Tuesday 2nd February 2016

 
 Sometimes in your life you find a beach that is pretty much perfect. One where the water is blue as a turquoise, the currents are minimal. O.K. so Anse Marcel has a type of grass floating in the water at the moment due to northerly winds but this, again will be gone in 2 days and it doesn't smell like our british seaweed does. It's quickly hoovered up either by tractor during early mornings or it is brushed away by the beach guys, Jimmy or Guillane. 
 
Now the bar/restaurant is part of Anse Marcel Beach resort and it is quite wonderful. You book your reservation for either early lunch 12.30 sittings or 2p.m. sittings. This I assure you is nothing like school or canteen sittings. There are tables in front of the bar, that are inches from the sand and just a matter of a dozen steps from that perfect water. Or there are a number of various sizes of open sided wooden beach huts containing four tables or individual tables for bigger groups. These can have plastic sides put down in case of inclement weather! We had 2 rainstorms during our stay, one lasted 3 minutes, the other a good warm tropical storm that lasted 10 minutes and had the cheek to totally wet our beach towels. I won't bore you anymore with tales of fabulous meals but at anything from 17- 30$ for a starter which is bigger than most main courses we've seen. This restaurant serves superb food, folks come from in all over the island such is its reputation. There is also a lobster tank and scales for you to decide how big and how you would prefer your catch of the day to be served! Poor pinchy!

The only problem here is that service ends at the bar and the restaurant by 6pm, all closed until breakfast at 8am so for dinner there are just 2 places within walking distances (anywhere else is a cab ride away because this settlement/marina is surrounded by mountains and is a 1 in 3 car ride from anywhere! The 2 bar/restaurants sat beside the marina, just a 5 minute wander from our room are Le Calypso and Da Tony's. We sampled both and they were both good. The service and atmosphere at Le Calypso was great, lively, happy with terrific staff. Da Tony's was an Italian and Peter happily polished off a very good Spag Bol.
 
So we chilled in the warm waters, the snorkelling wasn't good but three days rest and recuperation was what was needed. We loved our room, complete with jacuzzi shaped bath looking out at our sea view as well as his n hers sinks and a shower room, it really was full of all mod cons. The only things missing were a kettle but that's an American thing and a bottle opener! But it was large airy and could have fitted four quite easily. We quite like Anse Marcel.