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....