A Day Full of Activity - Tuesday July 8

Holy cow I haven't done this much in one day since, well, Saturday I guess. This was Kevin (my nephew)'s only full day on the island so we wanted to pack it all in. We packed a picnic lunch for the beach (consisting of 4 pb&j's and a roasted chicken with 2 forks), stopping at Petite Colombe to supplement our snacks with some fresh baked goods. Petite Colombe supplies baked goods to the restaurants and has wonderful pastries. One of our purchases was an assorted bag of croissants, including chocolate, which had a life outside the store of about 1 minute.

We settled on Shell Beach because it is in Gustavia which is where we needed to be for our 2pm scuba trip. It was kind of funny to find that "Shell" beach is just at the end of a small road and has 2 areas full of shells (see below) but the rest is regular sand. I'm not sure what I was expecting but the 2 patches of shells weren't it! Cute though, and small in comparison to St. Jean and Flamands.

Shell Beach:


At Shell Beach is Do Brazil, a restaurant that seems to be on everyone's "to do in St. Barts" list. At first I thought it was a simple beach bar but then realized that the upstairs is where the restaurant is, and its quite festive.

Kevin, Paul and Suzanne at the bar:


The restaurant upstairs:


Following a relaxing morning at the beach, we headed to the dive boat, which, not surprisingly, was the nicest dive boat I have ever seen. Frank and the divemaster were so incredibly nice and accommodating, doing pretty much everything for us other than the actual dive. Suzanne and one of the other women on the boat went snorkeling while we dove, and it seems that they saw better fish life than we did, including 2 sharks, a hammerhead and a reef shark. I saw lots of purple sponges and a baby sea turtle, very pretty but not nearly as exciting as a shark. I loved that when we surfaced once again Frank did all the work. The other 2 women who were traveling together invited us to do a champagne sunset cruise with them on the dive boat tomorrow night and, given the VIP status of the boat and crew, we of course accepted the invitation.

A slice of the harbor in Gustavia:



On to St. Jean again, we thought Kevin would enjoy watching the planes, but it turned out that the big attraction was actually the big waves and the boogie boarding. It didn't even look like the same beach as Sunday, and we were loving it.

Taken from the beach at the end of the runway, arriving flight:


Suzanne and Kevin waiting for some waves:


Kevin on the Boogie Board:


best paparazzi photo of the day:


At this point we were dying for cheeseburgers so we thought Le Select would be a great choice, unfortunately, they don't start serving food until 5:30 and it was only 4:45 and we were sadly turned away. Match in St. Jean, however, saved the day. After a quick $100 stop for some grilling essentials, Paul fired up the grill at the villa and made some fabulous cheeseburgers that actually rivaled those from LeSelect. It was shortly thereafter that I think I fell asleep for the evening. Nothing beats a 12-hour night of sleep on vacation.......Little did I know that while I was catching some Z's, The Ambassador showed up at our door wanting to take Suzanne out for a drink. Huh. I cannot recall in my pathetic 20 year history of dating anytime where a suitor actually showed up at my door offering to take me out. But do I want the surprise date? I will have to ponder.