Saint Barthélemy (St. Bartholomew, or St. Barts) and p.s. I found a lighthouse.

Where the rich and famous (and very briefly I) come to vacation.

I feel like instead of writing an island specific history I could have just written a generic template for the islands we’ve visited and just cut and pasted it, editing for minor differences. While there are some differences between their histories, they pretty much follow the same pattern. Columbus first sighted; France, England, Spain, Netherlands or Denmark settled; they were fought over for years; one country won out by war or attrition; slavery was abolished; the island becomes independent or a territory of the country who won.

Let’s try it with St. Barts. Columbus sighted it in 1493 and named it Saint Bartholomew after his brother; in 1648 the French started settling; the British attacked, traded to Sweden (who named Gustavia after their king); slavery was abolished in 1847 during Swedish rule; Sweden sold back to France in 1878; in 1946 the residents became French citizens with no rights. Simple. Of course there is much more, but you get the idea.

Tourism started to grow on this tiny island (9.2 sq miles) in the 60s and 70s spurred on by the building of a landing strip. That landing strip is extremely short and only mid-sized planes are able to land on it, and even then it’s considered one of the top 3 most dangerous airports. The planes need to clear a mountain (well hill) and then make a deep dive to hit the strip to give themselves time to land before dropping into the ocean at the end of the strip.

The water colour around St Barts is a unique shade of blue, that seems different than other islands. It is a volcanic island with reefs almost all around the island, which is perhaps the reason for the colour. The French speaking island of approximately 10,000 residents is covered in high end retail, designer shops, boutique hotels (the largest has only 58 rooms), pricey restaurants, and beach clubs. There are strict regulations about not allowing fast food outlets on to the island so you won’t find a Big Mac to save your soul.

The perfectly sheltered harbour is dotted with the usual sail boats, and yachts, but also super yachts. One shore dingy we saw on our walk today was at least 25 ft long. That was just the shore dingy. Imagine how big the yacht is. One boat we saw in the harbour struck our interest and it appears to be quite the spectacular charter super yacht – world famous according to their website. You can check it out at yachtloon.com – quite the website. (Thanks to Phyl’s sleuthing and locating it for me).

Perhaps because of the challenge in getting to it, St Barts has become a haven for actors, singers, writers and other people who can afford their outrageous prices. Some of the names that are tossed about as those that have vacationed or lived here are: Beyoncé & Jay-Z (St Barts is well known for it’s NYE celebrations and Beyonce performed at one recently), the Kardashians, Mike Tyson, Gwen Stefani, a couple of Victoria’s Secret supermodels, Greta Garbo, Howard Hughes, Nicole Richie and Jeff Bezos.

Oh yes, and to my template I should add which Hurricane played havoc on this particular island. In the case of St Barts, most of it was destroyed by Irma in 2017 however, the local residents used their private money to rebuild infrastructure and rebuilding happened more quickly here than most of the other affected islands.

I got ahead of myself a little, so let me start again. We arrived into the capital of Gustavia this morning at about 8 am under very grey skies and pretty wild waves. I didn’t have an excursion planned for today, so I was able to have a bit of a lazy morning, and enjoyed my 3rd cup of tea before attacking the day.

Under blue and sunny skies, one of my fellow passengers and I headed for the tender to do some exploring on the island and discovered a longer than usual line. We discovered the reason when we got close to the front of the line. The swell and waves were making each passenger boarding difficult because the tender was pitching about. Eventually we were all aboard and off we went.

You could tell immediately upon disembarking the tender that this island was upscale. The ferry facilities, the street lights, the board walk, etc were all very nicely done. Our Destination Manager had told us about a lighthouse we could walk to and how to get to an interesting beach so off we went.

After just a short walk past stores like Cartier, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabanna, and Hermes we found the pathway to the lighthouse and also found a lovely botanical garden all around it. There were many species of trees and bushes that were identified by signs all along the pathway. One of the trees that was familiar to me from other trips was the Plumeria or Frangipani tree from which the flowers grow that they make into leis in Hawaii. And the view of the harbour from the base of the still active, 30 foot lighthouse built in 1961 was spectacular.

Back down the hill we wondered along the streets, dodging traffic, trying to stay in the shade and making our way in the direction of our second destination. In no time we’d found the famous Shell Beach. Before exploring the beach we stopped in a shaded area for a lovely refreshing drink at the Shellona Restaurant. The prices were pretty outrageous (12 euros for an iced tea), but the view couldn’t be beat and it was a hot and humid day – not complaining!

We found our way back to the tender dock, mostly along the harbour and after putting in 5.3 km worth of steps we came back to the ship for lunch at the Star Grill on the outdoor upper deck of the ship. The afternoon has been spent napping, reading and writing this blog. Tonight is the “famous” deck BBQ where the sun decks are transformed into a huge outdoor restaurant, with buffet style food service. Afterward, is line dancing with the staff. I’m pretty sure the staff enjoy it as much or more than the passengers.

Tomorrow is going to be something totally different than anything I’ve seen so far on this trip. My blog won’t be focused on long ago history or pretty beaches, but rather an event that took place 18 July 1995. Tune in tomorrow!