Cost of Taxie to French Side

[IrishLassie]

Does anyone have info on how to get to the French side of St. Maarten, meaning cost, where to get transportation, etc. ?:confused: We don't want to book a tour, just go over there for a few hours & to see the planes come in over the beach. :D

Thanks for any info.

[MGC]

Does anyone have info on how to get to the French side of St. Maarten, meaning cost, where to get transportation, etc. ?:confused: We don't want to book a tour, just go over there for a few hours & to see the planes come in over the beach. :D

Thanks for any info.

 

If you haven't checked out the Ports of Call section yet, you should. I'm sure you'll find answers there. For example, this thread should help.

 

The airport where the planes fly over the beach to land is Princess Juliana, which is on the Dutch side (Sint Maarten), and the beach is Maho Beach. You'd have to time your visit for when something is actually coming in to land.

[WehoAtlantis]

You can read my review for info on that in my signature. It is the Equinox review. I would post it here but that is more accurate.

 

Hope it helps.

 

Mike

[TeaBag]

We rode the local bus and enjoyed the experience. We found thepeople very friendly.

[IrishLassie]

We rode the local bus and enjoyed the experience. We found thepeople very friendly.

 

Where did you get the local bus and also for the return trip back to the ship? Also, how long did it take you to get to the Dutch side (sorry about saying "the French side", not sure what I was thinking when I wrote my original question. :eek: ).

[jerin]

Does anyone have info on how to get to the French side of St. Maarten, meaning cost, where to get transportation, etc. ?:confused: We don't want to book a tour, just go over there for a few hours & to see the planes come in over the beach. :D

Thanks for any info.

 

Taxis are between $6 and $10 per person from the end of the pier. We went into town and took the bus for $2 per person and enjoyed the experience, but we're open to being crammed into a van with a bunch of locals (there must have been 20+ of us at one point in something not much bigger than my mini-van, we were the only tourists aboard).

[zoncom]

$2US small white vans go from Back Street to French side and back every few minutes. They will let you off anywhere in between also. Taxi will be tres cher.

[Lsimon]

Look at this great link someone posted a while back - not my photo but all the taxi rates are there: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v357/gtaylor/Taxi/

[EatonDoolittle]

$2US small white vans go from Back Street to French side and back every few minutes. They will let you off anywhere in between also. Taxi will be tres cher.

 

 

I also had a great experience with the bus - very easy.

It is not far - maybe 20 minutres over (someone can correct me, if need, it's been a few years). I think I grabbed one right in front of the outdoor market.

 

However, allow much, much more time coming back, as the one road gets very crowded, traffic crawls back to Phillipsburg, particularily if there are multiple ships in port.

[eandj]

Maho Beach really isn't much of anything except for the plane landings. You need to find out about what time/schedule the BIG commercial jets land. We did am inexpensive "tour" with Bernard and he had us at the beach just at the right time. A 707 I thin it was from France. I think he said there is a plane schedule posted somewhere nearby.

But I wouldn't want to spend more than a half hour or so at that "beach". Head to Orient Beach for fun.

[Softball20]

We've been to St. Martin many times, both for land and cruise vacations. The flight schedule is posted on a board at the Sunset Bar, which is the bar at the end of the runway. Fun to visit for a few minutes, but I wouldn't spend my entire day there; the beach just isn't that great. Sunset, which is at the end of the airport, is about 20 minutes from the pier in Phillipsburg. As others have said, traffic back to Phillipsburg can get quite busy and it could easily take longer. St. Martin is a great island, but we prefer the French side to the Dutch any day. Take a cab to Orient Beach and spend the day relaxing. Orient is busy, but it's a lot of fun. There are also many restaurants there, so there are plenty of nice options for lunch. There's also a little market kind of behind the beach area. Sometimes we'll walk over and pick up some nice cheese and a baguette to have on the beach.

 

If you're not into a whole beach day, and want some shopping time, too, they did recently finish the "boardwalk" area right off the pier in Phillipsburg. You can take the water taxi over from the ship. They really did a nice job with the beach area there, and you can easily walk up and down Front Street, where the majority of the shops are.