St Barths, Part I

I have spent a lot of time the past few days organizing our pictures and I'm so happy to have it done so I can share them with family and friends.
We had such an incredible trip, so much to show y'all!

 First, let's talk a little bit about St. Barths!
 St Barths is an island in the French West Indies.
It is a small island (8 square miles) and thus has no major air or cruise port...meaning no mass tourism.
This, along with the French culture and food, was our main reason for choosing St. Barths for our vacation.

I'm going to recap the trip in timeline form, and then share my thoughts and recommendations at the very end.
Away we go!

Day 1: Friday 11/27/15

We flew out of Charleston the day after Thanksgiving, bright and early.
International direct flights out of CHS are unheard of, so that meant we spent the majority of our first day of vacation in airports.
We traveled from Charleston to Miami to St.Martin to St. Barths.
Whew!

At SXM, almost there!
Our flight to St. Barths was on a very small puddle jumper,
 with the most amazing views.
I am not a nervous flyer at all,
 so this was actually a really cool part of the trip for me:
Arrow points to airport runway.  Amazing!
  Once we finally arrived, we picked up our rental car, stopped by the grocery (wine/cheese/bottled water) and made our way to our cottage for the week.

We checked in around 5:00 pm so we were able to enjoy a bit of sunset and settle in to our spot.
The view from our back porch:

Visitors:

We were in bed relatively early after a full day of travel.

Day 2: Saturday 11/28/15

We were up with the sun for our first full day on the island!
Per my research,
I knew that the best bakery on the island would be our breakfast destination.
We started many mornings with ham and cheese croissants from La Petite Colombe:

After breakfast we headed into Gustavia, the "downtown" area of the island. 
We explored and did some shopping.
The majority of St. Barths shopping is luxury expensive (Louis Vuitton, Chopard, D&G) but I had done some research and found mention of this hidden gem, Saint Barth Stock Exchange, on a shopping message board.  I would never have found this place without searching for it, and I'm so glad I did.
It's a store filled with overstocks, mark-downs of local shops.  It was so much fun to browse and the owner was so sweet, humoring my attempts at French.

 

Kev found his Cubans: 

French pharmacy fun: Pretty sign:  

After wandering around for a couple hours, we decided to stop by Le Select for a cold Carib and a snack.
Le Select is in the center of town and is known for being the spot that inspired Jimmy Buffet's "Cheeseburger in Paradise".  It felt like a true Caribbean dive, which was exactly what we wanted after spending the morning strolling past mega yacht after mega yacht. 

 
After leaving town we decided to head to the beach.
There are 15 or so beaches on St Barth, all public, and K decided on Saline.
On the walk through the dunes I snapped this pic.
This message is painted all over the island.  It means "Hey you!  I love you!"

I think K's insistince upon Saline may have had something to do with it being one of the islands "top optional" beaches. 
After getting cleaned up, we made our way to Shell Beach for sunset.
We had reservations at Do Brazil, the restaurant directly on the beach there.
A glass of rosé with my feet in the sand, delicious.
Shell Beach was really neat.  The "sand" is all tiny shells and the rocky landscape made me feel like we were in Italy.

My best French impression:

That's a wrap on Days 1 and 2 of our vacation!

I absolutely love reliving it through posting,

stay tuned for more next week.