Phillipsburg, Sint. Maarten,Tuesday

D J and Grandma snuck out of the cabin and went to breakfast in the Villa Borghese dining room and left the sleepyheads behind. Grandpa caught up with us as we had Eggs Benedict and visited with John and Julie from England. Britt was a little under the weather with travelers discomfort, but Grandma fixed her up with yoghurt and dry Rice Krispies and convinced her to eat a tablespoonful of black tea leaves dry…followed with water to keep it down. It is a cure Grandma learned in Turkey, and it did the trick. (Horribly, Britt said.) Grandpa and D J were off on their own adventure watching the approach to St. Maarten, passed the remains of the Fort, and the second fort, and watched the docking and the way the crew was able to back this 94,000 ton ship into a spot makes one wonder why a person can’t parallel park a car. Meanwhile, Britt and Grandma snoozed like ladies of leisure. The kids got to try Baba Ganoush and pita chips. Brit and Peg split a cheeseburger with fried onions made just for us. D J had a tuna sandwich and Grandpa loved the fish and chips. Soon the boys were off to sail on the Canadian Racing Yacht KC2, an Americas Cup yacht, against the Stars and Stripes, the American Racing Yacht. I understand their yacht won, because Grandpa was the timekeeper, and DJ was back up wincher. They thought he was on steroids he did such a good job. They threatened to test him! No one got any sun today, either, and my nose is growing again…Grandpa’s head looks like a shiny beet after the aloe was applied (Thank you, Colleen!) Brittany and Grandma hit the shopping strip and got our diamond bracelet charms at Diamonds Internationals. After we wore out our wallets we went to the beach and Brittany found a million seaweeds, a nice tan, and more shells. Then Grandma and Brittany went looking for a taxi. We found Iva who took us to Orient Beach so Brittany could see nude men, opps! The idea was to see the beautiful beaches on the French side, but she got to see some other beauties. As we pulled up to the beach in the taxi to let Britt dip her toes in the water, Britt turned to Grandma and said, “There are nude men here Grandma!” Sure enough, in all his glory, there was a very tanned gentleman walking the beach. Iva said, “oh, they aren’t supposed to come down here that far.” Then we saw the second man. They didn’t have any tan lines, and Britt saw a woman with her Bikini top off. Ewwwww! I missed that one. He was definitely tan all over, with no Coppertone lines like Brittany had by the end of the day. We road back to the ship and met up with the boys at the Duty Free store. For dinner they tried frog legs. Britt had Bolognese sauce on pasta and Pasquali fetched chocolate milk for her…and smacked Dj when he drank one of her three cartons of milk. I think he is taken with her. She came back and Gameboy-ed as she was still not up to a seven course meal and was feeling guilty after slamming Grandpa in Golf yesterday, coming from behind. As Grandpa was about to taste his fruit soup, it was swiped from out of in front of him by Pasquali…who then supplied a fantastic dish of pasta because he thought the soup was not that good. You should have seen the look on Grandpa’s face! For dinner we had lamb! It was fantastic. D J really liked it. For dessert they had white chocolate mousse. D J loved the little red champagne type grapes. They are much sweeter than the green grapes here. All the produce on St. Maarten is shipped in from the Dominican Republic. After dinner, Grandma finally got the computer to post the pictures. It has been very slow. To put it mildly. I think I may not send any more pictures until the airport. When Grandma was doing this, Grandpa tried to regain his honor from the trouncing he got from Britt yesterday. They said it really wasn’t a trouncing, it was a sneak attack. Today was a trouncing by D J. Last night Grandma had a reaction to the fermentation of the Pasta Fazolli and as we were trying to go to sleep, the gas attack caused us all so many giggles that we were afraid we would wake the neighbors. Britt supplied her own hot air contribution. In fact, Grandpa had the Pasta Fazolli, too. Poor innocent D J. The worst was when Britt asked Grandma if she could use her breathing machine. I told her it only trapped the gas and we giggled some more. As Grandma Gawne would say, we always get around to it! Antigua, St. Johns, tomorrow!