Saturday night... fever (sorry - I tried to resist)

Hunger brings us back on the ship. Well, one of us is hungry anyway. I enjoy today, more than ever, the appetizing display of fruits. Then I go back to sleep. I sleep through the farewell pool concert with the New Birth Brass Band, through the autograph session with Poncho Sanchez, the wine hour featuring Roberta Gambarini's latest CD....

The concert tonight is the Marcus Miller band again. I think I'll skip it this time. Loved it the first time, but I'll save my last Denoral for dinner. I want to go and chat up the neighbors again, try and make a better impression than last night maybe. But I'm still nauseated and not hungry (between the healthy snacks and the flu, I'll end up being the only person who has lost weight on the cruise!!!). We do have a lovely dinner again. I learn that the brother from New Orleans is named Dean Ellis. He is a DJ on the local jazz radio station and works at Emeril's restaurant Nola. Cool. I'll make sure to call upon him if I ever get back to NO. I'm putting a link to his show's podcasts on the blog. Go check it out!

Again, I wish I could hang out more, but... oh, does that pillow feel good.

Saturday, Bahamas

When the sun rises, we are in the Bahamas.

Our stop of the day is Half-Moon Cay, which you won't find in any guide book. It turns out to be an island owned by the cruise company.

The global view is stunning.

Up close, it's very Disney. With a back channel built so that the boats used to disembark us are not visible from the idyllic, interminable white sand beach. There is a fake village square, and a small wooden church. All white. By the time we get there, all but the Tshirt store are closed. Even the little post-office is closed. I understand that it's Saturday, and that any decent post-office is going to be closed. But, once again, the island belongs to the cruise company. It lives for the ship. There is nothing here, other than housing for the 40 something crew who stay on at all times. Incomprehensible.

Right in front of us, zooming by, is... Roy Hargrove.

He is stylish with the ship's signature blue towel around his neck. But he's quite rude - he does take a picture when asked, but without a word, and dashes away as fast as possible. Diva attitude here again, as he did last night during Gambarini's set. The dude ain't no Dianne Reeves.

The beach is unbelievable. The sand is blindingly white, and of a texture I have never felt. It is so soft that it almost feels like foam. It's an amazing sensation.

The water is a bit cold to be really comfortable, but we are happy to lounge in one of the gazillion chairs spread out all along the beach. You're not bothered by the neighbors, either.

Friday night, one more show

I really want to go see Roberta Gambarini, who sings tonight in one of the small lounges. I was moved by her one song during the Roy Hargrove show, and I want to hear more. So I drag myself there. The seats are not as comfortable as in the big concert room, but we are very close to the stage. She is truly fabulous. A smoky, sensuous voice. And suddenly, who show up - Roy Hargrove. Reciprocating. Does one number. Then disappears. Then he reappears, clearly unwelcome, and does silly trumpet sounds during one of her songs. She keeps it playful, but is clearly irritated. Then he disappears again. And doesn't reappear when he was supposed to... Not sure what's going on between those two, but it seems a bit contentious.
Mrs Moody, the wife of James Moody is in the audience. Roberta salutes her. And asks whether Moody is here to. The answer: "no, he's practicing". Not rehearsing for an upcoming show with someone else, mind you. Practicing. At 84, he still spends his evenings practicing...
Great night altogether. But my pillow feels very very good.

Friday night - Herbie and cute dress

Tonight is the special concert with Herbie Hancock. Can't miss that. So I time my next Denoral so that it will start working at 6:30!
It is also formal dress night. I wear a long, satin blue dress with bejeweled straps. It fits quite well; I work on the hair and make up (naturally flushed cheeks...). In the end, I look good (sorry, no pictures - don't blame me), but, boy, do I feel lousy. Dad is quite strapping in his suit.

This turns out to actually be a bit of a disappointing concert. Herbie is not all there. He could actually very well not have been there for part of the set - he plays recorded sounds, which suggests that the rest could also very well be.
However, he does a phenomenal duo with the young Swiss harmonicist of the Marcus Miller band, Grégoire Maret. Plays something on the keyboard, the kid repeats on the harmonica. Makes it harder and harder, longer and longer. And the harmonicist just keeps repeating. The audience are on their feet. That kid is a genius! It's his big day.

After the show, we go to dinner. This time, Ronald has reserved our little table. The menu is somptuous. Unfortunately, I send back most of it untouched; which worries Ronald, not about me - (I haven't said anything about being sick. Who knows, maybe they'd put me in quarantine at the bottom of the ship. I just try not to come to close to anyone.) but about the quality of the food. I keep reassuring him that it's delicious. I even refuse the lemon drop that the sommeliere automatically orders for me - yeah, I'm known around here! Our neighbors are back too. We spend a lovely evening discussing with the father and the two sons. We learn that their dad spent quite a bit of time in France as a GI; specifically on the west coast. He knows Royan and La Rochelle. The conversation changed topic before I got a chance to ask whether he knew Chatelaillon!!! I still don't know their names, but they are totally charming. It turns out one of the brothers (the one from Miami - the other lives in New Orleans) saw dad (and Marcus Miller) at the gym earlier today. So now I have to believe it.

I'm all dressed up, and can't go anywhere. I wish I could go dancing now. Stupid virus.

Friday at sea - flu

I'm sick... Muscle ache. Fever. Let's see, where were we 48 hours ago? St Barth?
Good thing it's a day at sea. Bad thing, I forgot to bring even Excedrin. Me, the migraine girl, travelling without my Excedrin... And I'm not going back into the bowels of the ship to see the physician. Let's see what dad has in his massive pharmacy. 4 tablets of Denoral. Oy. Let's try one. Takes a good hour and a half to do something and it lasts for, what 3 hours... Sleep. Watch TV. Fabulous caper movie with Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith, Karl Malden, Bob Newhart. I don't see the first few minutes, so I don't know the title. Will have to look it up when home. Sleep.
Dad goes and work out at the gym. Marcus Miller is pumping iron next to him!
Sleep. I manage to get dad to bring me a cup of tea in the afternoon.
I manage to get myself up for a bit and go rest in the fabulous spa. I particularly love the tiled, HEATED, lounge chairs. Although, I don't really need the heated part today. There is usually no one there. So peaceful. So romantic too.

Waiting for us in the room...

Almost every night, at bed turning, they brought us a fresh pair of towels, folded creatively. There was also an elephant. But the hanged monkey is a bit creepy. The eyes of the doggie are chocolate. I piled those up to bring back to Arthur.

Roy Hargrove

Tonight's concert is trumpetist Roy Hargrove, featuring singer Roberta Gambarini. Dad heard her earlier in one of the late night spots, and was wowed. In fact she comes in for only one song and never shows up again. It is very strange. It would have been better with her. He's good but not unforgettable. We stay hungry. I am starting to feel a bit sick too. Bed. We sail away for another 48 hours at sea.

The world famous post office of Nevis

There is one shop tourists enter: the philatelic office. This is the one specialty of Nevis. The big seller these days is the Obama spread, which flies off the shelves.

Well, that's pushing it. The pace has nothing to do with flying and there are no shelves, just an ocean of wooden boxes behind a little counter. Million of stamps. Two clerks. Amazingly, they find whatever you want very quickly and they do take AmEx. Nothing electronic, mind you. I'll keep the beautiful receipt. I get a dinosaur set for Arthur, one of Marilyn of course, and one of Alexander Hamilton [Note for the Frenchies - c'était le premier ministre des affaires étrangères des US. Un beau gosse, qui aurait sûrement fini président s'il ne s'était pas fait tuer en duel par Aaron Burr, le troisième vice-président.]. He was born in Nevis, and left at 17 to attend... Columbia University (I'm sure Leon and Paul knew this). We missed his house. Well, in fact the house was destroyed in a 19th century earthquake. So we missed the reproduction of his house, rebuilt in a different location...

As there is really not much else we can do here, and hunger pains are coming, we go back to the ship. Obviously, most of the other 1798 tourists had the same idea. There is a loooong line waiting for the tenders, manhandled by the local port authority - as efficient as everything else. The line snakes around and around, with little shade. People are getting cranky. This is the first fault in the perfect organization of the cruise, likely not by their fault. We enter the enclosure where everyone is parked toward the front of the line, and we make our way - up current - towards the end of the line. When we get there, there is no space to extend the line within the enclosure. The only option is to spread out on the street. The port authorities don't want that, so they order us to go start a new line. We were thinking that we'd be in a different location, but that we'd go after everyone. But, in fact, they order us to start a new line, just next to the other one. The poor, red-faced, sweaty people who've been in line for an hour become even more red-faced and start hurling insults at us. Trying to explain that we're just following the orders of the uniformed people doesn't really help. We are going to be lynched. But we are not particularly unhappy to not have to wait another hour before having lunch. After a few minutes, they order a first group to move forward. To calm the crowds, we let a few people go ahead of us. We are part of the second group. They push us into a circular gazebo, and we wait again. As there is only one entrance to the gazebo, the people who were first in line are now stuck at the back of the gazebo... It would make sense that they would gather the number of people that fits in a boat. But that would be too organized. So, we don't get into the first boat. It's a zoo, a stampede. But we learn from our experience and we maneuver to be close to the exit. We end up being just next to Romero LuBambo, Diane Reeves' Brazilian guitar player. He's a brilliant guitarist. But a very normal man in his fifties, with a real wife (not a surgeried barely legal babe), and a bunch of children. No diva attitude here either. They are taking their being trapped in the gazebo in stride.

Thursday morning, Charleston, Nevis, British Commonwealth

After one final stretch of kayaking, we get to a shipyard. Very Caribbean, too. One guy is hammering away at his colorful boat. He doesn't seem particularly pleased when I take a picture of him.

A conch and lobster fishing boat comes back from an outing at sea. Half a dozen beautiful guys jump ashore. With very little loot for such a large group. They are rather disorganized. Life is hard here, but certainly at a different pace. I feel like I'm in a postcard.

I get to take the prototypical Caribbean picture of the well worn barca against the backdrop of impeccable blue sea.

We have plenty of time to contemplate this, as our taxis are of course not here. A manager paces, punches his cell phone, and curses about unreliable cab drivers. The group of Americans, used to managers taking responsibility, roll their eyes. One taxi arrives but it's not the same one as before. So our stuff is not in there. You know, the dry pants, clean towels, etc... They suggest we go to town in this one, then find the other one there. I'm not going to change on the street in town, and no one wants to risk having the manager disappear too. So we all wait. Except a feisty bunch who clearly cannot waste a minute of their vacation time. They are going to have fun. So they decide to walk to the Four Seasons to have a drink. Since they have not taken the pain to communicate with the locals along the way, they don't know the Four Seasons was closed by the hurricane. They are so obnoxious that we almost let them go...

Diane Reeves sits in the cab with her friend. No diva attitude here. She has no belongings in the missing cab, so she could very well make a fuss and request to be taken to town, as her cab is here. But she just chats quietly with her friend.

The other taxi finally gets there, and they start hurrying us to jump in. I make the case that, after making us wait for over half an hour, that they are going to have to wait a few minutes for us to change clothes.

We return to Charleston, the small capital of Nevis, around lunch time. Uniformed school girls and dressy office employees in heels navigate the pot holes of the uneven sidewalks. It's a happy, cheerful behive in a landscape of tropical decrepitude. Amazing really.

A bar. Closed (hopefully).

There are some carefully maintained historical buildings, next to massive messes.

The market is mostly empty. And the lady there looks like she is out of a period movie.

We didn't see the cemetery, but there is no escaping taxes here either...

Love the firestation, where there is no sense of urgency. The wives are here too, playing cards.

The shops are cavernous, offering an unlikely assortment of anything.

No tourist enters them. There is no lack of tourists, though. The ship has disgorged its 1800 passengers in the small town, each carrying the same light blue towel. There is no mistaking us for the locals... Most of us err back and forth on the main street. As we must look disheveled from our morning at sea, many fellow tourists ask us if we went to the beach. When we say we went to three beaches, there is clear envy in their eyes. It seems we were really lucky to book this kayak trip - nobody else got to see a beach on Nevis. There are apparently none close to town.

We feel a bit out of place, but rather comfortable. We only have a little bit of time, but I wouldn't mind coming back. It's lovely, in a way, and warm. Though I fear the leisurely and inefficient pace might drive the Western tourist crazy in a few days.

Thursday at dawn, kayaking in Nevis

We ordered breakfast in the room, since we are going to have to get up early. I finally put the iPhone to good use - as an alarm clock. Pretty much all it can do here. But, of course, I am well awake at 6:30 am, though not quite ready to wake up. At 7, the iPhone goes off, and at 7:01, breakfast knocks on the door. It is quickly eaten, watching CNN. The orange juice is frozen, not the divine freshly squeezed one we get at the regular breakfast buffet.

Outside the window is Nevis, a single volcanic cone, with a plume of clouds stuck on the top. There are several stories of how the island got its name. The most popular is that the early Spanish sailors - maybe even Columbus himself who, of course, did come here in 1493, but apparently never set foot ashore - thought it was snow topping the peak and called it after the Spanish word for snow, nieves. Hard to believe that seasoned navigators who'd made their way through the Atlantic would be that wrong, at least in any kind of sober state. My theory, which I have not read anywhere, is that it's named after the highest peak in the British Isles, the Ben Nevis. Which (my theory too) is thought to be the highest point because they've never actually seen the top, so miserable is the weather in that part of Scotland!


The reason we are up so early is that I have signed us up for a kayaking trip. We meet the rest of the group in the nightly concert lounge, which is very strange when fully lit. There is the same feeling as when you are in Bourbon Street in New Orleans in the morning, when the only other visitors are a few guys cleaning away the signs of the previous night's revelries. We embark on the first tender, and land in a different world. Where everyone was white and French in St Barth, here it's finally the Caribbeans, with natives. Well, at least the natives we brought a couple of centuries ago, courtesy of our free transatlantic voyages... As Nevis is part of the British Commonwealth, the gardens and the people look, I kid you not, English! They drive (insanely fast) on the left. The school kids wear plaid uniforms.

Roosters roam in neat gardens overflowing with bougainvillea, in front of small colorful white-shingled houses. But also, many houses and hotels along the way are boarded up or just abandoned.Our guide says that, two months ago, a hurricane destroyed a lot of the beaches and, most dramatically, closed the Four Seasons hotel. The only modern hotel of the island. (There are several venerable plantation-type institutions on the slopes of the volcano, which I'd love to pay a visit to, but that will have to be for another time - any volunteers for the field trip?!). Closed until at least 2010. There are insurance fights, lawyers,... Our guide says that 90% of the economy depended on the Four Seasons, so it's big drama on the island.

When we get to the kayak shop, there's no one to meet us. A guy prepares bikes for other tourists.

Finally, a dude show up and tells us we can only take a towel for two and our money on board the kayak. The rest has to stay in the taxi that, supposedly, will meet us at the end of the kayaking journey. We are also warned that everything that is not in the tiny "dry bag" is going to get wet. Dad takes his pants off so that he'll have something dry to change into afterward; I opt to keep mine to avoid sunburn.

And off we go - 13 cruise members on 7 kayaks, and, one another kayak with the picnic, one guide. Who doesn't guide much. We have to guess which direction he wants us to go. We actually start paddling around Nevis counter-clockwise. It is beautiful, very lush, with dry, austere, big sister island St Kitts in the distance.

After rounding the first cape, we stop on a small beach of purely black sand.

This one was clearly very damaged by the hurricane. It is littered with debris. But also some magnificent shells - orange, pink, yellow - that we are not allowed to bring back.

Some of the debris is quite photogenic...

Here, we get to snorkel. I swim far to reach the cliff. I cross a freeway for fish, but mostly it is sand, sand, sand. There's nothing left after the hurricane. Next to the cliff, I see three types of fish, a bottom feeder of indistinct color, yellow-tailed snapper and a black-bodied blue-finned species that stumps the guide. Very damaged indeed. It'll come back. I'll have to come back.


We get back in the kayaks, and paddle to the next bay. The scenery is again different here. There is a small section that looks like a mini-Etretat or maybe like Laguna Beach here (the fake Italian architecture of the house at the top of the cliff is more Orange County than Normandie).

We stop on a very large blond sand beach. So different from the previous one. But there is no one here either.
Strikingly, here as we saw during the short taxi drive, most palm trees are dead. I inquire about whether this is also to be blamed on the hurricane. No, that's a disease. Double whammy.
We have a feast on the beach, fresh guava juice, home baked super moist (and not with water!....) fruit cake, star fruit, orange slices, and a fresh coconut machetted open by our guide.

Suddenly, the lady in a white bathing suit starts wailing. In a good way. She and her friend had a lot of trouble with the kayaking. Couldn't get it to move in the right direction, or forward, for that matter. But here she is, big, black and beautiful, waving her arms, her body rocking back and forth, and...wailing. An odd, plaintive, soulful song in a language I don't recognize. My, my, oh my. It's DIANNE REEVES. She can't kayak, but man, can she sing...
Dianne Reeves (left) and her friend on the blond sand beach.

Wednesday evening, salsa and pyjama - part 2: pyjama

After the concert, it's dinner. Ronald has not done his job, and our lovely little table for two in the fathers-and-kids corner is taken! Ronald apologizes and brings in the manager for this area of the restaurant. He says there is no reserved seating, and helps us find another table for two in an adjacent section. The table is next to the railing of the huge spiral staircase that leads down to the other level of the restaurant. On this table, there is a "reserved" sign... The manager swiftly takes that away, proving that there is indeed no reserved seating. There will be two more upset people later tonight. The view is great, but service in this section is not as impeccable as in the other. The wine steward is inept, and we wait between courses. I mean it's not hell, but it's a clear departure from the unbelievable service the ship provides everywhere else. We have been very spoiled.

At 11 pm, it's Pajama (or Pyjama) party on the Lido deck, poolside. We are in PJ's too, like the rest of the crowd. Dad had to buy a pair for the occasion, as he feared that following the instructions ("come dressed for bed") wouldn't get him very far... I'm in an oversized man's shirt with heels. Leaning on the railing of the 10th floor deck, we watch the zoo below. There is a competition for the best outfit. As it's the Playboy jazz cruise, there are a lot of Hugh Heffner wannabes in velvety smoking jackets and fewer bunnies. I guess the demographics of the passengers make it easier to dress as an over-the-hill priapic pervert than to trod in skimpy outfits with ears and fluffy tail. But one of the winners of the competition is precisely one of these - a petite woman well into her seventies, the body and the bodice of a (cancan) dancer. We had noticed her before; her rather excentric way of dressing made quite visible, especially when in St Barth or San Juan. Tonight, she is in a firehouse red bustier with matching stockings and stilettos.

J'ai une faiblesse pour les vieilles dames indignes.

After the competition, we go to bed. Tomorrow, we have to get off the ship at 7:50 am for our kayaking adventure on Nevis. Good thing we napped.

Wednesday evening, salsa and pyjama - part 1: Salsa

By popular demand - here is a cartoon of the trip with ports-of-call.

Back on the ship, we nap. It's really exhausting all this planned doing nothing. We are hungry at 4 pm, and the one thing they are not good at on the ship is tea time. No towering display of cucumber sandwiches. No scones with Devonshire cream and strawberry jam. The cute three-bite croissants and pains au chocolat we have at breakfast are not served for "goûter". Apart from unappetizing pizza slices sitting under an infrared lamp and pool-side burgers, there's nothing available in the middle of the afternoon. The lunch buffet closes around 2:30 and dinner will reopen around 5:30, but in between the various stands of the food court are open only to the 900 employees of the ship. Can you believe those people eat too?... And not in the galley either...

I see a lonely croissant, sitting in a basket behind the curtain of a closed stand and charm a guy there to give it to me. That'll do very nicely. We enjoy the croissant in the descending light on the Lido deck. Then it's ping-pong. The two tables on a corner of the deck serve as drink tables at night so they're not particularly clean, but we have fun.

Then it's time again to dress up for the 6:30 pm concert. Tonight, Poncho Sanchez on congas and his crazy band. In between the rows of bolted seats of the concert room, the organizers have regularly added folding chairs to accommodate the potential 9oo attendees to the concerts (half the number of passengers - the other half is having dinner). Tonight, with salsa in the air, people start folding the chairs that are foldable, and everybody is dancing in the aisles. Doesn't really look like a concert anymore. And toward the end, we just jump from our comfy white pleather seats and join the dancing crowd in the lower row. One of the party animals - a loud, friendly, tall, overweight Asian woman in her fifties, with a diverse group of friends and a ton of energy - tells me that my husband can dance. When I let her know it's my dad, she needs to know how old he is, and her jaw drops. Dad glows.

St Barth - Shell Beach (en Francais dans le texte !)

After our enlightening chat in the Marchand de Journaux, we make our way back to the taxi station, just next to where the tenders dock. People are still coming off the ship, so there is still quite a bit of activity at the little cabana here (where they distribute the ship-specific baby blue towels) and a ton of people trying to orient themselves and find a ride to beaches. The taxis are trying to fill their vans with people going to St Jean. But, I don't want to go to St Jean. I want to see the pristine, undeveloped, top-10-in-the-world beaches... Well, the taxi drivers are being very Parisian. They just refuse. The sea is too rough at those beaches today. That's OK, I just want to see. But there's nothing to do on those beaches. Well, that's precisely why I want to go... But you have to walk from the road to the beach for a little bit, in the woods. Do I look like I'm a cripple? Anyway, they just leave with other customers for St Jean and ignore us... We are not going half way around the island to sit on a beach where the biggest attraction is watching planes land, with restaurants and night clubs all around. So if we can't see paradise, we decide to go to the little beach in Gustavia itself, at least for a nice dip in the Mer des Caraïbes. Shell Beach, it's called - in good French. We cross the village again, through a few pleasant, sleepy streets and reach the beach. It's rather small, but the water is bleu-des-mers-du-Sud and warm.The other side has no sand but pretty rocks and surf.

The air is balmy, not scorching, and after a dip in the water, I sit comfortably on the sand, my toes grazing the mounds of sea shells that give the beach its name.

Alain hesitates for a while, pretending the water is too cold. But once he's in there, he doesn't seem to be able to get out of it... (This one for my gay friends who can't get over how good my dad looks in bathing suit - I predict increased traffic on the blog today).

The odd-looking 17-year-old trombone and his father are here.

And amid a big family group is.... Keb'Mo!

Now we know who the woman is, the one relieved him from his love for all "women".

We almost know, actually. There are two tall light haired women with a little girl, a Maribel look-alike. We've seen that toddler and the two sisterly-looking tall women all over the ship before.

The kid is Keb'Mo's daughter!!!

And one of the tall women must be the woman, the other her sister.

But it's not entirely clear which is which.

Maybe I'm being too conventional here...

The chubby white boy with male-pattern baldness is part of the entourage. Oh, and yes, Keb'Mo stayed fully clothed and on his cell phone the whole time...

When dad finally makes it out of the water, I'm well on my way to sunburn and we eat a panini bought at the little shack on the beach. A fresh passion fruit-watermelon-strawberry juice. It's just a simple tuna salad/mozzarella panini, but man, the French Caribbean tuna salad doesn't taste like it does in LA. I have to find the recipe and reawaken your dull senses, friends. This IS how it should taste. It tastes like Provence.

Life is good after all.

As we walk back, we come across... Marcus Miller, with a pal, on a tiny street. He is looking for the beach too. He has an easy and cheerful smile. On the way, we mail a post card for Arthur - at the local post office, which is as cheerful as any French (or other) post office - and board the tender, then the ship. The view of the bay is decidedly ugly, but we'll keep the memory of lively and lovely Shell Beach.

You know you're in France when....

"Interdit aux annexes - no dinghies". No comment.

Saint Barthélémy - a little oh! so French corner in the Caribbeans

After a night of smooth "sailing", we pass a big island - St Maartens/St Martin, the Franco-Dutch twin of the small (21 km2) island we are to disembark onto. From the distance, it doesn't look like much. Lots of little volcanic peaks emerging from the water - probably tricky to sail around here.

We have arrived at Saint-Barthélémy, a French territory known as a wealthy people's playground. Saint-Barth, you'd call it. As in "For Christmas, we are renting a villa in Saint-Barth, just next to that of Johnny Halliday". Of course, it's not quite the same as "we're spending Christmas at Mick Jagger's house on Mustique with the Bruni-Sarkozys", but you get the idea.

From closer up, it's not much more charming. The hillsides are dotted with red-roofed, very boring, decidedly non-Caribbean-looking houses. They are probably hurricane resistant, but it's not particularly esthetically pleasing. We are reminded that early settlers here were Swedes. The houses wouldn't look out of place in Skåne. Actually the small capital town is called Gustavia. Apparently, at some point in history we exchanged St Barth for a warehouse somewhere in Göteborg then bought it back a few years later, when the Swedes lost interest and couldn't figure out what to do with it. Columbus landed here, as everywhere else (just a year later) and named the place after his brother. But for some reason, Spain never actually colonized the place. Maybe they couldn't figure out what to do with it...

Un promène-couillons dans le port de Gustavia.

The harbor is of course way too small for the massive ship, so we reach land via tenders. Gustavia is only a few streets, narrow and over crowded with small French cars, driven by French-driving drivers. Zooming down the narrow passages. Parked everywhere. Hard to take pictures of anything at all.

Christmas decorations are still up and look very odd on a Caribbean island.

The shops are Cartier, Dior, Bulgari, Van Cleef, Chanel, Choppard. A nightmare. We have some hope when we see people congregating upstairs in a... bookstore. We join the crowd. Unfortunately, the place is packed because it is closing down! The shelves are mostly empty and the reduced prices on the leftover merchandise are still rather high.

One sign of design. Phew.

The town does not have much of a tropical flair. No flowers. Very few palm trees. It reminds me that in some areas in nearby Guadeloupe, it felt like Scotland. It's not the case here, but it's still odd.

Can't say there are no palm trees, now, can I?

The KLM-Air France agency is cosy. Papa, si t'as pas encore montré le blog à Gérand, c'est peut-être le moment...

The Lutheran church, avec les mobs garées devant.

We buy a St Barth firehouse Tshirt for Arthur. The shop tenant is rather French too... We make a stop in a "marchand de journaux", those typical shops where you can buy newspapers, magazines, postcards, cigarettes and lottery tickets. In most French resorts, they are the life of the town.

This one is amazing, but not in a good way.

Before you enter, you are warned that you can get newspapers only if you ordered them in advance.

I swear.

Inside, the woman behind the counter has an I.Q. of 80. The only customer here is explaining to her that the Lotto machine can finish filling the grids automatically.

She had no idea.

I promise I'm not making this up.

We chat with the customer for a while. A younger guy, who says he pays 800 euros a month for his one room apartment, and looks a bit beat up by life, but reminds himself every day that the view on the Caraïbes beats that of the Périphérique anytime. We ask him about the best beaches on the island. He concurs with what I've read. There is Saint-Jean, just next to the airport and with large hotels, bars, restaurants, night clubs. The most beautiful ones, which remain undeveloped, are the Anse du Gouverneur et the Anse de Grande Saline. We can't walk there, but taxis will take us. He also explains to us that the roads are terrible on Saint Barth, but maintained purposefully so to try and prevent people from driving too fast. They also keep the prices high so that not too many tourists come and bother them. He says it helps maintain security on the island, as opposed to what happens on Saint Martin (qu'il décrit plus ou moins comme un coupe-gorge pour les touristes). Everything to make the tourist welcome, really....