Visitors!

Salut tout le monde (Hi everyone!)

Saturday was a super fun day for me! The students and Anna all headed out early to visit La Savane de Petrification, the desert part of the island, but I didn’t go with them… I had visitors coming! Grandma Linda and Grandpa Tom are on a cruise that stopped in Martinique for a day! Their ship wasn’t due in port until 9am, so I got up early to exercise: my normal morning swim in front of the hotel.

As I was getting in the water at 7am, I saw their ship pass by on the way to the port of Fort-de-France. I swam, got myself ready, had breakfast, and then headed into town. I arrived almost exactly at 9am and the ship was still just off shore.  A bunch of locals and I stood together watching the ship come in, commenting on the enormity of the ship and the precision needed to bring it into port. The ship’s name is Anthem of the Seas and is part of the Quantum Class cruise ships, the second largest in the world!

Grandma and Grandpa came down the ramp at about 9:45 and we decided to head out to the Balata Garden, a privately-owned botanical garden that is one of Martinique’s most well-known attractions. Martinique is known as the Îles des Fleurs (Island of Flowers) and this was the perfect place to see why! It’s not very big, but it’s beautiful!

Grandma on the suspended bridge!

We spent a couple of hours walking around, and Grandma Linda and I both walked the suspended bridges among the trees. We ran into the Royal Caribbean group, but we were happy to let them leave us behind!

After the gardens we had lunch at the restaurant on site. Grandma had scallops, Grandpa the duck breast, and I chose the tuna. We all started with some Accra, which is one of the most famous dishes in the Caribbean. It’s a form of fritter in which you can put different ingredients so each island has their specialty. These were vegetable Accra and they were very good! The specialty in Martinique is Accra with Codfish, which I haven’t had yet, but I’m hoping to at some point in my stay. For dessert we had caramelized pineapple with vanilla ice cream that I added the rest of my rum punch to, significantly improving the dessert!

We had just seen the bus back to town pass by, so we had about 20 minutes to wait for the next one, so we hung out and chatted with some others who were visiting from the cruise ships. As we were walking to the bus stop to head out to the gardens, Grandma had seen a man selling coconut shells that had been make into bird feeders with hummingbirds on them. She wanted one of the small ones, so we looked for him on our way back, but didn’t see him. We walked the boardwalk where there were many others selling goods… we didn’t end up buying anything, but I definitely took note of what I might come back and get!

It was a nice, relaxing, no stress day that finished as they went back onto the ship and I sat on the boardwalk, my feet dangling in the water, and watched them sail off into the sunset…