(Our how to spend your life savings in a week)
It is February and my first winter in the south of Spain and I am barely getting by. My friend called me to say, “I’ve got a house in Saint Barths for a month, a spare room, come visit me!” It may have taken me all of 25 seconds to make up my mind. The flight was very expensive, over €1400 plus bag and seat fees, but I bit the bullet and hit purchase and within days I was in Saint Barths.
For those of you who have yet to experience St. Barth’s, it is a beautiful island with some great beaches, a nice downtown area (Gustavia), and some good restaurants. It is also entirely overpriced and designed solely for those who think other’s opinions of themselves are most important. Designer shops are all there, and fussy restaurants with ludicrous menus: two had a chicken dinner for over €100!
Most important is being seen with expensive logos on your clothes, shoes, eyeglasses, and the size of your yacht and/or villa. To say how little this impressed me is like saying the surface of the sun is a little warm. However, with the right friends, you can mostly avoid these idiots and enjoy some of the island, if you pay for it.
If you are not coming on your McMansion Boat, you’ll need to fly to another island and take a smaller plane to St. Barth’s. Most go to St. Maarten first, and then a 15-minute flight later you land in St. Barth’s which is a fun ride as there is a hill you climb first and then a very short runway. Our flight left early and landed before it was scheduled to take off! Along the way, it was softly raining, and the sun was out so we saw a beautiful rainbow gracing the many yachts in water.
I meet my friends at the airport, and they take me to the Villa. As you can see it is amazing! My friend is one I have known for over 35 years, we were neighbors in Washington, DC. He convinced me to buy a condo in the building next to him began my history of purchasing real estate, renovations, and eventually selling for much more that has now enabled me to do the traveling I am doing now. It all started with that small apartment. Read more About Me to see my journey.
I am blown away as we are on the water and the sound of the ocean (actually the Caribbean Sea, but who’s arguing?) is huge. This will be a great vacation! Of course, I still worked while I was there, but thankfully the internet and cell phone coverage was adequate for conference calls. We were on Anse des Cayes, on the western side of an island that is sort of shaped like a flattened V.
The home is a wonderful villa that has three bedrooms, each with its ensuite. The home is designed to be lived indoor/outdoor with sliding doors all along the sides facing the water. A wonderful deck wraps around the house and the pool and has a hut with a bed in it. This is what $2,000 a day (US) will get you. VERY out of my league, luckily not for my friend who’s been coming to St. Barth’s for over 20 years. I am very grateful!
Ironically, the house was so nice, the ocean (sea?) within spitting distance that we didn’t leave the compound except for groceries and breakfast pastries for the first four days. It was so relaxing, other than when I was working, still, we all took naps each day — that type of vacation.
On my first night, we walked along the beach to a nearby restaurant that was wonderful where we had wonderful cocktails, wine, salads, and local lobster! I, like the idiot I am, insisted on picking up the tab for the generosity shown to me by my friend. Only when reading the check did I realize it was over €700 for the two of us! Whew! After picking myself up from the floor, paid the bill without hesitating knowing that I was on vacation. (Of course, the idiot inside my head was yelling up a storm!) Live and learn.
After a few days, we felt the urge to explore more of the island and did a drive around it which only took an hour or so. We stopped at two beaches to see them and stayed for a couple of hours on one, but the wind was strong and made us get sandblasted every 15 minutes or so. Still, they were beautiful.
Gustavia is the seat and main hub of the island with shops, restaurants, and a couple of dozen yachts that look silly. They all have staff on each that looked bored out of their minds. The town wraps around a nice harbor and is picturesque to walk around. One of the restaurants we ate at, with that famous €100 whole chicken dinner, was famous for one of the shows how idiotic spoiled rich wives can be. They were there earlier in the year and turned the restaurant into their private dance hall and the dining tables their dance floors. I am sure it was all heavily produced, as most of these shows are not based in reality, but I was so glad that I missed that. But you get the idea.
For the most part, we were happy to cook at home, drink too much with dinner, take long naps listening to the ocean, and enjoy each other’s company. This is what made this a great vacation for me. (See below the map from Boundless Roads that I used in my research.)
Thank you for reading my article. If you would like to read about other travel posts you can go to Articles to see all posts, or to Destinations to see them grouped by location. General travel tips can be found here.
