Tuesday 17th November

Today we arrived in Philipsberg, St Maarten, an island split between France & Holland. At the terminal were 2 other cruise ships & another joined us about 2 hours later. As with all the islands we visited the terminal shops all sell jewellery & watches or somewhat tatty souvenirs & the tour promoters congregate.

We decided to try for the 3rd time to get some US cash & amazingly found an operating ATM on the second try. As the terminal is quite a walk from town & we were unimpressed with it, we took a water taxi across the bay to a jetty in front of the main streets. Unfortunately we were underwhelmed with what we saw of the town so had a coffee & trotted around the streets of more tourist shops & a few stalls.

One interesting sight was 2 ex America's Cup boats out racing with tourist crews but that was a bit too much like work for Dick, so he didn’t envy them.

Eventually at about 11.30 we chucked in the towel & resorted to sitting in a cafe to use their very slow wi-fi. Jane updated the blog & d*** checked the banks etc & 2 hours later we started to walk back to return on the water taxi. We decided that an island tour wasn’t for us & returned to the ship having done a little judicious spending on a gift & some mosquito repellent which we think will be an urgent necessity later on.