St Barts is chiefly known for two things:
1. Its Exclusive Luxury – attracting the world's rich and famous to be pampered to the max.
2. Its Gorgeous Beaches – unbelievably attractive powdery white sand washed by warm milky turquoise waters.
Today, even though we are neither rich nor famous, we had a little glimpse into those lifestyles when two of our favourite guests kindly invited us to join them at the exclusive Nikki Beach restaurant, at St Jean Beach. It doesn't take long to understand why people are prepared to pay the high prices here – it was about as picture-perfect as possible.
All the waiters and waitresses were slim and beautiful, the DJ was playing was playing chilled out music, everything was a cool white (the linen, the upholstery, the uniforms, the sand), while the beach looked amazing. It felt like we were in a James Bond movie – you expected a beautiful Bond-Girl to emerge dripping from the sea to sit next to us.
It was stiflingly hot, but when you have a beach as perfect as this to cool off in between courses, then that's no problem. In this heat, everyone else wisely chose salads, but I foolishly ordered a hot and spicy dish that had me sweating buckets – fortunately, the rose wine helped to cool me down.
I really couldn't come up with a more perfect location for a luxury lunch – I could get used to this!