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For those of you who wish to sell or rent their week or unit, we have opened up the Sapphire
Beach Club website for that purpose. We charge $25 per year. If you wish to rent or sell your unit, send us some text (and $25 to esk@sxm-info.com via Paypal). If you wish to rent or buy a unit without high middleman fees, check out the website. At present, there are several sales and/or rentals available directly from owners. Given a 25 to 35% standard rental commission, there should be some bargains in eliminating the middleman and dealing direct.
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SXM-Activities: Below left is photo with from our Caribbean balcony with Random Wind in the lower left corner stopping for a snorkel and lunch. On the right of the photo is Passat, the ship whose website has appropriated one of our maps. That's Diane doing the acrobatics off the Tarzan swing.
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Travel: We flew back on April Fools Day, having spent a couple days packing things up. I dropped Martha at the airport and got a skycap to help with luggage while I took the car to Michael at Unity Car Rental. I had requested a junker and it was still a junker when I returned it. No worries about dents and scratches, mate. Unity is in Simpson Bay so I was back at the airport in fifteen minutes. Martha was all checked in and waiting for me! We went over to the food court and had our last wine and cheese tasting on the island before we headed up through security and on to the gate. United was on time and we even landed in EWR a bit early.
At immigration, they had a new system where a disgruntled employee allowed several people out of the Santa Claus line and told them to get in a shorter line in front of one of the open booths. We chose the slowest, chattiest attendant and became one of the last to arrive at the baggage carousel. It didn't matter as our luggage wasn't there yet. We got it and headed to customs. We had brought a wine shipper when we came down in early January. I have some that use nestable cardboard inserts to protect the wine. I can break down the cardboard container so that it is flat and nest the inserts so that it will fit in one of our large pieces of checked luggage with room to spare. We also had a wine in a box container with a plastic bladder. It holds 3 liters, 4 bottles of rum, in a fraction of the space and weight. I brought back a case of fantastic Burgundy averaging about $50 per bottle and four bottles of $20 Angostura rum in the bladder. I declared 3 liters of rum at $60 and 9 liters of wine at $600 and a cat. Lilly, the cat, got us immediate access to the USDA line and a man there said he was not interested in cats, just throw your luggage on the belt into the sniffer. And that was that.
As usual our connecting flight departed from the furthest gate that United had from our landing gate, not only the far end of the other concourse, but downstairs with no facilities. Consequently, we ate upstairs in one of those restaurants with a tablet on the table. Even the waiter couldn't make ours work so he went to another table and used used another tablet. The only thing that the tablet does well is increase the tip as the default setting adds 18%. Because he used another tablet, when the food was ready, no one knew where it went. With the long walk to the gate and ordering problems, we had to hurrry through dinner leaving half of an expensive beer behind. I rushed downstairs to get in the boarding line, only to stand there for 45 minutes. Our flight to Albany made up a few minutes and the luggage was delivered quickly. Our neighbors had parked our car in the short term lot at the terminal, so a three minute walk brought us to our car. An hour and a half drive brought us to the snow-covered hills of Salem, NY at 11PM, over 12 hours since leaving our condo.
In other travel news, the Anguilla ferries have increased the toll from $15 to $20.
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Alcohol: We went over to Select Wine Cellar on Tuesday to pick up a case of wine to bring home and have a last lunch from Champagne Bistro with Sylvain (left, taller in a black shirt) and Petrus (shorter in a light tan coat). Sylvain knows that I like Musigny. The real Musigny is a tiny grand cru plot in the village of Chambolle-Musigny. There are two other plots there that have grand cru status (Petits Musigny and Les Bonnes Mares) and several premier cru vineyards. There were several of these in the mixed case that I brought home.
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Nature: On the right is a pair of pelicans looking for lunch as they head east across Cupecoy Bay in front of our Caribbean balcony.
Our office is well over 100% solar-powered and our hosting company servers are about 130% wind-powered.
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Small Island story: We tried to do this the easy way, but here is the hard sell: Take this survey about your internet usage and you will be entered into a contest for dinner for two at Daniel's by the Sea. An island friend is pursuing a psychology degree via long distance learning. One of her requirements is to conduct a research study on internet use, personality traits, and the impact this may have on an individual's social life. She's past halfway to the 300 responses she needs by mid-April. Your responses will be confidential; the survey doesn't ask for your name. It might take 15 minutes. If you can spare that much time click this
link to the survey. Thanks much.
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SXM-INFO'S CONTESTS
Winners of the contest that ended on 5 April
Lagoon Pub Crawl - two for one ticket - Bonnie Simpson
Skipjack's - $50 off a dinner for two - Kenneth Fritz
Marci's Mega Gym - Two for One week with a shake - Kenneth Fritz
Random Wind - $40 gift certificate - Kenneth Fritz
Select Wine Cellar - Wine tasting and a bottle of wine - Bonnie Simpson
Piazza Pascal - $50 off dinner for two - Bonnie Simpson
Pizza Galley - $25 off on a dinner for two - Kenneth Fritz
As you can request five prizes on one entry form, you could win a bargain on lodging, car rental, entertainment, dinner, and a gym to work it off! That would be five prizes to one person.
Current Contest: now to 5 July
Lagoon Pub Crawl - two for one ticket
Skipjack's - $50 off a dinner for two
Marci's Mega Gym - Two for One week with a shake
Random Wind - $40 gift certificate
Select Wine Cellar - Wine tasting and a bottle of wine
Piazza Pascal - $50 off dinner for two
Pizza Galley - $25 off on a dinner for two
Ti Coin Créole - $30 off on a dinner for two
Read our rules, visit the websites of these sponsors, find their contest codes, and enter them on our entry form.
One of the rules is that you should enter each contest only once. You can enter five of the drawings on one entry. Thus, you could win a rather nice vacation at a considerable savings by combining accommodations with dinners and activities. I really check and while ago Sulay entered 33 times for one contest, instead of increasing her chance of winning, she decreased it to zero as I deleted all of them. She did account for about a third of the entries for that contest.
Here's some comments from a past winner:
Erich,
We met with Sylvain at Select Wine Cellar, enjoyed the tasting, and opted for the Belin Champagne for the free bottle. It was very good. I will try and find this at home to drink again. He was a very nice host. ... I enjoyed entering the contest and look forward to future entries.
Over 16 days we only had only one 4 minute rain shower; otherwise the weather was beautiful. We tried the Hideaway Restaurant at La Vista. It was very good as were the other places we dined.
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Future Contests:
5 July to 4 October | 4 October to 6 December
same cast of characters as current contest
RESTAURANTS
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On 29 March the Euro was at 1.089 and today it is at 1.097. Fairly steady.
With the Euro being so weak against the dollar it behooves those of us with dollars to check the exchange rate offered by restaurants again. For several years French side restaurants have been offering better than market exchange rates, especially for cash. The real rate is under 1.2 at this time and I find many French side restaurants have lowered their rates to 1.2 and are sticking with it. Ask for your credit card to be charged in Euros, assuming you followed my advice below and got a card that has no charge for foreign transactions and gives you the wholesale rate on the exchange.
Il Nettuno Restaurant,
Piazza Pascal, and
La Villa,
in Grand Case are offering 1 to 1 for cash.
Nearby Ti Bouchon offers 1 to 1 also. This is no longer much of a bargain.
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You should not be paying a currency transaction charge as there are many credit cards that don't have this onerous charge. My United Mileage Plus Explorer/Chase card no longer charges it and gets my first bag checked free for all United tickets purchased on the card. My Capital One Signature Visa Venture card gets a good exchange rate with no fee. The frequent flier benefits can be used on any airline and there are no blackouts. Basically you get to spend 1 cent on air travel for every dollar you charge to your card. However, we can usually get a round trip from Albany to SXM for 35,000 miles on United. They would sell me that ticket for about $700. Do the math and you see you would have to spend $70,000 on Cap One to get enough "miles" to buy the ticket. Consequently, we rarely use the Cap One card. As there is no yearly charge, it is a handy spare card. We found it best to take the rewards in merchandise. We picked up an 18 bottle wine refrigerator with half of our points from a previous year, but we couldn't even fly one of us to SXM. Recently, they essentially gave us 1% cash back, but it could only be applied to travel expenses charged on the card which makes it essentially the same as getting a ticket through their system. Moreover, spending several thousand dollars at restaurants in Burgundy and Paris did not qualify as traveling expenses and neither did the gite rental in Beaune nor the apartment rental in Paris.
In the spring of 2014 Cap One offered Martha a Quicksilver Visa Signature Card that gives us 1.5% back - no fooling around with miles. They do not charge an exchange fee on foreign transactions and they do provide rental car insurance. This will be our primary card as airline miles are not as valuable or as easy to use as they used to be.
We always notify our card companies of our travel. Chase actually accepts this info on-line, making it much easier.
There are discussions on Credit card Forum and Daily Markets that may help you decide what card is best for you.
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RESTAURANTS
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We had a reservation and got a rather nice table on a lovely afternoon in early March. We started with some water and a bottle of Cotes-du-Rhone from Guigal. It goes well with a thin crust pizza topped with mushrooms, onions, ham, and a lot of spicy oil. Martha had a shrimp salad with extra anchovies. The food was quite good and they have more complete meals if you wish - check the menu on their website. You can't beat the view and the service is good. Prices are pretty good. This cost about $70 and the wine and water were almost half of that.
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| News and Changes: We frequently post some dining photos to Facebook. Less frequently we post activities and other things related to SXM or food. If you're interested, I trust you know what to do.
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If you are looking to purchase gift certificates for island restaurants, check out
Antoine Restaurant,
L'Escargot Restaurant,
L'Oizeau Rare Restaurant,
Piazza Pascal,
and La Villa. Treat your friends at your favorite restaurant!
Dino Jagtiani from Temptation Restaurant has produced a cookbook with art work by Sir Roland Richardson, St Martin's treasured artist, and poetry by Laura Richardson, Roland's wife. Together they have poured their shared passion, creativity, and talent to the best of their ability into this magical archive of St Martin's flavors. For further information, please contact Chef Dino Jagiani dinojagtiani@aol.com or Sir Roland and Laura Richardson roland.laura@wanadoo.fr
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We just added Lucia's Taxi Service as a client. She has a seven seat van and like most taxis looks forward to island tours rather than short trips. She has a tour discount coupon on her site. She'll also meet you at the airport or take you to the airport at the end of your visit. Her English is excellent y se habla español.
Here is the current list of the ARCHA members contributing to the security and clean-up of Grand Case. They would appreciate your continued support of their efforts. The sticker is displayed at businesses that participating in this much-needed endeavor.
BARGAINS AND HAPPENINGS
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Coupons: Below are links to the SXM-Info clients who have coupons on their websites.
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For flights, car rentals, and hotels: CheapOair can get you there. It's always worth the effort to check their rock-bottom prices. We were looking for flights to Spain or Portugal and really wanted first/business class, but found only $8000 flights (each - ouch!). That was a bit much. Martha checked CheapOair and got about half that. It's still about three times the cost of cattle class, but I'm willing to pay that.
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SXM-Info has chosen SkyMed and MedjetAssist to arrange medical transportation services. We hope you never need it, but when air evacuation flights cost $30,000 or more, it's good to have. Check out both and see which one offers the best prices for your timeframe and traveling group.
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Kindle: We now have now have two Kindle devices, as Martha just bought a Kindle Fire, She paid about $200 for the device without the 3G option. It connects to WiFi which we have here in NY and at the condo in SXM, and nowadays, at almost all restaurants, hotels, etc. The Fire is essentially a tablet computer with Kindle capabilities and a camera. If you add
Amazon Prime
to the package you get free 2 day shipping on Amazon, access to a lending library of Kindle books with no expiration, and access to over 40,000 movies via Amazon.
The Kindle Paperwhite e-book from Amazon is a great thing to take on a beach vacation. It is glare-free, weighs less than a half pound, and is one-third of an inch thin. It's only $119. Newsletter subscriber Contessa says: "I loaded it up with more books than I needed and it was a very convenient way to read without lugging books to the beach." Paul M wrote: "My wife and I spent a lovely week at La Samanna in late March and I loaded my Kindle with several books and read them on the beach. The Kindle was fabulous. I had a case and was careful not to get in contact with sand, but the device was excellent to use for beach or poolside reading." Wendy K reports that her friend Jerri is quite happy with hers and now Wendy reports she bought her own. If you've already got one, you can get books here. They are cheaper than any other version of the book (except used!)
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Even though Martha has a Kindle and is quite happy with it, she still downloads audio books from our local library to her Zune or Sansa player (iPod knockoffs) and that has been working rather well. Obviously, these are audio books and it's not the same as "reading" the text, but it works quite well and keeps us amused as we drive. I just got a newsletter from a reader who reports that "Regarding downloading - several of my friends have the Nook and they can download books on it from their library in the states...but they do expire after 2 weeks."
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