In March of that year, Connie and I took a week and went to Sint Maarten, and Saint Martin. It is an island in the southern Caribbean. I have no idea now why we decided to go to that island. It is an island that is owned by two countries The Netherlands and France. We stayed on the Dutch side which is Sint Maarten. We left on a Saturday (check out the Purse story in the funnies) and returned on a Friday. We got there late in the day as at that time they were two hours ahead of where we live. The hotel was ok, and the rooms were decent but nothing like the brochure promised us.  On Sunday we spent the day around the hotel and at the beach around the hotel just relaxing. The next night was a little noise as the couple across the stairwell were having a major fight that went on most of the night. Either the walls were so thin, or they were so loud that we could hear almost everything. Anyway, they were so mad at each other they cut their vacation short and left the next day. Their vacation did not last long as they had just checked ion on Sunday. For some reason, I think they had both been drinking a lot. We had taken a car from the airport to the hotel but on Monday morning we decided we really needed our own car to be able to do some of the things we wanted to do. We were able to call from the hotel and had a car brought to us at about 10:00 that morning.

We decided to go into Philipsburg the capital of the Dutch side Sint Maarten. We had not gone too far to realize we were going to have to be extra careful as there were always some kinds of animals crossing the road.  The main ones were cows, pigs, sheep, and chicken. They seemed to be everywhere and went wherever they pleased.  We had left a little after 11 and it was not that for into Philipsburg, but you did not go very fast because of the animals. We saw a bar on the side of the road and decided to stop there for lunch. It was not crowded so we decided to sit at the bar and talk to the bartender so we could learn a little more about the island. We ordered hamburgers, fries, and a coke. The hamburger tasted a little different, but it was not too bad. While we were eating the guys raised the shades and even though there were places shaped just like a window there were no glass or screens on them. What we did see was a lot of grass with fencing around it and wandering around eating the grass was a lot of young goats. It was then we realized we were eating goat burgers. Connie and I stopped even though we had barely eaten one-half of our sandwich. It was just too tough-looking out there and seeing where your meal came from.

We left and went on into Phillipsburg and it was a very nice and cute little city. What we noticed right away was all the cruise ships docked there. The town was full of tourists and had all the shops that tourists like to visit. Connie and I spent most of the afternoon there before returning to the hotel.  As you can see it a beautiful town with a lot of shopping for the tourist

Tuesday was a relaxing day just hanging around the resort and doing a few little things. The thing that I remember that day is we ate lunch at the resort outside in the open air overlooking the ocean. It was quite warm that day and I am not sure what we ate but I remember Connie and I having several glasses of iced tea as they seemed very small. Where we in for a shock, the waiter kept refilling our iced tea glasses and when the bill came, we found out we were charged for each refill the same as if it was a new glass of iced tea. We were so used to having free refills we never even thought to ask if we had to pay for refills. Back then a dollar for a glass of iced tea was high but so what we were at a resort. We were both shocked to see that our bill was so high. The cost for our iced tea was about $12 double what we paid for our meals. Guess what we had a lot less iced tea for the rest of our trip.

On Wednesday we took the car and went to the French side of the island. We went to Marigot capital of the French side of the island. I remember noticing there were not as many animals that we had to look out for, but we did have to stop once for a short time while a farmer got his animals across the road.  We spent a lot of time there as we loved this little city. It was such a fun place to visit, no cruise ships there but a lot of big yachts. Seemed to move at a much slower pace and not as many tourist gift shop as there were in Phillipsburg.

Thursday, we went to an isolated beach and the sun was very intense. It was so intense that I broke out with very painful blisters on my upper lip that took a long time to heal. I remember it was embarrassing as they were not only painful but pretty hard to look at. But it was a wonderful day that Connie and I just enjoyed spending together.

Friday, we left early that morning to fly into Miami and then to Dallas. The flight was getting us to Dallas in the late afternoon. We would be in early enough to go pick up our two shelties, Brandy and Misty that Lou An and her husband Rick were taking care of.  I do not remember what exactly went wrong, but we ended up flying into San Juan Puerto Rico because something was wrong with the plane. We were there around 10 AM and we did not leave there until about 4 PM. By the time we got to Miami, we had missed our flight by several hours and ended up not getting into Dallas until late in the evening. It was too late to pick up the dogs. Connie was up at 6 the next morning ready to go get them, but I made her wait till 9 so Lou An and Rick had time to get up.

Overall it was a good vacation but one we never talked about being one of our great vacations.