Day Four: St Maarten

Day Four again saw us getting up at stupid o'clock to take gorgeous photos of sleepy ports and sunrise in the lovely island of St Maarten, see?

Now, great story time, the island has been one of the most fought over in the last few centuries, mainly by the Dutch and French, in fact....only...by the Dutch and French! So one day they decided to call a ceasefire to all the fighting (whereby at that stage the island was almost changing hands monthly!), and to jointly own the island, however they could not decide who owned what. It was decided, finally, that one Dutch man and one French man would set off from the same place and walk around the circumference of the island in opposite directions, and wherever they met, the island would be split down the middle, so each side would own their own side, of which both sides agreed. So, both men set off with food and rum to keep them going in their journey.

About a quarter of the way round, the Dutchman got a tad thirsty and decided to have some rum. Unfortunately, no one asked the dutch lad if he had ever drank rum, and so because he wasn't used to drinking something that you could probably carve, and the fact that he was a very young lad, the drink went to his head and so he decided to have a sit down and get his head together. When he woke up, it was around 4 hours later and the Frenchman was already half way round the island, which is why the French own three quarters of the island and the dutch only own a quarter!

We didn't get a chance to go and see the madcap airport I spoke about a few months ago, we were over the other side of the island, but we did go to Marigot Bay, which is owned by the French, and is a really lovely port with the odd scattering of boutiques and touristy places.

From there, we were taken on a drive round the rest of the island, stopping off to take various shots of the bay, and wandered back to Philipsburg, where we did a spot of window shopping, before realising just how bloody big our ship is. One of the other liners had come into dock whilst we were away, the Regatta. Its an amazing sight, and well worth a photo methinks!

Interestingly, the port itself was very tourist-orientated, despite the fact that they'd had to rebuild the entire port since it was destroyed in 2006 by a hurricane.

We got back to the ship just after lunchtime, so had a bite to eat then went to chill over a cocktail (or two) in the bar.

After dinner, we went along to The Marquee, where we saw a performance by Manuel Martinez, who was incredibly funny and a weird but wonderful magician to boot! After that, we went and watched the acrobats flying through the air, before heading for a drink on deck and retiring to our cabins, ready for tomorrows island, St Kitts, which is our favourite island by a long shot!

The Normal Blog Bit

This week started fantastically, especially after the weekends destruction of the soon-to-be-relageted Blues, *cue evil laugh*. It was a fantastic game and personally I think we were kind on them, only sticking 5 goals past them, although I was slightly peeved that we conceded a goal against them, but I'll get over it!

Monday was an 'interesting' one. I was knackered after Sundays derby game, so just wanted to sleep at my desk, which I did for most of the day, until my mom text me to tell me that my aunt had got her hand caught in a blender, and had just got to hospital!!

Luckily she had only caught one finger, and the blade had missed the bone, so she was very very lucky. It was just one of those silly, automatic things that you do, and probably won't ever do again, we hope!

The rest of last week wasn't much to write home about, or indeed write to you about. Work came in, work got done, Pub on thursday was attended, enjoyed, and departed forthwith, and thats about it. Blog again soon!