St. Lucia : Martinique

Saturday: This morning we got up nice and early to head to Martinique. Let me tell you, it is not easy waking up for anything at 4:30 in the morning. Jen picked us up at 5:15 and we headed to the port to meet the ferry. Getting our boarding passes and through security was a piece of cake. Definitely don’t need to get there an hour and a half before it leaves. We waited for a bit and boarded our ferry. We took the first seats we saw which was not the best idea. Our ferry actually left 20 minutes early. I never thought I’d see the da that happens in St. Lucia. Anyways, the whole way over we felt sick. I’m surprised none of us got sick on the boat. We were very excited when we finally reached shore.

Once we arrived we walked to our hotel which was pretty easy to find. Tanya did ask for directions and I’ve realized I’m going to become very reliant on her the next few days. We asked them to hold our luggage for us and then we hit the streets of Fort de France. One of the first places we visited was McDonalds. There is no McDonalds in St. Lucia so yes at 9:37 in the morning, I got fries and a hot fudge sundae. No regrets! Afterwards we went shopping. While prices are not cheap, the quality seems a whole lot better than St. Lucia. I’m loving all the street art and cobblestone roads. We went in some cute clothing shops and I bought a beach dress for 16 Euro. While we hadn’t had a ton of food and were all hungry, we decided we needed to make the most of the day since all stores except for the mall close at 1:30. This was a bit of a bummer, but oh well! We’ll do more shopping on Monday. At 1:30 we stopped and got food in the mall. We then went to the supermarket where we got cheap meat, some brie, and bread. This will be Abby and my lunch tomorrow since we’ve been told places are closed on Sundays. We also bought wine for cheap and some snack foods for later on and tomorrow.

We headed to the hotel to check in. Unfortunately the made us pa for a 2^nd room since our room could only fit 2 adults. We were a bit bummed about this, but it all turned out ok after they moved us a second time to 2 adjoining rooms. The view is spectacular and the hotel is super nice! The front desk helped us set up a day trip for Monday, so hopefully we’ll get to see some of the island. We stayed to rest in the room until about 7 when we headed down the road to a restaurant called the Black Pearl. My chicken burger was delicious! When we were finished we headed upstairs to finish our last glass of wine, before we went back to the hotel to crash. All day I have been very reliant on Tanya and it’s frustrating for me to not be able to understand or ask questions. Another observation I have made is that people stare at us. I’ve never been stared at so much in my life. Men, women, children, it doesn’t seem to matter. It’s like they’ve never seen 3 white girls who speak English together before.

Sunday: Oh it felt so good to sleep in this morning! I have missed sleeping with a heavier blanket on me. The A/C made it cool and comfortable. Way cooler than my room in St. Lucia! We all got up and enjoyed some amazing coffee in our room. Lavazza coffee is soooo good! Afterwards we headed out to see if any coffee or pastry shops were open. None were. We had also been told the supermarket might be open, but the main one was also closed. By this time we were all hungry and so we went to a small supermarket to get snacks. There wasn’t much we really wanted, so we headed back to the hotel in hopes that the might still be serving breakfast. We were too late. We ate a few of our snacks in the room and waited until the time a ferry would leave for the beach. All of us are crabby, but we’re hoping that the beach will have food.

The ferry was relatively easy to take. Our first stop was at apparently the better beach, however we took a look at it and realized it was a tourist beach much like Reduit. We chanced it and took the ferry to the next beach. Since when did we become beach snobs? Well our decision was worth it. This next beach had food options, coffee, and a lot more space to lay out. After getting some coffee we laid out under a palm tree. There was a creepy guy who kept talking to us and whom we ignored for quite some time. He knew no English so he talked mostly to Tanya. When we got sick of hearing from him we headed to get food. I got pork, fries, and vegetables and it was delicious. We finished up in time to catch the last ferry back to Fort de France. When we got back we cancelled our trip on Monday because we found out that Monday is also a holiday for those in Martinique and therefore we won’t be able to catch a ferry in time to get us to where we would need to be for the trip. However the kind hotel lady scheduled a lady to pick us up and give us a private tour around the island. It won’t be by boat, but definitely will be cheaper. Hopefully she’s open to bringing us where we want to go. After hanging in the hotel for awhile, we went back out to find food. The Black Pearl looked to be the only place open, so we headed back there. This time around I got a burger. Again very good! I haven’t had a good burger in forever! We got back to the hotel and sat around chatting for awhile.

Monday: Monday morning we got up, drank coffee, and had brie and bread for breakfast. We checked out of our hotel, leaving our luggage behind and left on our tour. The lady who took us was willing to do what we wanted and took us first to the supermarket where we were able to buy chocolate, coffee, and alcohol to bring back home with us. This made us all very happy. After, we went to a garden that had a souvenir shop and I was able to get more souvenirs than I probably needed, but hey I’m only in Martinique once. We then drove through the rain to a waterfall. The waterfall wasn’t anything spectacular compared to ones I’ve seen in the states. Afterwards we went to the town of St. Pierre which is near Mount Pelée. Mount Pelée erupted in 1902 and killed all the people in St. Pierre except for one prisoner. The city still has parts of the original buildings that stood at that time. It was really cool to walk around the city and see all this. Finding a restaurant that was open seemed to be a bit troublesome, but eventually we did. In fact I even tried a bite of Abby’s shark. After lunch we went to a black sand beach which overlooked Mount Pelée. The sand was so hot to stand on, but the water was the clearest I have ever seen! We spent about an hour at the beach, before heading back to the hotel. Because everything was closed, we stayed in the hotel lobby area for about 2 hours before leaving. Luggage in tow we walked down the streets towards where we had to meet our ferry to take us back to St. Lucia. On the way we stopped at what was like a food truck and I had a crepe and ice cream, 2 things I will not be getting anytime soon in St. Lucia. We got to the pier and waited forever to go through customs. Our ferry left about 45 minutes late. Tanya and I however were smart and actually spent the whole ferry ride back outside. I did not feel sick at all and I was happy to be back home.

*This will probably be my last blog post until next year. My t and y keys are currently not working on my laptop so I’ve been using the onscreen keyboard to type those 2 letters which is a pain.