2014-April 14, Monday---St. Maarten  (10am-9:30pm):

Finally---a day in port!  Ken prefers the sea days, but I prefer port days!  We had been here once before and had gone to Dawn beach to snorkel that time.  Not the best snorkeling, but I've read there isn't great snorkeling on St. Maarten, so we decided to do one of the ship excursions to Orient Beach this time just to chill out and enjoy the beach.  

  That wasn't until 1:45, so we headed off the ship a little early and looked around.  We found a ferry right at the port that went back and forth to the main town area until 6, so we decided to buy the day pass for $6 or $7/person and ride the ferry over.
The ferry dock.

boats in the marina

Near where the ferry docks in town.  Beautiful beach!

 Just off the ferry dock looking left.  Even has a Hard Rock Cafe there.

Just off the ferry dock looking right.

 Just off the ferry dock looking straight ahead.

 I thought we'd wander around for about an hour, but as soon as we got there, Ken was anxious to get back on the ferry so we wouldn't miss our excursion (in about 1.5 hours!).  So back we went.
 Now there's a church with a view!

  Another look at the town area from the ferry.

Looking out to sea from the ferry.

 Our ship, the Maasdam, in port.

  Eventually our excursion time came and we were on our way to Orient Beach.  It was very pretty and it was nice having cushioned lounge chairs and unlimited fruit punch/rum runners as part of our excursion fee.  We were deposited on the left side of the bay---far away from the area "most" topless women go to. 

We didn't realized this was the ocean side of the island until we got there.  Thus the water was pretty rough.  But we had fun playing in the water.

 We even paid $3 extra and got an umbrella.  There were several venders there, too.  I did buy a cute dress/swimsuit cover up for $15. 

 We took our snorkel gear and I did manage to see a few fish---like these surgeonfish.

 We even took a walk down the beach.  It was definately a well used beach! 

 Someone was having fun building a sand castle.

 There were lots of water toys for rent, too.

 Looking back towards the beach from the surf.

 We only had about 1.5 hours there which was way too short.  We were back at the pier around 4:30.  Since the ferry quit running at 6, we didn't go back to town.  We could have walked back (Dad and I did when he and I were here years ago) or taken a taxi back, but Ken didn't want to---so we ended up back on the ship early.   They were having another Caribbean fare bar b q, this time on the aft Lido deck.  So we got some goodies and enjoyed a pic nic dinner with about 1000 of our fellow cruisers.

   We decided to check out the theater tonight and saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.  I hadn't seen any of the Hobbit movies before and didn't even know what they were about, so it took the whole movie for me to figure out what was going on.  By the time I did, it was over.  Now I'm anxious to see the sequel. With all aboard being so late, the Showroom at the Sea show didn't start until 11pm (the Filipino Crew show).  I'm sure it would have been interesting, but we were exhausted and headed back to our room after the movie and sat on our lanai while the ship departed St. Maarten.

 Good bye St. Maarten!

Ordinarily, we wouldn't have gone on the ship's excursion to Orient beach.  It would have been very easy and much cheaper to take a taxi, but we were looking to burn some of our obc.  Turned out to be a pretty nice excursion.