We went to beaches as well as the capitals during all three stops. In addition to this we also toured both sides of St. Martin with public transport, a great way of meeting locals and getting a better understanding of the place. There are two sides to this one. You are really on your own if something would happen, there is no staff to take care of you, but no one knows your route or would expect you to be at a certain time at a given place, which is also good. This particular day six gigantic cruise ships visited St. Maarten including two out of the three largest passenger ships in the world. In spite of this massive tourist invasion and our extensive traveling throughout the day we didn't meet a single tourist on any of the busses. On an organized tour you are however a sitting duck If anyone would decide to attack, and that's exactly what happened that day. Some fellow cruisers became witnesses of an attack on a group of tourists from the cruise ship. The victim got severely stabbed with a large knife and then robbed right in front of his tour group.A tip for European cruisers bound for St. Maarten; apart from the fact that the French side is the more beautiful side, it could be worth making a loop around the island if you need or want to make some phone calls. You will only pay a fraction of the cost of making a call to Europe on the "Dutch" side. St. Maarten is an independent nation within kingdom of the Netherlands without being a part of the country of The Netherlands. This is the right opposite of St. Martin which is as much part of France as anything else and therefore also territory of the European Union and under such European regulations that puts limits to how expensive telecom charges between the EU members can be.

St. Maarten

Cabins (staterooms) on the Epic is is a popular topic. We took a few days to try the odd arrangement out before we formed our own opinions. Even from our cabin a mixed report came out. I thought that it was inconvenient not to have a bathroom. The stuff that you normally get out of sight by closing the bathroom door ended up in the bedroom area, which made the cabin look disorderly the whole time. The lack of a proper door on the toilet allowed noise and odors into the rest of the cabin, in the case of the toilet, and plenty of water on the floor in the case of the shower. A visit to any one of the three functions disturbs the other person much more in an Epic cabin. My wife had the opposite opinion. She loved the design and the arrangements. One thing in the cabin that I seldom care about is the TV, but the Epic has got really smart smart TV's. You get information about everything that goes on, get all kinds of practical information, keep track of your on board accounts a.s.o. on the screen. The info-leaflet Freestyle daily is great, sometimes we misplaced it, but we never had a problem with a lost TV screen. If we still wanted a paper copy we could always pick one up at the reception. The English copies were always out of stock, but there was always a copy in an alternative language like Spanish, German or French. 

You are really on your own if something would happen, there is no staff to take care of you, but no one knows your route or would expect you to be at a certain time at a given place, which is also good.A visit to any one of the three functions disturbs the other person much more in an Epic cabin.

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