St. Barts

St. Barts is everything you’d want in the glitziest, must upscale exciting Caribbean Vaction imaginable. The fanciest resorts, the best French dining, top-notch service, St. Barts is first class all the way. It’s won all sorts of travel awards, from Conde Nast it got named one of twenty Edens left on Earth.Indeed, St Barts has done a wonderful job of preserving its natural resources. One of the reasons for this is that there was never a plantation industry on St. Barts. Therefore, hills and valleys were never ploughed over but rather left au naturel in all their tropical lush splendor. Very unspoiled terrain and no slave industry to speak of help make St Barts the paradise it is today.

Climb the island’s tallest mountain, at almost 1000 feet, and you can see neighboring St Kitts and Sint Eustatius in the distance. St Barts was once a colony of Sweden, the only colony ever posessed by this country. Today you can see evidence of this in Swedish street names but that’s about all that’s left over from the days of Swedish rule. It was back in the late 1700s, after all.

St. Barts is the most European of all the Caribbean Islands, in that the culture is very Old World. There are upscale art galleries, fine restaurants are the norm, there’s an emphasis on wine and wine culture, and European-style bakeries and bistros as well as boutiques are everywhere in Gustavia, the capital city of St. Barts.

Although Gustavia is the capital, the tourism center is actually a town called St. Jean. Fine stone architecture and red tile roofs. Restaurants feature food imported daily from France aboard small planes. Feeding the world’s celebrities and ultra rich is a demanding business after all. Before celebrity actors, musicians and fashion moguls discovered St. Barts, it was the Caribbean vacation spot of Rockefellers and Rothschilds.

Beaches may sport topless people, but nudity is a no-non on St. Barts beaches even though it’s so European. Try watersports, boating, fishing and horseback riding, or do nothing at all. St. Barts is the perfect island in the Caribbean for anything at all.

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