Yesterday we called at St. Martin, well actually St. Maartin on the formerly Dutch side. (They got their independence last year.) St. Martin is the much more prosperous French side of this "smallest land mass in the world shared by two countries." The formerly Dutch side has a huge deep water cruise port, however, that allowed for the 6 ships to dock yesterday which disgorged over 20,000 blue haired, overweight, nacho eating, drunk or very elderly folks. The tide of humanity on the two long docks--0.42 miles from our gangway to the tour bus parking lot--went onshore for four hours and reversed for the after lunch period until about 5 pm. The entire island is absolutely corrupted by the cruise ships, now mostly very poor towns on the formerly Dutch side and continuous shopping centers on the French side. It took 4 hours to circumnavigate the island in bumper to bumper traffic. I was looking forward to visiting St. Maartin/St. Martin but in my (now) 131 countries visited, this is the only one I would not want to return to.
Above is my iPhone picture of the most none alluring Allure of the Seas but a lovely picture of it and an "only" 3500 passenger Celebrity ship sailing into the sunset. Seeing them leave was very pretty. By the way, the Allure has two 10 story climbing walls and apparently its own lighthouse. That I don't understand. Our top deck, by the way, was a number of decks below the lowest passenger area on Allure. That part was good.
Still having a fantastic time and enjoying Silver Cloud all the more. She's a fine ship, she is, she is.
Mike
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