SXM.

There's really no way to even begin, & a week later I really just don't have the desire to organize by date, activity or even location. So, in brief:

We stayed at La Samanna on the French side of St. Martin. Our resort was small, quiet, quaint & exactly what we had in mind. Given that June is the very beginning of the off season (& the beginning of hurricane season, yikes), our resort & the island were both relatively quiet. It was nice. We rented a little Kia that drove like a golf cart (Baby Boy did not love the Kia) but got us around just fine. You need a car on St. Martin. It's small, but not that small. We explored the entire island, & decided that we loved the French side best (the Dutch side is full of casinos, bad restaurants & people pouring in from the cruise ships - yuck). 

I brought three swimsuits, after an exhaustive search of maternity swimwear. It turns out I hate maternity swimsuits & will likely never buy one (a bikini, & two tankinis up a size - Target & JCrew provided happy + perfect finds). It only makes sense that I ended up wearing the same one almost every day, washing it every night, of course. Go ahead & judge my pregnant belly. No one wants to be wearing a tankini when it's 90 degrees & 90% humidity.

We did a lot of eating. We loved the food & the heavy French influence on the island. When we go back someday, we'll go back to the lolos that we discovered & ate at often - Talk of the Town, Chez Coco & Germain. Creole food is amazing & I ate the only ribs I've ever loved. We had a lot of seafood - Mahi Mahi & shrimp, especially - rice & beans, barbecued chicken, & johnny cakes. And fried plantains count as a fruit, right? I hope so, because they're one of my favorites. The Loterie Farm, Le Cottage & Spiga were a few of our favorite nicer places (tapas + eclectic, French & Italian - respectively). We liked Laylas Beach Bar for casual food in a really cool setting, Sarafina's in Marigot for crepes + macaroons (I made crepes with nutella & bananas for dessert with friends last night because I was having withdrawals) & our hotel had a lovely breakfast on the patio every morning. We ate a ridiculous amount of pain au chocolat & a lot of fresh fruit. The afternoon offering of ice cream or chilled fruit kebabs on the beach was always appreciated. Not appreciated: Having a doctors appointment with a very accurate scale the day I got back. 

We both read a lot, which was especially nice because I've apparently had ADD for the past 6 months & haven't gotten through anything longer than an article in The Economist. I read The Help (blah), The Tender Bar (interesting), How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization (gives The World Cup some new meaning) & Catcher in the Rye - a book I somehow missed in my public school education. Much of our daily routine involved reading, swimming, eating, napping, reading some more, & then moving chairs down by the water & reading with the water lapping against our toes until the sun went down. 

It was nice. 

We got to know the island well. No maps (almost)! We spent a day traveling around the island & stopped by many of the beaches & sites that we were supposed to see. It turns out that our favorite spot was the beach at our resort on Baie Longue - perfect water, perfect sand, & never more than 6 people. But the explorations were still fun. We visited our first nude beach (somewhat hard to avoid, it turns out), drove to Pic Paradis, visited Orient Beach, walked through the market & port in Marigot, explored all of the food options in Grand Case, hiked to Happy Bay (our favorite non-resort spot on the island, by far) via Friar's Bay, drove through Philipsburg (& determined to avoid going back at all costs), took a really small boat to the island of Ilet Pinel & went snorkeling for the morning, coming across a lot of other New Yorkers along the way.

We loved our babymoon. Every minute of it (even when the two! cockroaches ran across our table at dinner one night - It is the Caribbean!! laughed our French waiter in his thick & exaggerated Parisian accent). Loved where we went, & loved that we got to go with just the two of us. We came back rested, happy & so excited for the next few months.

Photos! Sorry if these make your computer scream at you.