While we never brought Villa herself, we made a number of trips to the French side of the island, and I have to say, of all the island towns we’ve visited, this is the one I’d be most willing to live in. Our first trip over was to visit the monthly flea market at Time Out Boat Yard, where we managed to offload at least a few things, like our old bimini-top solar panels. It’s a pretty decent market, with everything from dinghies and motors to miscellaneous electronics and half-used bottles of boat wax.
When that started to die down, we figured we’d nip around the corner to town to see what all the fuss was about… and immediately dropped our keys into the water. The “inflatable” Key Buoy we used, of course, completely failed to inflate, and we spent about fifteen minutes fishing in the fortunately-shallow-and-clear water with oar-chopsticks before managing to get it back out.
The staff and crowd at The Royal Croissant did an admirable job pretending not to have been laughing at us, and we enjoyed a nice recovery-croissant and coffee with a view of the little harbor.
I was super amused by the conference-boats docked along one wall, though we never actually saw anyone using them. Jazz was more impressed by the artistic tequila display at the local liquor store.
We would return here several times, always with a better grip on the keys. But not always in better spirits, as Jazz’s neck injury made the ride back and forth into a bit of an ordeal for her.
It’s a pretty long ride, with a lot of interesting wrecks along the way.
We had to come, though, because Marigot has the island’s only MRI machine. So we ended up getting at least a little bit of familiarity. We ended up at this cafe (Banana?) a couple of times.
And we decided we had a favorite coffee/Gelato shop.
And Les Amandies always made us feel welcome, even if we brought Captain. French onion soup!
We managed to walk around a bit of the downtown. A lot of it is up and running, and there’s a lot of art sprinkled around. There’s also still a surprising amount of damage from Hurricane Irma.
Just loads of contrast in there.
We also managed to make it to a Mardi Gras parade, between doctors’ visits, so that was fun.
When it was time to leave the island, we took full advantage of the local Super U’s impressive boxed wine collection. I think we basically bought one of each, thinking that we’d see more French islands in the future and maybe know what we like. (We like Vieux Papes).
And then there was quarantine, and now all the wine is gone. Ha ha. Ha ha.
Looks like you are provisioning and ready to move if your weather holds up. Thanks for the updates. Jazz, I’m so sorry for your injury. Sailing is difficult without pain. Hang in there a bit longer. Like a Norwegian carpenter I worked with consoled me when I smashed my finger to a bloody stump and turned to him for sumpathy…”Hey, it grows back.” It will.