Top Ten Things to do in St Maarten in One Day | Cruise Travel Guide

Hey everybody, I'm Josh.

And I'm Rachael.

Come along with us as we try to do the 10 most popular things in St. Maarten.

All in less than 8 hours. Let's go!

Here we go. All right, good morning.

Hello.

If you're wondering why we're doing it all under 8 hours, now you're not, cuz we're on a cruise ship. So we are here in St. Maarten for a little over 8 hours, uh, and we booked an excursion not with Celebrity, which is the one that we're on, this little one.

Yeah, compared to the rest of those.

I know, there's some big ships in port today, but we are going with Bernard's Tours and we kind of threw together a bit of our own itinerary.

Yeah, so if you watched our St. Thomas video, this is very similar. We're kind of throwing together our own itinerary. We were able to customize it with Bernard's Tours. We will leave their link down below if you're interested. They also have bigger tours if you want, but—

But we're not sponsored, so we'll also tell you whether it's worth it or not. Yeah, a little introduction to St. Martin is that there are 2 sides. One is the Dutch side, one is the French side. We have never been to the French side. Yeah, so we're excited to be starting off on the French side. We're gonna try some food, check out some beaches. There's also a nude beach and Then we'll make our way back over here to the Dutch side. If you are interested in doing something a bit simpler where you don't have to pay much at all, we do have a video where we did no excursion and we just walked straight to the beach. It's very easy. I'll put a link up above. And here's a quick little look at the port area. They do have an I Heart St. Maarten. They've got a bar right next to us here, a bunch of shops. Guava Berry, we will be back for probably. Yeah, it's a really nice area, but if you're looking to do the free beach, uh, just continue on this way and turn left. There is a water taxi that takes you to the middle of the beach, but I think it's worth it to just walk, honestly. If, if you can walk 10 minutes, you're good. And if you can hold back from taking a picture at the other St. Martin sign, there is one right here. On your way out towards the beach.

So our first stop today is at Orient Bay Beach, and usually it's known for its vibrant water sports activity, but today we're here and it's a little cloudy. I would bet there's 10 people on the beach. Not a lot, but it is on the French side and it is one of the most popular beaches over here, lined with bars, restaurants, beach chairs, umbrellas. I would assume they all come at a cost, but it, it is actually very, very pretty, and I'm sure on a clear day it's even more beautiful.

And we did go to the south end, which It's the nude beach. It's just over there. Yeah, it is the nude beach. And apparently it was a nudist resort that is not open, and it hasn't been open since Hurricane Irma, I think in 2017.

Yep.

Um, but our guide said you don't catch the locals there. Those are the European people. But there is still a nude beach. There is still a nude beach. And I think I saw the upper half of a man's butt cheek.

I was like, I think I saw an entire New person, yes.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Also something else, some other facts that we did learn along the way is this is about 37 square miles on St. Maarten. It is split 21 on one, 17 on the other. Most of the people live on the Dutch side because that is where the majority of the jobs are. And prostitution and gambling is legal on the Dutch side, but not on the French side.

Yes.

All right, we got to get our feet wet.

Yeah, it's a little colder than I was expecting.

Yeah, yeah, the weather is not great for this, but luckily we had a great day in Antigua yesterday. Great snorkeling. If you want to go check that out, it was a beautiful day. Beautiful day. I'll say, I actually don't think the water is that cold.

It's better once you get in a little bit. Like, the first shock is cold.

Oh, my shorts Yeah, now our, our guide did say that like snorkeling is not the greatest off the beach. However, if you can get across over to some of the islands, that would be the better spot for you. But for now, we might have to just go on to the next stop.

Hey everyone, Rachael from the future here, and I just want to say a quick thank you to today's sponsor of the video, Bellroy. As you know, we travel a lot, and when it comes to luggage, we want something that is reliable, lightweight, and durable, and we found that in Bellroy. We took a quick weekend getaway, and I was able to use the Transit Carry-On Large and the Lite Travel Pack. The Lite Travel Pack is what I used to replace my backpack, and it was the 38-liter option. It also comes in a smaller option, but let me tell you about Bellroy's backpack or the Lite Travel Pack. It gave me organization I didn't even know I needed. It folds out flat for easy packing and has more storage than I could imagine from a backpack. It has a luggage pass-through that worked perfectly with the Transit Carry-On Large, which is the perfect carry-on suitcase. It has a telescoping handle with 3 height settings. Again, it has some organization in it that I didn't know I needed in my life when I travel. It has removable packing cells that double as internal dividers. The big thing I noticed was that the, the wheels itself made for a really smooth, soundless ride. And here is the really cool part: Bellroy has developed Fix-It Kits to replace key parts such as your wheels, handles, lock, and packing cells in less than 10 minutes. This is huge when you're talking about reliable, durable luggage when— and traveling as much as we do. So if you're in the market for some new luggage, I highly recommend Bellroy. Click the link below and you'll get even a small discount. Now back to the video.

All right, so we are headed up to Paradise Point for some pictures, but check out this. This is like a rainbow eucalyptus tree.

Isn't it cool?

That is so neat. And as we're about to turn around, we saw like 3 monkeys.

Oh yeah, there's more monkeys up in that tree.

Rachael says there's monkey in this view.

There is.

I am not seeing it. Oh gosh, okay, I see.

I was like, you've got to see him now. There's more in the back too.

You can see more monkeys there, but I hear.

Are they mean?

But check out that tree.

Are they mean?

No. So our guide said that we should touch the tree. Oh my God, look at how color!

Oh wow, it is cold. It's like cool to touch.

It's so many different colors. So neat.

So thrown off with the monkeys.

Yeah, we were not expecting to see monkeys today. No, but here we are.

It's beautiful. It is so pretty.

All right, so Pic Paradise is our second stop, which has 424 meters. It's the highest point on St. Martin. We did not make it all the way up there in our car. Instead, um, we got to the highest point you could in a car. Otherwise, she said it's about a 45-minute hike to the top. But we got some pretty fantastic views here, and that's also about where we saw the rainbow eucalyptus tree. As well as the monkey. Monkey.

All right, so here we are at Fort Louis. It was originally built in the 18th century to protect Marigot's harbor, which you can see right down below us, and warehouses that— the warehouses were always filled with like valuable goods. rum, coffee, sugar. They were protecting Marigot from pirates and enemy attacks. But I think the pirates part is the coolest part. You can also climb the steps to the top, which we just did. They are steep, but there's not very many, so it's doable. Um, you enjoy the views of Marigot Bay, the city, and on clear days, Anguilla. Anguilla? Anguilla.

We'll say Anguilla. And the good news is after this, I think we get to go eat.

I hope so, because sometimes— I was just telling Josh, plans change and you have to pivot. So we didn't get to go swimming at Orient Bay. We didn't get to climb to the top of Pic Paradise because the weather was not the best. So, but we did get some beautiful views. We got to see monkeys and we got to see that really cool tree. And now we get to see this view.

Yep. And I think we're gonna eat some French food down there.

Oh, so pretty. So we decided to start off in, uh, Marigot with some lunch because we're both hungry and it smelled delicious. A lolo, I believe, is what these are kind of considered. So Marigot itself is the capital of the French side. It is characterized by a blend of French sophistication and Caribbean flair. It has a charming waterfront, which is what we're on now. It also has a much French-inspired architecture and vibrant markets, which we did drive by, so I can't wait to walk through those as well. And for us, there's a French pastry shop that's supposed to be—

Yeah, so we're gonna try that. But before that, we're gonna have curried goat, oxtail—

I'm having oxtail.

And saltfish, because our guide did tell us saltfish is one of her favorite local things.

True.

And oxtail. So here we go.

And the cool part for me is all you have to say is, I want a St. Maarten beer, and they bring you a St. Maarten beer.

All right, for a couple appetizers, we did the saltfish. I really don't know what this is going to be, so after it is not way too hot—

I was gonna say, is it hot?

Very hot. I was like, it looks hot. Um, we will cut that in half so that we can see what it looks like on the inside. And then just some fried shrimp. We had to get some.

I haven't had shrimp for days. Days.

Yeah, so let's cut into this guy. Looks like salted fish that's fried. This is the goat curry, white rice, pasta salad, and another salad.

And plantains. Don't forget the plantains.

Oh, and plantains. What'd you get?

I got braised oxtail, a couple salads, and I got the Cajun rice with plantains and plantains.

This looks freaking good, and this place has picked up. That's why it's loud.

It's pretty good. Oh my God! Really? Mm-hmm.

Really tender. All right, so we came across the street to get some French pastries. This is a brioche with sugar.

Yep.

This one is a Nutella croissant, and this one we have no idea what it is, but we can see some pineapple, we see some sugar, and it's a French pastry.

You can't go wrong. Yeah, while in France.

While in France. And we got some guy singing to us. All right, welcome to Maho Beach. This is chaos. So there's a plane coming in, but we basically told our driver that we'll meet her at the end because This is chaos. It is legit chaos. The cars aren't moving. So many people. But let's see a plane land. Here it comes. I want to— you taking a picture?

I'm trying. Chaos.

Here comes a helicopter. There is a bar over there. I don't think we're gonna have time to hang out here.

There's the big one in K9.

All right, so Maho Beach was a bit too crazy for us. Now we were able to see a small plane, a helicopter, and then as we were leaving, a giant jumbo jet came across. So we did end up coming back to Philipsburg, which is where the cruise port is, and we're going to spend the rest of our day here. Right now you can see behind me is Front Street, which is a lively commercial heart of Philipsburg. Phillipsburg, known for its abundant duty-free shopping, waterfront views, and bustling atmosphere. The street runs parallel to Great Bay Waterfront and is lined with numerous stores offering jewelry, electronics, and souvenirs alongside many restaurants and cafes. And so our goal is see if we can find a little bit more to eat, drink, and probably get in the water because the sun is back out. And now we're on the boardwalk area of The Great Bay Beach, which we have done a video here before where we just spent the entire day here. It's a great little location, but we're gonna grab some brews and bites, I bet. All right, we're here on Great Bay Beach. We did rent a chair for $10 so that we could drop our stuff off, and we're just gonna like drink some beers, hang in the water. You can see it is magnificent, uh, probably one of the most beautiful beaches I ever saw for the first 40 years of my life.

Cheers!

I needed this.

So, so bad.

It's nice and relaxing. Time for one more thing on this journey. It's guava berry rum. Or it's guava berry colada time. Rachael said it's a national drink. Let's do it. Can we get the original? All right, last stop.

Guava berries. It's the national liqueur of St. Martin, and it is locally grown, so it's not like a mix of a guava and a berry.

It's its own specific fruit.

You can get numerous things— jams, liqueurs. Um, we got a guava berry colada and a guava berry rum punch, which is what it's known for, is the liqueur side of the guava berry.

All right, and this is right in the port. That's tasty.

That's tart.

Welcome to the cruise ship. We are on Celebrity Eclipse. Did you know that? You do now. Let's talk about this tour. So this tour, we did book it through Bernard Tours, and we ended up realizing as we did it that it was not a Bernard Tours person. It was a person that seemed to be contracted out, probably because we were a single couple.

But mind you, They do offer that on their website.

Correct.

So this is not something we requested or booked separately. Like, this was an offer on their website specifically.

Yeah, we had some issues where there were times where we were not sure that we were going to be going to the places that we intended to go to. We had submitted our itinerary to the company a few weeks before, and they even wrote back saying, here's how we would recommend doing it. And so we thought everything was good. Then we get today, the lady thought there was gonna be more people with us. And—

Yeah, first she says, oh, there's 4 of you, and Josh is like, no.

Yeah, and, and clearly it seemed like she did not understand what our itinerary was. It was like, yeah, we can maybe do these things. The fortunate thing is we got to almost everything.

Almost everything.

Yeah, there was a brewery that we really had hoped to go to and Unfortunately, the— our guide did not, you know, go the extra mile to look it up to figure out where it was at and make sure we made it there. Uh, the other thing is at Maho Beach, we do wish that we would have known, but we didn't have service.

Yep.

Um, so we didn't know what the itinerary was because we felt like we didn't need it. You know, we spent $480 on this tour, and so we felt like maybe they would have an idea of when the big The big planes were coming in and maybe we could have spent a little bit more time. But gripes, it was— I'm glad we did it. But the next time that we come to St.

Maarten, it will be a beach day.

Yeah, I think we'll just go right off Philipsburg.

Yeah, it's the easiest thing to do.

It really is nice and the beach is really just— it's very nice. It's what you want. Lots of food, lots of drink, lots of people, lots of fun. And it's a fantastic beach. And I think that what today showed us is that we— for us, the rest of the island is not really our thing. You know, the French side, I was slightly disappointed by, but I don't want to go so negative.

And I can say from the tour itself, I think it was just less engaging. I think that started from the very beginning when not knowing that we were a private tour, not knowing that we had already submitted our itinerary, not knowing that we had done our research. Because that was the fun part for us of doing it, is we'd already done our research and all we needed was the transportation to get there. And it just wasn't that engaging. Eh, lesson learned. Again, would we do it? Sure, maybe in a different way. But if we ever come back to St. Maarten, now that we've done it a free beach day and a tour, we're gonna do it the free beach day, right?

Yeah, unfortunately our weather For the first half of the day was also not very good. Yeah, so take it as you'd like. This is your warning or your encouragement to do the same thing. On that note, we do like to end all of our videos talking about our favorite bites and favorite moment of the day. What was your favorite bite?

Saltfish.

Saltfish. Those were really good. I was surprised. They were super good.

They were hot, nice, freshly fried. They just left a flavor in my mouth. And the pico that came with it worked so well with it.

Yeah, I, I would probably go with the oxtail. I thought the oxtail was very good. I thought that the Cajun rice was a little bit dry and the white rice was great. So if I had been able to pair together the oxtail with the white rice, I think it would have been perfect. But the white rice with the goat curry was delicious also.

It was. I mean, it was all good food.

All right, and What was your favorite moment of today?

At first I thought it was going to be seeing the monkeys in the wild, but I'll tell you where it ended up being is the first step into the ocean at Great Bay Beach, because I was just done. I was done with being in a car. I was done with the tour. And for us to be able to just be like, oh, this is, this is what I was looking for.

Yeah, I think when we come to the Caribbean, a lot of times we We do want those beach days and we want to be able to embrace the sun and stuff. And so, you know, as you can tell, yeah, for the first half of the day it was just— it was rainy, it was dreary. There was not a lot going on other than sitting in a car. And so yeah, when we had our beers, got into the water, it was fantastic.

It was. It just made— it kind of pulled the whole day together.

Yes. All right, so is that your favorite moment too? Yeah.

Oh, okay.

As I just said, we are on Celebrity Eclipse. We do have a ship tour out already. We probably have a video about Antigua, and tomorrow we are headed to Puerto Rico, and the next day Dominican Republic. So if you're interested in following along, make sure to hit that subscribe button.

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Cheers!

Cheers!