Miam miam in Martinique

Martinique: French food and friendships

 We are in France (Martinique is an oversea province of France but runs the same way dixit Greg!). So, Emmanuelle feels somehow at home. Even if it is a tropical France, we can still find some good bread, some cheeses (quite expensive though) and some other goodies to excite our palate. We went shopping and filled our shelves with biscuits, jams, pate, saucissons, th efridge with industrial yogourts... The kids were playing the game pretty well and wanted to have what they knew from their few previous visits in France.

For Emmanuelle, it feels strange to speak French to people and sometimes, English comes first (eg in a shop).

Greg is trying to practice his French and with the support of the boys he does quite well in some very specific situations (eg in boat shops). The boys are always impressed.

 Martinique is a green volcanic island. It is hilly, lush and seems quite wild.

We’ve been to 6 various bays and we liked St Pierre, even if the anchorage wasn’t great: it was rolling and the shelf was going deep quickly. The village was destroyed in 1902 by a volcanic eruption and everybody (except 1 drunk guy who was in jail) died.

 

There are still lots of ruins. Some houses are built with some of the remaining ruins giving an impressive architectural mixture of old and new. Greg would like to come back to this place as St Pierre was full of wrecks that he could not dive on as he didn’t have a dive buddy.

 Before, we went to Fort de France: the BIG city!

We had a specific shopping list of things we wanted to buy there: mainly books and sun suits.

Emmanuelle spent 3 hours wandering by herself in the streets, shopping around and enjoying some freedom without the kids.

The kids loved their visit (too short) at the library

 

One of the big events is that we finished school and we sent the last tests from Fort de France!

We are officially on holidays. The boys did really well and this is encouraging.

We had some difficult times when we left and few more latter (mainly with Victor) but they understood it was important. They learnt a lot and are proud of that as they did it mainly by themselves. They are able to start their work without any help. We should continue like that. The new school year should start by the end of August. In the mean time we will try after few weeks of complete break to work on some maths and French.

We spent some time with two other “kids boat”.

2 American boats: one with 4 kids (between 9 and 4) and one with 2 (9 and 11).

Victor, Felix and Clea had great fun coming and going from Alouette, Pickles or Merlin (the 3 boats). They were jumping for hours from the different boats, were comparing their Lego collection, or were watching movies all together. They are becoming quite independent...radioing their friends on the VHF to plan their afternoons! Victor is even picking up some US intonation when he speaks (time to meet SA boats!!).

Being all together was great because it allows us to share lots : usually technical stuffs for the men, more practical ideas for the women : recipes, boat organisation tricks, but also fears and laughters.

It was also a party after another one: each boat had to host the crowd!

The kids were finished after few nights like that - and us too as it was also more drinks that we usually have!

But it was fun!!

Now we are back in Anse Ste Anne , in the South of the Island as we are waiting for the good weather to go back South, may be with a stop in St Lucia.

We were happy to meet Alouette again as they were supposed to have left Martinique while we were exploring the North coast of the Island.