Trips, Pics, and Tales

With our port days done, I was really glad to have the Top Chef activities on board! This is what we sailed for so we were really looking forward to this! Today we had our cooking class booked, and we chose to cook with Hosea. But before that was the Quickfire Challenge! So two Top Chef events today! And of course we needed to balance that with the ever important quality "sun" time!  By now, I think most people, or at least a good majority of the ship was aware that this was a Top Chef cruise. So when it came to the Quickfire, it was a full house! The Quickfire was a chance for the passengers to cook onstage and also cook with the Top Chefs....they used a raffle ticket system to choose 8 passengers, which I thought was a really fair way to make the selections. The stage was set with 4 stations... The chef's were introduced and the passengers were selected and the "rules" of the contest were given In the first round, there were 4 teams of 2 with ...

Our tour of St. Martin continues!!! This really was a great day...we did a lot! So, we left Maho beach after seeing the planes and our last stop was our beach stop. Our original tour was supposed to include a 2 hour stop at Orient Beach. However our guide told us that after the recent hurricane, they preferred to take us to a different beach because Orient just wasn't up to their standards.  So, we went to Divi Little Bay Beach Resort. This was just fine by us! This is where the tour divided for those who went on option 1 vs option 2! Those who didn't want the beach went back to the ship, and those who did, well, we went to the beach! It was gorgeous! I believe you could rent a chair for about $10 or $15 and there were jet skis you could rent as well. There was an outdoor restaurant too.  Alex and I just put our towels down and went in the water - it was perfect! You can see the beach wasn't crowded at all, which was nice ...

Our next stop was Maho Beach! If you haven't been to St. Martin, you may not know that this is the beach right next to the airport, and this is where the LARGE international jets come in and fly right over the beach! I knew Alex would enjoy this...but he wasn't so sure. We pulled up to a mob scene! It was crazy. And when our driver told us we'd be here for an hour, or maybe it was an hour and 15 minutes our whole bus grumbled! No one wanted to be there! Come on guys....let's see the planes land! I'll admit it was packed. I think a plane must have just landed or taken off. During our last trip, the tour we had drove by here and we saw the beach area but didn't get to see any action. So I was looking forward to this! Our driver told us to be careful and the risks of being blasted.  We got out of the van and I checked the board, which again...no picture, sorry! And we had only about 5 minutes until a BIG plane was to land! Cool! So first some pictures of some small...