Arrived this afternoon on the "island". A bit of delay between Paris and Saint Martin, but anyway we are here with all our luggage (!), our rented Mini Cab, and our rented villa (Agave). First dinner at Andy, as usual. Just great. Again this strong feeling that we left yesterday!
Now sitting on the terrace, with a good cigar (Davidoff Grand Cru no. 2),an old rhum (Vieux Rhum Clément from Martinique), and listening to the last Marianne Faithfull ;-)
Life is good. And appreciated!
You know what? I’m just happy :-) And I would like to share that with you.
I have closed Outlook, sent my last professional emails, activated the “out-of-office” message, had the last telephone calls, and now I am on HOLIDAYS for 2.5 weeks!!
And just starting to realize that tomorrow I will be in Saint Barth with my wife and my son. I am waiting for this moment for quite a long time. Not because I have no fun or because my life is boring :-), simply because I am exhausted and I really really need to charge my batteries again! And what for a better place than Saint Barth to do that? :-)
Thanks to all, my family, my friends, my friends and colleagues from Innoveo, our partners and customers, for your good wishes and your valuable inputs that we have to benefit from this time. Totally agree! It’s the first time since years that I will not have a look at my professional emails during my holidays. Let’s see if I can manage that, I will tell you when I will be back ;-)
You can expect a *lot* of colorful pictures posted here in the coming 2.5 weeks, I’m prepared and in the “starting block” for posting!
And yes, I can tell everybody that we know how far we are super lucky to be able to go “there” again. No question or hesitation about that.
So, see you on the other side, and take care!
Saint Barth 2011 more and more approaching :-)
Really and concretely now (check-list!)…
…after some hours of travel, we will be again in Saint Barth for our next trip and holidays there :-)
For 2011, we will again rent a new villa above Lorient Bay (Camaruche). So excited to be there, I can’t wait!
Very high season in St Barth now. Actually the period almost all St Barth lovers would not be on the island, as it’s time for “show off” and “celebrities”.
Concentration of big yachts is just crazy now there, about 100 yachts (and no small ones) are present near the Gustavia harbor. And grouped outside the harbor, as the swell is very strong :-)
(From MarineTraffic.com)
Yes yes yes, in exactly two months, we will be on THE island, Saint Barth.
Just by writing that down, I’m already super happy :-)
Condé Nast Traveler has published a very interesting article about St. Barts in June 2010. A very emotional article from a journalist who *really* knows St. Barts and its specificities, its “soul”. Not the St Barth (I prefer The French term ;-) of the magazines and TV shows, the one we have also discovered the last years, and that make this destination so unique. No show off, back to the roots.
Some abstracts:
And over the years, I have discovered a parallel, private universe on St. Barts, a completely different world from the one you see splashed all over the pages of magazines. […]
I remember the local vicar, Charles Vere Nicholl, saying years ago that St. Barts was more like a village in Provence than an island in the Caribbean, and he was right. Geezers playing pétanque, pastis, baguettes, Jacques Brel on the radio, every Peter Mayle cliché, but delivered without any of the stuffy uptightness of the mainland French. Imagine the laid-back, barefoot, sixties, hippie-ish spirit, what the French call décontracté, served up with just the right amount of impeccable taste, good food, and ridiculous attention to quality—perfection, non? […]
The stain of slavery, the sense that something truly evil happened, the seething resentment of injustice, is something you can still smell on other Caribbean islands but never on St. Barts. Here, the lingering darkness of history does not exist. […]
The island remains what it has always been—a place for libertines, hippies, and people who have inherited that early pirate spirit. "Except," noted Piter, "the hippies have grown up and smoke cigars now instead of joints." […]
One of the things I love most about St. Barts is the way the language weaves and flows with the division of the island. The windward quartiers (St. Jean, L’Orient) express themselves in a kind of Creole. The leeward side (sous le vent—places like Corossol and Public) speak patois. […]
The unadulterated joy and hope of our first trip had, over the years, been tempered by pain. The hope remained, strong as ever, and now some kind of wisdom had replaced the joy, which isn’t such a bad deal after all.
I’ve just ordered a new Saint Barth (2010) poster for my office. A small one, 74x114cm ;-)
Should help to wait till February 2011 for our next stay there!
The EARL hurricane is coming over St Barth this night… Should be a category 2. Very strong swell planned with 6-7m waves, heavy rains, and a uncommon north wind up to 150-170km/h.
The Gustavia harbor is almost empty…
Take care all on the island!