Boy, am I a doofus!  I made the mistake of reading … and reading … and reading last night!  It was 11:45PM before I forced myself to put The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell down.  Unfortunately, my brain was complete wrapped up in this historical fiction and I didn't fall asleep until around 2:00.  This wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been woken up by a heavy rainstorm at around 6:00.  Ugh!

After Kathie, Kelley, and Victoria woke up around 7:30, we made our way into Phillipsburg to a restaurant Kathie had been to two years ago called the Kangaroo Court (located at Hendrick's Straat 6, across the street from the courthouse) where we had a delicious breakfast with some fabulous French pastries.  After breakfast, we made our way around the eastern part of the island to the Butterfly Farm.  Serendipity struck again as we went down the wrong road, but ended up driving along some of the most gorgeous beaches (near Orient Baie), providing some magnificent Kodak moments.

We eventually made it to the Butterfly Farm by about 11:00.  Again, this was something Kathie had visited two years ago and totally loved.  It wasn't the biggest butterfly "farm" we had been to, but we had a wonderful time exploring.  It's really something having butterflies swarming around you, looking for the little bit of nectar you have on your finger!  After a couple of hours of trying to attract a wide variety of butterflies (from all over the world), we decided it was time to push on to the town of Marigot (the capital of the French side of St. Martin).

While I enjoyed visiting Philipsburg in Dutch St. Maarten, it is obvious that 90% if the town is dedicated to servicing the cruise boats and their passengers.  As a result, it loses some of its charm in order to sell more trinkets.  French Marigot is about 180º from this!  It's a quaint town that just oozes charm and has some wonderful shopping and delicious restaurants.  We went to Claude Mini-Club (Blvd. de la Mer in Marigot, tel: 590/87-50-69), a neat open-air restaurant built on the second floor of a building that has about a half-dozen coconut trees literally growing through the floors and the ceilings.  The food was quite tasty (especially loved my lobster!) and it was a great break, with a gorgeous view (see below)! 

Victoria slept through most of lunch, but was pretty much ready to go by the time we got back to the car.  We headed back to our hotel and did a quick change into our swim clothes and headed down to the beach.  Again, it was a beautiful experience for all of us, with Victoria and Kelley building a great sand castle, me and Kathie getting some reading in, and (of course) more snorkeling.  The highlight for this "excursion" was a "colony" of starfish, each of which larger than 10" across!

Dinner was a bit of a downer tonight.  We first went to a place called Temptations out past the airport that had been recommended by our waiter last night.  Unfortunately, they were only seating people with reservations (which, of course, we didn't have!).  So we tried to find another place he had recommended in nearby Simpson Bay called Saratoga, but couldn't find that either.  We ended up back at the place we had breakfast at yesterday, Turtle Pier.  Our original logic was that it should be pretty good, given the yummy breakfast we had had yesterday.  WRONG!  They got three of the four orders wrong and what they did give us was not very interesting (not bad, just not good).  Probably safe to say we won't be heading back for dinner!

So we headed back home to rest up for yet ANOTHER busy day tomorrow!

Tomorrow: Islet Pinel