The St Maarten Candy Store
Bobby's Marina, Philipsburg, Sint Maarten
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Philipsburg is the capital of the dutch island Sint Maarten and a popular stop for caribbean cruise tours. If you enter the town from landside – as I did – the things you see feel like a huge theater or cinema setting. Everything is artificially prepared and well organized for the hordes of day tourists from the ships. They never walk across more than two streets into the land, so from there on the setting switches completely from paradise to literally nothing.
However, another famous spot on Sint Maarten is (the also featured here) Maho Beach and the very unusual border to France, as the northern part of the Island is french and accordingly called Saint Martin. Thanks to the Schengen Agreement there is blessedly no border control between the Netherlands and France – also not here.