I cannot say that my trip went off without a hitch. When you travel as much as I do these days, you come to expect it.
The first part was perfect. I was heading to Sao Paulo and Steve’s job was to bring two huge suitcases back to our house on Cape Cod and get one of our cars out of storage in preparation for our return from St. Barth next month.
We hired Easyway and their VIP service to come to our villa and take our luggage to the airport. They took our passports and got our boarding passes for our flight to St. Maarten, so all we needed to do was arrive 15 minutes before our departure.
Pascale Minarro from my St. Barth office was traveling to Sao Paulo with me and we chartered St. Barth Commuter to take us to St. Maarten for our transfer to Miami where we were to catch our connecting flight that evening. Easyway also met us in St. Maarten. They took charge of collecting our luggage and getting our boarding passes on American Airlines, so we did not even have to go outside to check in. We went through a small security area and were in the departure area in no time.
Then we waited for our flight to Miami but it was quite delayed due to bad weather in Miami. It finally arrived but when we left Miami customs and were going to our flight to Sao Paulo, we were told it was delayed – TWELVE HOURS! Yikes the tradeshow started the next day – we would never get there in time.
We spent the night in Miami and boarded our delayed flight the next morning expecting to arrive at 7:00 pm that evening. However, we sat in the plane for an hour and a half due to a problem with the navigation system before they told us to deplane and wait for news. They gave us a voucher for lunch…It was a $10 voucher! Have you ever been able to eat lunch at an airport for $10?
Long story short, we departed at 1:00 pm and I arrived at my hotel at 11:00 pm. Pascale arrived without her luggage so she had to spend the following morning shopping for some decent clothes to wear for the trade show. AA had mistakenly put her luggage on the night flight to Sao Paulo instead of on our delayed flight…a comedy of errors.
The show was great and worth the aggravation to get there. By the time we finished our 15 minute individual appointments, each and every travel agent we met was ready to send their clients to St Barth as well as visit the island themselves.
Pictured Villa Avenstar
Now that I am back in beautiful St. Barth, I have more villas to inspect because many owners are coming to our office and requesting that we add their villas to our inventory. As you may already know, I insist on visiting each and every property before we agree to represent them.
We also have partnerships with the hotels in St. Barth. They are included in our St. Barth Properties’ The Hotels of St. Barth collection. The BIG news is that the beautiful luxurious Guanahani Hotel & Spa has a very special promotion on their Summer Packages $1= 1 euro! That is a huge savings. Have a look at the packages here: http://stbarth.com/hotels/LeGuanahani/packages.htm. For more information, please contact: [email protected].
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