Day 10 - St Maarten - Big ships

Today was our time in St Maarten.
We took a walk into town along the boardwalk which in itself is an experience. The amount of taxi drivers or sunbed vendors that are hawking for business was unreal, but we brushed passed them all and got to the local shops. We then got caught by a localised downpour of rain. Its the first time I've seen it go from drizzle -> rain -> tropical downpour in a couple of minutes.
Even more bizarre is how quick it is to dry up!
After the local shops were done we headed back to the cruise terminal compound for a taxi back.
We could have probably gotten one somewhere closer, but after experiences in St Vincent we decided to head for the "authorised" taxis.

We took a taxi from the south of the island where its Dutch influenced to the north which is the French side. This was nice, but with the temperature rising so did some tempers. Lunch was had, but slightly spoiled by the smokers in the resteraunt we'd picked.
Some market stalls were checked, stuff bought and we headed back to the ship. In retrospect we should have probably swung by Maho Beach and experienced a landing aircraft, but given traffic and the tight time to return to the ship we headed straight back.
The cruise terminal has a huge selection of shops - generally the same brands, but it did allow us to get some local rum to add to the stash we were collecting.
We were berthed today next to a CelebrityXCruises ship - which our ship decided to have a honk-off as we left the berth that evening. This was set off alongside a bit of Freddy Mercury - We are the Champions. This appears to be the new sail-away anthem for P&O after they decided that using Rule Britannia was insensitive.