Antigua for the Holidays

 December 2024 we headed to a new island: Antigua. I chose a small resort hotel on Dickenson Bay called Siboney Beach Club.  Renowned for it's red phone booth on the beach which is a photo op for just about everyone passing by.

Siboney Beach Club is a small resort with a nicely sheltered beach area but part of a bigger bay with soft sand beaches where you can walk from end to end in about 30 minutes. There are other resorts and restaurants so when you tire of the food, you have other options in walking distance.

Antigua is definitely a place you need a car if you want to see more than wherever you are staying. Road are so-so and they drive on the left and Google maps can take you some interesting directions. Once you get the hang of it, it's fairly easy and people there are not insane. 

As we are a dive family, we of course had to find a scuba shop. There are not many outside some of the bigger resorts but we ended up using DiveCarib in Falmouth Harbour. It was almost an hour drive from our hotel but while my peeps went diving, I checked out the historic English Harbour site which was just down the road.

English Harbour has tons of history and is a cool place to visit just to see what mega-yachts are parked at the dock. It's a site from the 1700s with a naval history museum, restored buildings with shops, restaurants & bars. It's a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage site. The cool thing is when you pay to enter the park, it also gets you into Shirley Heights which has an old fort and several buildings undergoing restoration. Not to mention the absolutely fantastic view of the Harbour and other parts of the island, including a house on a promontory owned by Eric Clapton.  

The town of St. John's can be pretty hectic, especially with a cruise ship(s) in port. It's downtown area is easy to walk around but it is congested and they cater a lot to the cruise passengers. 

If your adventurous, head to the NE part of the island to Devil's Bridge National Park.  The NE side of most islands tends to be more rugged and Antigua is no exception. Beautiful place to walk along the cliff and watch the waves break over the "bridge" and along the coast.

Jolly Harbour on the west side of the island is what I'd call a work in progress. There were a number of hotels under construction on a large, long white sand beach. There were other smaller properties on one end and some larger, older resorts as well. It was mostly adults vs. Dickenson Bay which had many families. Nice beach and clam waters but there was clearly work being done to make it more upscale. 

And I can't forget Stingray City, it was the one thing I really wanted to do.  It was really cool but what I would call organized chaos. We made reservations in advance (which they couldn't find even with my confirmation) and arrived early (which was a good thing).  They check you in, send you to a waiting area and then load probably up to 200 people into boats to go out to the sandbar where the rays congregate. (AKA they show up because they know there will be food). If you have your own mask & snorkel, take them vs using what they provide. The rays are huge and very gentle but it's busy with probably 30 rays and 200 people. They do get you lined up for a photo while holding a ray (for a price) and that is kind of cool. You definitely need to know how to swim and this is not an adventure for really little people. If the tide is in, even for someone over 5' you are bouncing on your toes. 

Vacation Non-Vacation

 After a year of not traveling at all (unbelievable for our family) we needed a change in scenery. Desperately! We checked our options for some of our usual island destinations (Curacao, Aruba, Bonaire, St Croix) but couldn't make any of them work so we opted for the next best islands: The Florida Keys.

A week after the dawn of 2021 we packed our stuff and flew south. It was great to get first class seats for what we would pay for cattle class on most domestic flights. We landed in Miami, met the other family for lunch in Key Largo and caravanned south to Chardonnay House in Key Colony Beach, a man made area of canals at the northern tip of Marathon. 

This house was a very welcomed respite from the past 24/7/365 of living in our house.  We had 4 bedrooms, lots of desk space and lots of outdoor living space to essentially quarantine somewhere else. We worked and went to school the first week, in between dives and trips to the grocery store.

There were lots of walkers and bikers in the neighborhood and people were genuinely friendly.  Must have had something to do with the warmer, sunny weather?! Sunset Beach Park was at the end of the street and had nice views of the ocean. 

And then there was the diving with Captain Hook. It was more than chilly for our crew that is used to diving in warm waters (like 80+ degrees) but a good time was had by all!

At the end of our two weeks of non-vacation we all flew home with tentative plans for when we can all travel again and Covid-19 is behind us!

SXM Still in Recovery

We just spent 2 weeks on St Martin and while a lovely island it still has a long way to go with recovery after Irma in 2017.

The Dutch side fared better than the French side or maybe because the airport and cruise ship port are both on that side of the island they got it together quicker? Either way there's still a lot of work to be done on both sides.

Marigot is a sad version of what it once was. Few shops are open, the market is a portion of it's previous size but there are restaurants open and you can climb up to Fort St Louis for a lovely view of the harbor and Anguilla just across the water.

We stayed on the French side at Nettle Bay Beach Club which is about 70% rebuilt/renovated. There are few units that are completely abandoned with little hint of anything further being done. Many are beautifully rehabbed.

The beach is lovely however you do need shoes to walk around as there is still glass and debris from the storm and renovations that are all over.

It must have been cheap dock your mega-yacht week around Christmas as we counted at least 7 in our small bay and dozens more in Simpson Lagoon near the airport.  Then there were the private jets. One after another they came in past Maho Bay Beach where you can watch all the tourons get blown off their feet and blasted by sand for fun. Clearly this island is for the wealthy.

On the plus side, the food is spectacular! We had wonderful meals out and were able to get anything we wanted to cook to eat in. The prices are not hideous as compared to many other islands and are no more expensive that Paris.

We dove with Ocean Explorers and had a great experience with them. Our divers did 2 shark dives and saw all kinds of sea life!

The French side is way more laid back from the Dutch side. It is quiet for the most part and it was easy to be relaxed.  The Dutch side has the casinos, bars and clubs as well as numerous hotels and resorts. It's clearly the party side of the island.

While we had a great trip and totally relaxed and St Martin/St Maarten checked all our boxes, it will be a while before we think about returning.

Azores - go before everyone finds out!

We recently spent 12 days in The Azores or Sao Miguel to be precise. There are 9 islands and this is the one that is easiest to get to now that their government allows Delta to fly from JFK daily from May to October. It's a little over 4 hours from NYC and (currently) a reasonable airfare if you consider it is A) Europe and B) Summer.  We scored tixs for about $800/pp in AUGUST.

The Azores are a unique place. They are volcanic, have a tea plantation, grow the best pineapples you will ever eat, largely self-sufficient when it comes to food.

You can go hiking all over the island if you're that type of person.

You can go swimming in an ocean filled pool, scuba diving, sailing and whale watching (which we suck at because we never see whales) if your that type of person.

You can go to the botanical garden, historic and still active military fort/museum, or have a personal tour of the farmer's market and cooking class on what you've bought.

A really cool and unique thing to do is have dinner cooked by volcano. Furnas is the part of the island that still has volcanic activity. There is a park where restaurants take their pots in the early morning, let them cook all day and then serve dinner at their place in town. We were lucky enough to be there when they pulled one out of the ground. It's like Mother Nature's Crock Pot.

There aren't a lot of hotels so check out Airbnb for great deals. We scored a 3 bedroom flat with a view of the harbor and a parking spot in the building right on the main drag for about $239/night. We were walking distance to everything in Ponta Delgado.

Car rental was pricey but necessary if you want to see the island. Parking in town can be a challenge but is manageable. Driving is easy and as the roads that go around the island are winding so you don't go much over 30 mph. There are roads the cut across that move faster as does the highway. But take the scenic routes to really get a feel for this island. Just know that cows are really a source of traffic.

You can take 4 full days and do the highlights or a week to 10 days gets you a really in-depth view of these islands in the middle of the Atlantic.

Bonus: No regular cruise ships stop here unless they are on transatlantic from the US to Europe for the change of season. So you will not have days where the town is flooded with people!

The one thing you can't really do is shop. If you're a shopper looking for duty-free or lots of shops selling local wares, this is not the island for you, find somewhere else for that!