance of a restaurant named Mark's Place. He was out of the car before I turned it off, and by the time I caught up to him inside, he was already at a table getting directions from one of the customers. Later, back in the car, I asked him why he chose to hassle the patrons instead of the employees. He said, "He looked Dutch, and I figured he knew his way around this part of the island." As we pulled into the Belair, I thought, Can't beat that logic.

We enjoyed our breakfast on the balcony with the sugarbirds, then headed out for a walk up the hill to Fort Amsterdam. It was a gloomy morning and we were in for a pretty gloomy day, yet we were quite cheered to be romping around this magnificent island. We brought rain protection for our cameras, and I carried a tripod with a few lenses.

Fort Amsterdam is built on the knoll of a peninsula between Great Bay and Little Bay, and its canons were installed to protect the southern-most part of the island. Ray says the canons that were installed, he heard, were originally too short to reach the far edges of the bay, allowing trespassers to slip by laughing at the short splashes along their port side. There were a couple of larger model canons we found on the way up that must have been the replacements meant to stifle them. The fort obviously has a lot of history, and the interested reader can find a plethora of it online. I remember Ray mentioning that the Dutch scrambled to make the fort, and used much of what lay at their feet to do so. Photo # 7 of the gallery shows some of the early ingredients closeup.

On the way to and from the fort we had to pass beachside and roadside of the Divi Little Bay Beach Resort. It was a little more upscale from our place, but I wouldn't give up the wonderful employees of Belair Beach for anything. We stopped for a few shots by their cool Endless Pool on our climb down from the fort, and ducked in to their beachside bar for a bottle of water when it started raining on our way back. And this wasn't the last time we'd be using their yard for our enjoyment.

We got dry shirts, picked up the car keys, and headed out to challenge the gloom to wipe away our smiles. It failed miserably. We took in a good chunk of the island, but not much by way of photos. Without them I have a harder time reconstructing the course of our merriment, but I remember stopping at the Howell's in Marigot for wine for happy hour later, and some French pastry for right away. Again we were ducking and dodging rain from awning to overhang, but when we got back to the car, Ray said, "Wait. I want to go get a shot of that spiral staircase we saw back there." I also recall, with the help of a few discarded photos, that we were at some spot that was near the Blue Mall. We didn't shop, but we stopped for a few shots at the lava beach, photos 15 thru 20 in the "Rest of the Island" gallery.

The sun was starting to help us conquer the threatening gloom as we came through Cole Bay on our way back. Ray remembered an almost hidden ice cream stop along our route and we turned in for a taste. WOW!! TheCarousel Gelateria Bar had the most incredible ice cream I can remember eating. A thousand flavors! It's a round building with an old carousel displayed off the back. We ate as we walked around the exterior, examining the wonderful photos stretched along the walls of the circular porch. The photos all had an ice cream theme, some with famous people, some with nobodies like me, captured from the early days of cameras to the most recent smiles of flavor enjoyment. Then there it was just before the carousel. A beautiful marble spiral staircase. We finished the last bits of our ice-cream-covered sugar cones as we raced to the car for our cameras. Photos 3 thru 13 in the "Rest of the Island" gallery were recorded there.

Without actual planning we turned into the parking lot of the Belair right at 4:30. Ray immediately went to work preparing the drinks and pick food. We carried the trays out to the spacious deck and remembered to bring a couple of sugar packs for our feathered friends. The sugarbirds never failed to entertain as they scooped up the piles of sugar from the railing. After our happy hour or two of watching the ocean roll into the beach below our balcony, we got ready for dinner at Mark's Place.

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