Flight +
nights stay in a
star hotel / double room, is
Note
These values represent only an estimate of costs for travels from London, bought in
2015-01-16 with departure date in
2015-05-05 and return date in 2015-05-17 . These values refer the best quality and price according to parameters of selection set by Bananatrips. Prices may have changed since date of publication and will also depend on the specific date of reservation. The success in obtaining good prices is to make reservations in advance. For specific values in other dates please REQUEST A SEARCH BEFORE MAKING YOUR RESERVATION.
Saint Barthelemy also known more commonly as St. Barts is "a little sliver of the Côte d'Azur in the Caribbean". Its people were once the poorest in the region, French families who came from Brittany and Normandy 300 years ago to eke out a living from fishing: the island has no topsoil so could never be planted.
Then in 1945 the Dutch aviator and adventurer Rémy de Haenen built a house here and invited a string of famous friends to stay: Greta Garbo, Howard Hughes, Johnny Weissmuller, Robert Mitchum. With them came money and glamour and an "alluring air of hedonism" that has never left.
Today de Haenen's house, Eden Rock, is a hotel, a "big gaudy pageant of a place" favoured by "divas and rock stars". It stands on a rocky outcrop overlooking the beach of St Jean, a "great place to watch the world’s most beautiful people promenading back and forth in the world's priciest swimsuits". Those are available in the capital, Gustavia, a tiny village "packed to the gunnels" with top-flight jewellers and designer shops - Cartier, Dior, Hermès – "as if all of the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré had been relocated to St Ives and drenched in tropical sunshine".
WHY GO
Amazing scenery and beaches
You might find a celebrity or two
ORIENTATION
Although the island is only eight miles wide, it feels much larger, so "precipitous" is the terrain. And though uncultivable, it is "teeming with life": little white butter-flies dance among the trees, emerald geckos bask on its dusty byways, and pelicans dive for fish off its wild east coast. There's no lovelier way to spend a day than touring this coast, sampling a few of its 20 or so beaches in turn. At L'Orient you can watch turtles; Toiny is renowned among surfers for its barrelling Atlantic waves; and Grande Saline, "approached down a leafy corridor", is "the most flawless bow of coral sand imaginable".
