Brenda here:
Yes, I know, it’s been a while since we’ve posted. Holidays, traveling, catching up from traveling, what can I say? But I do want to report in on two places we discovered during our escape from the frozen north. On St. Maarten we found not one, but two gelaterias, one within walking distance of our condo! The big GELATERIA sign predictably caught our eye as we drove past, so we made a point of visiting. A sign on the side read “Where’s Ivan?” so we’re assuming that’s the actual name of the place, though we won’t swear to it. We sampled our standard chocolate as well as the raspberry ice. (Hey, it was in the eighties in St Maarten!) The raspberry was fruity and refreshing, but we can’t say the chocolate was up to European standards. Still, it beat the heck out of most store-bought ice cream, so we’re not complaining!
The other place we found was on the boardwalk (well, I guess it’s not really a BOARDwalk, but a nice, wide walkway along the beach) in Phillipsburg, also on the Dutch side of the island, but with much stronger French influence. In case you don’t know, St Martin/Maarten is only 37 square miles, but is two separate countries, French and Dutch. It’s hard to tell when you go from one to the other–no border crossings or anything like that–but they use European power outlets and take euro on the French side, while they use our American 110 outlets on the Dutch side and theoretically take the Florin, though we never saw any currency but dollars.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, ice cream! Vanille & Chocolat Ice Cream Parlor was very French and both the chocolate (dark chocolate!) and the chocolate orange were definitely up to European standards. Excellent, and a wonderful way to take a little break from the sun. Highly recommended.