When I was growing up, there was a novelty T-shirt you used to see everywhere: My parents went to [insert destination] and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. I had my own version of it: it was from La Samanna, a hotel on the French side of the Caribbean island of St. Martin, with the hotel’s name inscribed inside a large fish logo. My mother had gone there without me. The T-shirt had cycled in and out of rotation over the years, but I’ve kept it until now, because the cotton is of the soft, kleenex-y vintage they don’t make anymore, and because there was something about it that kept me tied to my fantasy about this hotel.
In the 1980s, my mother was single, working in advertising and raising me largely on her own. We didn’t travel much together. But she had boyfriends who took her places: Florence, sailing around the Virgin Islands… and La Samanna, which sounded incredibly glamorous to me. I imagined a whole world of grown-up indulgences—daiquiris, dining by the sea, SPF 2 suntan oil—that my mother inhabited.
Decades later, I’m the mother who travels all the time, and my daughter, Nell, now 20, has occasionally made it clear that she’d like to come along, especially when tanning is on offer. My own mother, meanwhile, is 82—still an ambitious traveler who prefers museums and cultural deep-dives to lying by a pool, but she’s slowing down; and although she’d never spend money on a beach vacation for herself, she’s always eager for time together. The three of us see one another occasionally, but usually in the swirl of family dinners and holidays, with the distraction of other people and something that always needs doing.
So when the opportunity arose to stay at La Samanna, now a Belmond hotel, in one of its recently renovated private pool villas, I jumped at the chance to take my mother back. And then I thought: I should bring Nell, too. It seemed like the perfect way to give them the chance to get to know each other better. I also wondered what it would be like for the three of us to spend a few days in each other’s company. (Nell’s impatience over her grandmother’s repeated misplacement of her glasses and passport in the airport didn’t augur well.)
La Samanna had been one of the Caribbean’s great glamour spots for years after its opening in 1973, drawing celebrities and an international jet-set to Baie Longue Beach, a spectacular swooping stretch of golden sand. Its name, fittingly, was created from a mashup of its American founder’s three daughters: Samantha, Anouk, and Nathalie. The hotel lured returning families throughout the years, although it lost its edge to other five-star players—including Cap Juluca on nearby Anguilla (now also a Belmond hotel)—and remained a kind of time capsule, until in 2019 Belmond brought it back with a top-to-toe scrub-up. I was eager to see whether the place I’d so often imagined all those years ago could possibly live up to its mythology.
La Samanna has an unmistakably French-Rivera, old-school elegance, with bougainvillea tumbling over the walls, terracotta floors, rattan chairs and candy-striped umbrellas. Nothing about it feels try-hard or fancy, which is part of its effortless charm. The GM is Italian and most of the staff are French and Caribbean, so there’s a genuine warmth to the service that keeps the usual formalities of an arrival ritual from feeling stiff.
We walked through the lobby and out onto a terrace with a small pool and a gobsmacking technicolor tableau: to the left, a rocky headland above a blue cove; to the right, a long, sweeping beach lined with cheerful umbrellas. My mother said this part, at least, was just like she remembered it. The rest of her memories were hazier. She recalled a very good party with a great deal of champagne and the man who’d brought her, though apparently, it hadn’t amounted to much of a relationship. I began to suspect that La Samanna had occupied a larger place in my imagination than it had in hers.
Our villa, “Sucrier,” was enormous, with an open living room adjoining a proper kitchen. Upstairs were three airy bedrooms, done in cheerful tropical blues and pinks with rattan headboards and ceiling fans, and hung with works by local painter Roland Richardson. Down by our private pool, someone had thoughtfully left us a tray of mezze and champagne. None of us has the DNA or discipline to resist free champagne, so we indulged ourselves immediately. The villa had the relaxed feeling of a home, with enough room for us to be together when we wanted to, and to retreat to our rooms when we didn’t, which seemed like a very good arrangement.
By late afternoon, still a bit buzzed, we settled into our natural positions: my mother reading, me working, Nell on her phone. The pool was perfectly situated to watch the sun sink over the cliff. Then Nell shrieked. A green iguana roughly the size of a dachshund moseyed by her daybed. Within minutes we’d counted nine of them, who all wandered off towards the cliff edge and the waning rays of light, with Nell standing on her bed looking terrified and mom and I cracking up. It was a promising start.
That first night we had dinner at L’Oursin, the hotel’s French restaurant, where we drank a bottle of chablis from its 15,000-bottle-deep wine cellar. As soon as we sat down, Nell launched into a series of questions, like that game where you use a deck of conversation-starter cards (was she worried we wouldn’t have enough to talk about?). “What’s something you’ve never told your mother?” “Who was your first kiss?” etc.
My mother, who turned 16 in 1960, explained that she’d had to hide practically everything—being seen to do anything with a boy that wasn’t “proper” or could be misinterpreted as intimate could damage your reputation. Nell copped to an elaborate ruse about a sleepover that was actually a blowout party (which I already knew—mother’s instinct). We talked about dating, about feminism (second-wave and all the waves!), about what had changed for women and what, depressingly, hadn’t. I realized that when I was Nell’s age, I’d told my mother everything. Somewhere along the way, we’d lost that transparency. Maybe that’s just part of growing older: you begin to protect parts of your life from each other, and it bummed me out to imagine that could happen to me and Nell.
In the mornings, we were up early in our PJs in the kitchen, playing with the De’Longhi coffeemaker, which ground fresh beans and pumped out excellent cappuccinos. On the first day, a breakfast feast arrived at the villa, which we ate on our terrace; on the next, we filled our plates with French pastries and sweet fruit at Corail, which overlooks the hotel’s Slim Aarons-esque pool. We all got very into the Elixir Juice Bar, with its make-your-own detox drinks and immunity boosters.
And then there was the beach. From above, it looked marshmallow-soft and down by the water’s edge… same. Walking along the shore, I noticed that my daughter and mother’s square-toed feet were identical, while I got my father’s narrow foot and high arches—a reminder of what we quietly carry of each other. When people—staff, fellow guests—found out we were mother-daughter-daughter traveling together, they stepped back to study our faces, connecting the dots between shared eyes, cheekbones, and hair. They also invariably observed that my mother could be my sister—the chuffing she got from this was worth more than the tiny tweak to my ego. And, truthfully, she does look freakishly young. One afternoon, I booked her a massage at the spa, set in a little garden with hummingbirds and a waterfall. This was exactly the sort of thing she’d never spend money on. When she came out, her skin was so luminous that she appeared quite like herself circa when she first came to La Samanna more than 45 years earlier.
I spent some time alone with Nell—we took out stand-up paddleboards and vainly attempted to push past the waves to calmer water—while my mother and I signed up for a Crystal Sound Bath. Our practitioner, Suzy, arranged an array of instruments around her, and we lay down on mats and towels. If you’ve never done a sound bath, it’s a surprisingly psychedelic experience—the range of gentle sounds sends your mind hurtling off in all directions. There was the sonorous hum of the bowls, the tinkling of chimes, a drum filled with little metal pellets that sounded uncannily like the ocean. With eyes closed, I found myself traveling backward, picturing my mother at various ages. At some point I became aware of her breathing beside me—she’d fallen asleep—and I recognized with unexpected poignancy the gentle puffs of air she makes when she sleeps.
That evening, white I was still resonating from our sound bath, Nell and I met for a drink at the bar while my mother took a nap. Watching the sun go down, Nell told me how glad she was that we’d taken this trip together. Later, at dinner at La Spiaggia, the hotel’s Italian beach restaurant, we shared seafood risotto and grilled snapper and talked unguardedly about everything, needing no prompts. At some point, a discussion about one relative turned into a minor argument, with Nell and my mother firmly taking the same side against me. I might ordinarily have felt ganged up on, but I didn’t mind. I’d brought them here hoping they’d get to know each other better, and now they’d developed their own little alliance.
After dinner, Nell took my mother’s arm and walked her slowly up the hill toward our villa in the dark, me following behind, watching them make their way together. The hotel did hold up to my long-held fantasies about it, but in quite a different way than I would ever have expected.
La Samanna, a Belmond Hotel – The Details
In short… A grande dame of a hotel that feels both elegantly French and very relaxed in its skin—with a youthful tropical palette and an absolutely stunning cliffside view of the best beach in the Caribbean.
The surroundings… The island of St. Martin is split between the Dutch and French-administered sides. The road on the way up to the hotel from the airport on the Dutch side is built up and commercial, but as soon as you cross over to the French side on the north part of the island, there’s much more natural beauty. Arriving at the hotel’s modest entrance, you have no idea of the reveal behind the doors: that incredible view of Baie Longue, encompassing steep cliffs to the left and a swooping, umbrella-dotted golden beach to the right, and the opaline sea before you, usually with an anchored sailboat or yacht.
The backstory… American businessman James Frankel acquired 55 acres of pristine beachfront property in the early ’70 to build a family home, then converted it to a hotel named for his three daughters: Samantha, Anouk and Nathalie. Belmond took over in 1996 and gave it a big zhuzh in 2019, with the private pool villas following in 2024. They’re currently investing $6m in a glow-up for all the rooms.
The vibe… French Riviera old-school elegance, but warm and unpretentious—the GM is Italian and so many of the staff are French or islanders who set a genuinely friendly tone. Concentrated in a big white building, the hotel’s infrastructure feels like a throwback in places, but the décor is fresh and warm in splashes of pinks and blues, stripes and botanicals. Because of the hotel’s location on a promontory overlooking the beach, anywhere you go in is either up or down, so be prepared for a lot of walking narrow paths to arrive at various tucked away sites: the pool with its striped umbrellas, the gym and tennis courts up the hill.
The rooms/villas… All 76 rooms and suites—and 8 cliffside private pool villas—have ocean views. Our 2-story pool villa called Sucrier was just a couple minutes’ walk up the hill, and had three airy bedrooms (one downstairs, well-suited to my 82-year-old mom, and two up) designed by by Rottet Studio in cheerful tropical colors with rattan headboards and hung with original paintings by local painter Roland Richardson, whose work is scattered around the whole property. The kitchen was huge and fully equipped (a chef can be called in to prepare meals and any food can be delivered and set up in the indoor or outdoor dining areas), and the fridge came stocked with juice, soda and wine. For early risers, the De’Longhi coffeemaker is a gift, and there’s also a range of loose-leaf teas, from rooibos to green sencha.
The food & drink… Generous buffet breakfasts are laid out at Corail, overlooking the pool, with the aforementioned Elixir Juice Bar, with make-your-own detox drinks and homemade coconut milk. Beachgoers can shuffle a few steps up from the water to Laplaj for salads and light entrées—and a strong mojito—which in the evenings transforms into La Spiaggia, an Italian trattoria, where we had excellent seafood risotto and snapper. The food at L’Oursin really shone, between chef Michel Ravin’s flavorful fish soup, a remarkably good duck breast, and oyster mushrooms prepared with pumpkin. The hotel also has a 15,000-bottle-deep wine cellar, Le Cave, which you can also book for a private dinner.
The wellness… The La Samanna Spa up the hill is small and lush, incorporating locally made skincare products into treatments. The Fitness Center is well-equipped with the gamut of cardio machines and weights, plus daily free classes from yoga to mat Pilates and HIIT; a pro trainer is on hand to give you pointers, so you often get a private session by default. The spa offers alternative therapies both there and in-room, and we loved our sound healing session with Suzy Scholz of yogalovalova.com, an extremely skilled guide. Sportier guests will want to head down to the surf shack on the beach, where you can take out kayaks, SUPs and snorkeling equipment, and book SCUBA outings. And there are three tennis courts with stadium lighting for play after dark, with pro lessons available.
Is it family friendly? It seems so, with a wide and relatively calm beach and huge pool, and while there is no kids’ club, babysitting is available. I would be a little wary to come with a toddler, as their stubborn independence on the winding and occasionally steep paths could make for some anxious moments.
Be sure to… Our stay was too short to tour St. Martin, but there’s a Hertz rental desk at the hotel, making it super convenient to take a car around to the other sides of the island, exploring this unique melding of French, Dutch, and Caribbean cultures.
Parting words… It can be hard to find an elevated Caribbean option via a single flight from the States, but there are lots of nonstops to St. Martin from the East Coast, and La Samanna is a great option with a perfect beach, tons of water sports/activities, warm French and island character, and great food.
Date of stay… June 3-5, 2026
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