It
can be a major challenge to orchestrate a Caribbean airport rendezvous for a
family of six coming from four different cities, trying to all meet in St.
Maarten airport within an hour, but I did it! Using a combination of on line
airline booking, Wimco air department, and my own wits, I orchestrated
Providence, Baltimore, Newark, and New York arrivals to land in Juliana
Airport within the same hour….and they did. We had such fun buying one more
Carib beer each time a new face showed up at Gate 9 (a Wimco tradition
perpetuated by my 18 years traveling for the company….a Carib beer to toast
in the tropical air on arrival).
I’ve been to St. Barts plenty of times, usually on business when I am either
traveling alone or with a bevy of my colleagues. When it is the bevy
business, we get one of the bigger villas so we can all stay together, and
it is very collegial and noisy and busy and fun, with marketing staff going
in one direction and reservations staff going in others with their Sibarth
pals. But this trip to St. Barts was private…down time with my own family. I
wanted to relax, to laugh, to hang around with my grown children, to
experiment in the kitchen with my two young chefs, to do nothing important
and everything privately. It was not the first trip to St. Barts for my
family, but a new son-in-law-to-be was joining us and experiencing the
island with the eyes of a newcomer.
BOR was our villa on St. Barts for this trip, and what a fantastic,
welcoming, graceful home it was. Brook Lacour had told me that this villa
was a perfect Gordon family villa…just our style…so I had chosen it this
year on her advice. I have a particularly sensitive eye for fabrics, color,
and high end upholstery…BOR with its blue/white clean, crisp look and decor
fit the bill. On arrival night we dined in the interior white dining
room….it was the first and last time we used the interior spaces. It was not
that they were unwelcoming or uncomfortable, it was just that they were
inside and our souls were outside, even in the very breezy (defined by
placemats that went flying unless anchored down by a full dinner plate)
dining gazebo. By day two we learned to anchor everything outside suitably
and to keep the flame going in the barbeque, so from then on all meals were
al fresco, avec breezes.
Continued
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