First Full Day on St. Maarten/ Where I Bought my TV/ Happy New Years!

Since I have a few hours to burn until New Years at Bikini Beach with the rents, I figure why not write a quick post. It's been a beautiful day in St. Maarten and driving has definitely been less stressful today. I think we learned all the roads last night when we were lost for 3-4 hours. For an island that's 37 sq miles, it feels huge because of the mountainous terrain.

We woke up and left for Philipsburg in the morning. The day before we asked the guy at the front desk of our hotel for the best priced TVs and he recommended a place on Front St. called Klass. Front St. is probably the best shopping area on the whole island considering it is a line of stores for a mile down. And what makes this area so interesting is that it's a strip of land straddled by the Great Salt Pond and the Great Bay. Front street is parallel and one block from the boardwalk/beach and two blocks from the
Pond.

This area is known as the jewelry district

I can't compare Klass to any other stores, but I felt we got a decent price for the tv we ended up buying.  It was $400 for my Panasonic TV with an LCD screen and 32 inches, I believe. As a off/on side note, for great deals on flatscreens, definitely buy a Vizio from BJ's or Costco. My brother ended up buying a 42 inch for $500 and the picture quality is equal to any Sony in my humble opinion. 

After the TV purchase we walked to Ace hardware and bought an HD cable (they sadly don't sell TV cables at Klass... not too classy if you ask me) and I also got a garbage can for the kitchen and a full sized mirror. We later stopped by the grocery store and went all out buying food. The total ended up being a lot higher than I was expecting, but there you go, that always happens with me and food. Generally speaking almost everything on this island is a lot more expensive than anything you would buy in the US, but you wanna know what surprisingly isn't? Booze.  The grocery store next to AUC was selling 750mL Smirnoff for $8 when that same bottle is $22 back home. And another huge plus to the island is that there are no taxes. My flatscreen was $400 flat. No tax on that. 

Happy New Years, guys!