Saint Barth. Day 1. Bonjour and Bienvenue.
Here we go!
This year we opted to take our no-kids vacation in St. Barth for five nights. Five nights was Tzvi’s choice, not mine, because he said any less wouldn’t be enough. If you remember last year we went to Bermuda for two nights and that was pretty rough. So five nights it is, and this year we’re traveling with our good friends Hindel and Mendy Jesselson. May the odds be ever in their favor.
We left on Friday. Thursday night we had to deal with the cries of our children and then we realized Madeleine was getting a cold. But Friday we got up at 5:45 and we were off and of course the kids were up to say goodbye, tears and all.
We got to the airport and it was packed but thankfully because of our Mosaic status we got right in. When we got to check in, the woman was very stern and told us we needed to be checked in one hour before the flight. She was very upset because there was only one hour and nine minutes until the flight, which I guess is cutting it close, but we had mosaic and precheck, so I felt like we’d done a great job. When we were done we still had four minutes to spare. She had the same birthday as Mendy so by the end she was more friendly, but she said don’t do it again. Check in was easy otherwise, the flight was fine and we landed in St. Maarten, where we had to connect to our next flight to St Barth.
In St. Maarten we had to get off the plane, walk down the steps onto the runway, take a little bus, get on a line, go through passport control, collect our luggage, exit the terminal and then walk all the way around for a good seven minutes to arrive at check in for our next flight. It was so hot. We could’ve paid $100/person extra for someone to do this for us, but being the fiscally responsible people we are, we decided to do it ourselves. So we made it, albeit hot and sweaty. Then we had to wait to check in at Winair. Have you heard of that airline? Probably not.
The line to check in took a very long time, and I really don’t understand why. Maybe it’s an island time sort of thing. Tzvi almost got in a fight with a man who was checking bags for people who had paid the $100 a person for premium service because he tried to check all the bags ahead of us after we had been waiting. There was no way. We sent our bags off and went upstairs to the gate. We had to wait a little while so we got a tuna sandwich, which wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t good. We also got Evian water that had been imported from Israel because it had Hebrew on it. I guess St. Maarten isn’t boycotting Israeli products.
I don’t even know how to describe the process of flying to St. Barth. First, they hearded all 19 of us (yes, the plane only had 19 seats) onto a staircase where we waited for about 15 minutes to go out onto the runway. Then we got on another bus and were driven to our plane. We kept passing all of these small planes, saying ‘oh, that must be it… no, that must be it…’ until finally we got to this tiny plane that looked like it was from the 1970s and was only slightly larger than the bus. Before we booked this trip my friend Liz described it as a lego plane flown by a Frenchman. I think that was a good description. This is definitely the smallest plane I’ve ever been on. There was no assigned seating (“sit anywhere”) so we got on and took the second row. We were basically in the cockpit – there was no door or any kind of separation. Also, there was no air conditioning and it was deathly hot. It was literally a tin can with wings and propellers. After a few minutes we taxied. Driving around the runway next to A320s and other normal sized planes was crazy. Thankfully we took off quickly, because we were all sweating.
Once we were in the air, the flight was about 10 minutes and we were grateful it wasn’t any longer than that. It was cool but kind of scary. The landing is interesting because I think St Barth has one of the shortest runways in the world. Basically you approach the island and angle sharply downward and then come into this tiny runway, skid to a halt and then make a sharp u-turn. We also must have flown just feet above the cars driving below. It was nuts.
We stepped off the plane and entered the airport, which is a single building with just a few rooms. We had our passports stamped and then moved into the next room where our luggage was waiting. Well, almost all of our luggage. Tzvi checked his airtags and found one of them was still in St Maarten. Uh oh.
We exited the airport and were met by a driver from the hotel. For this trip, we are staying at Rosewood Le Guanahani. From the first moment we were greeted with Rosewood service. Our driver led us to his van and gave us cold towels, mints, refreshing sprays and bottled water. He told us not to worry about the bags and that this happens all the time. He said when the bag comes in he’d send someone from the hotel to get it.
For those who don’t know, St. Barth is a tiny French island just south of St Maarten, but it’s a world away from St Maarten and other Caribbean islands like that. It doesn’t have Caribbean island vibes, and everyone who works there is young, attractive and French (like, from France). I don’t think we met anyone the whole time who said they were born on St Barth. As we would see over the coming days, it really was a lot more like being in the south of France than like being on a Caribbean island.
We pulled up to the lobby, which is indoors but also outdoors, which we would soon discover is how everything is in St Barth. At the lobby we met Auror (in English, Aurora, in British, one who hunts death eaters). We were seated outside and given cold water and a welcome drink that tasted coconutty. They also gave us a welcome pastry that had delicious apricot jam. She checked us in and then led us to our rooms, which are Ocean Cove rooms and are located near the beach with ocean views. All of the buildings have pastel colors, kinds of reminds me of Bermuda. So we’re in a purple house. The room is really pretty, but the only problem is there’s no bathtub.
We unpacked (well, everyone but Tzvi unpacked). Ironically, Tzvi had been the only one to pack a bathing suit in his backpack because he had been worried about this happening with his luggage.
We forgot to take room photos on Day 1. These were taken later in the trip (in case anyone thought we got our room with an unmade bed).
We headed down to the beach and got chairs facing the lagoon. The hotel actually has two beaches – one looking at the lagoon and one at the beach, but you can only really swim in the lagoon because the beach is too rocky. What’s crazy is that the lagoon side is pretty windy, but the beach side has no wind, and if you stand right in the middle you can actually feel where it switches. I should mention that the beach also had the main pool, main restaurant and bar. It’s very beautiful.
We laid out a bit but it was cloudy. We were starving so we ordered a “felafel chawarma” which was a felafel wrap with “chawarma” sauce. For some reason it also had guac and pico de gallo. It was actually delicious and came with fantastic crispy shoestring fries.
Eventually I left and went to the gym to work out. Tzvi came to meet me and swam in the spa pool. On his way he saw a turtle just walking along the path. Then we walked back to the room and got ready for Shabbos to start. By the time we got there, Tzvi’s luggage had arrived.
Shabbos started at 630, which is very early considering we’re on the same time zone as New York, but I guess we’re closer to the equator. We relaxed a bit, got ready for dinner, made kiddush on a small bottle of Kedem we brought with us, and then headed out.
the view from our patio
Dinner tonight was at the Beach House, which is the one restaurant here at the hotel. It’s not like a huge resort where there’s a ton of restaurants – there’s just the one where you get breakfast, lunch and dinner. I think that’s because there are so many restaurants on the island that people actually want to eat at, so they couldn’t support multiple restaurants at the hotel. It’s not like when we go to Mexico and need 5 restaurants in the hotel because we’re afraid to go outside the resort.
The restaurant was pretty empty. I should mention that it’s low season here – I guess high season is December to March – so the hotel is only at 65% capacity (and they said our hotel is more crowded than most on the island) and it’s just generally quieter. I should also mention that the restaurant is also indoor-outdoor. Like they have the ability to close the walls, but they don’t. We were next to an open wall, and there was a nice breeze, but also there was no air conditioning so it got pretty hot.
Our waiter tonight was Alessio. He had a very strong accent and we had some trouble understanding him. Turns out it was because he was Italian. We first received delicious bread, including a roll that had the outline of the shape of the island on it. To start we had this delicious fried hearts of palm cake that was phenomenal. For mains, I had tuna and everyone else had mahi. We also got truffle mashed potatoes that were disgustingly creamy but everyone else loved them. For dessert they had a very nice menu of desserts, plus a special dessert for “Independence Week” because I guess the French were on our side in the Revolutionary War, right? The special dessert was a “Brookie” (a brownie/cookie with vanilla ice cream) which I guess tells you how the French see Americans… We wanted to get that one, but it had peanuts, so we had floating islands instead, which was a merengue in the shape of St. Barth in a cream, and an apple tarte, which was good, but not that memorable.
After we finished eating we told Alessio that we weren’t able to sign the check because it’s the sabbath. He immediately said “oh, it’s Shabbat.” I guess they get a lot of Jews here. Then he went to the kitchen and came back with a Kosher menu, that had all kinds of meat dishes. We didn’t ask if they also had a mashgiach. The beef was around 150 euro, so we wouldn’t be ordering it anyway.
Dinner was really nice. Then we came back to the room and went to sleep. Good first day.