Beaches of St. Maarten

[sopandbass]

Our family, myself, DH and DD-4, is interested in going to a beach while on St. Maarten. I'm afraid our daughter would have a hard time with a 5-hour long beach excursion through the cruise line. Does anyone have a suggestion as to which beach we could get to via taxi that would be nice for a couple of hours - something calm and shallow and easily accessible that would have umbrella rentals? Thanks for any suggestions!

 

[RebeccaLovesDisney]

We went to Galion Beach when in St. Maarten last month. Originally, we were headed to Dawn Beach, but due to the strong surf that day, our taxi driver suggested Galion Beach. It had chair and umbrella rentals, a restaurant/snack bar and restrooms and the water was protected and very calm. We found out from talking with other tourists, that Galion is also called "baby beach" since it is popular with families with young children due to the calm waters.

 

[TheWog]

DW, DS6 and I went to Great Bay beach. It is right at Front St., downtown Phillipsburg. You just take the all day water taxi (kids free) to the pier and then you can go to the right or the left and there are plenty of chairs with umbrellas to be rented. If you go left walk a little further down it seems to be a little less crowded. The water is shallow for a bit, but then drops sharply, so you would want to stay with your child. If you husband wants to rent a jet ski you can bargain that in with the price of the chairs. We got umbrellas, jet ski and water trampoline for $45.00 when we went. They also served us drinks. It was 5 minutes from the ship and you could go back to shower, change and have lunch on board.

 

[musicgirl]

We went to Dawn Beach. It was very nice. You could snorkel and it was very calm. The waves did pick up a little toward the end of our visit. I would have liked to stayed longer but we had already arranged for the taxi to pick us up.

Taxi-$42 for 3 round trip. Fresh water shower. Umbrella/chair-$10. There were a few people selling, but they left us alone when we said no. It was basically deserted.

Great Bay Beach looked wonderful. We were going to do this after lunch and shopping, but we were too tired!!!! It was also deserted.

I would probably do Great Bay if we were to go again. This would also depend on how many ships were in port. We were the only ship that day. It might be busier if there were more ships. We went in June.

Lorie