After many years of unsuccessful attempts to visit St. Barts over Christmas, we finally hit the island in November, before the holiday season rush and associated ridiculous spikes in rates. Definitely worth it – tiny but very cool – and very European – Caribbean island.
We were able to fly direct from IAD to St. Martin, but then puddle jumped on a 12-minute flight to St. Barts and its tiny air strip.
St. Martin turns out to be the hub of Winair, with obvious connections to Anguilla (long, eel-like island at top) and St. Barts (tiny little arm-shaped island on the bottom), but also to pretty much all of the Leeward Islands and many of the Windward Islands farther to the southwest.
The tiny, tiny airstrip of St. Barts:
Our slice of the island for the next 5 days:
Definitely a better beach than Barbados (and some fine alliteration):
You’re in the Caribbean, but you always know that it’s a very French type of Caribbean:
Crepes each morning (exact same thing one of us always gets from takeaways in Paris – Nutella, banana, and coconut, but a slightly different presentation of the ingredients than when you grab one to walk around the 6th arrondissement).
A little field trip one day to the island’s capital, Gustavia:
St. Barts originally was settled by the French West India Company, but King Louis XVI became disenchanted with its output, so he traded it to Sweden for trading privileges in the Swedish trading hub of Gothenburg. Sweden sold the island back to France in the late 1800s, but not before the island’s capital had been named after the Swedish king Gustav III.
The British captured the island and held it for 20 years, as well, and there’s an old Anglican church in town, as a result:
Gustavia Lighthouse towering over town:
The dreaded Moke, a form of transportation we were warned against. So we got a regular car rental while on the island.
Another couple of field trips / lunch outings. This one at Gyp Sea’s beach club in St. Jean:
The beach at St. Jean with the iconic (and underwhelming) Eden Rock jutting out in the center (you can also see it from the return flight video at the end):
And, all the way on the other side of the tiny island, Cheval Blanc resort. We were torn over staying here versus Rosewood, where we ended up. Very cool place, but super compact. We think we made the right choice.
Our choice:
The Anse de Grand Cul de Sac lagoon outside our door was home to dozens of sea turtles due to the sea grass there.
And the turtles weren’t the only denizens of the property. To wit: the reptiles of Rosewood:
We expect to see even more tortoises when we return. . .
They’d wander by our place at totally random times:
Pretty good digs:
And Nespresso quantities in line with our consumption for a change:
A few pools:
A decent beach:
Definitely a good stay.
And we survived the puddle jump back home.
Climate change is getting weird:
Adieu, St. Barts
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