Believe it or not, we do get out of Marigot Bay every now and then.

Last week, we hired a taxi to take us to the Pink Plantation for lunch (which we combined with our mid-trip grocery shop).

We went up, up, up in the hills on a very narrow road and got to a wall. The taxi said that was as far as she could go. The wall opened and . . . .

Breathtaking gardens with an even better view.  

And a 150-year old PINK French colonial home sitting in the middle.  It was just charming.

From this vantage point, we could watch the little boats below lazily sail by – and even see Martinique.

Lunch was served on the breezy porch and was delicious – we had fresh fish served with a variety of local vegetable dishes.  

My favorite was cristophine gratin (sometimes called cho-cho gratin), a West Indies specialty that features a squash/pumpkin-like vegetable, cheese, nutmeg, and I’m sure lots of butter.  I have never tasted anything quite so good!

We ended with flaming bananas foster – with locally grown bananas and locally made rum.

And the owner is an artist with a studio there, so we could shop, too (which we did!).

Just a lovely day.

If you want to go, here’s the website: http://pinkplantationstlucia.com/

They have a sister restaurant in Castries (where the cruise ships dock) called Coal Pot. We didn’t go there, but it is on our list to try next time.

In our past trips, I have posted about our normal, everyday life, and some people have said those are their favorite stories. 

We are not just tourists in St. Lucia at a big fancy resort – we are living here and doing many of the things we do at home.

I work. 

I have my laptop filled with all the regulations and documents I use.  We arrived on a Sunday and by Monday morning, I had set up my new office (which I admit does have a good view!). 

I usually have several Zooms a day from my make-shift space next to the WIFI router.  Except for the artwork behind me, most clients have not noticed a difference. 

Everyone works from somewhere different these days.

We cook. 

We provisioned with groceries when we arrived and have had to do one mid-month re-stock. 

We generally eat breakfast and lunch at home and then eat out for supper. 

But a few nights, we have just felt like staying in, cooking, and watching Netflix.  Just like home.

We do laundry.

We are lucky to have a washer.  And even a dryer, which is sometimes rare outside the US. 

But the dryer is small and takes a long time. And . . . we have such a nice breeze on the porch, so we air dry most items. 

Our clothes smell like sea air.

We also pay bills, have family Zooms, and set up doctor’s appointments for when we return. 

But at the end of the day, Frank and I gather on the balcony for cocktails and sunset. 

That’s a tradition we just might keep when we get back home . . . .

Today is a double feature – two posts in one day!

But it is so we can provide a public service announcement.

When we first came here, our taxi took us to the grocery store for provisions – after all, we were staying 3 weeks in an apartment and “living like a local”, which includes cooking at home sometimes.

We had not quite gotten used to the Eastern Caribbean dollar (EC), which is 2.7 times the value of the US dollar.  So everything seemed hugely expensive.  Olive oil was 65 EC!  (Which is $24, which is still a lot, but it was a big bottle.) 

So we were in sticker shock as we roamed the aisles.  When we got to wine, everything was at least 40 EC.  Wowzers!  (Really $14 USD, but we had not figured that out.)  So we searched high and low for something affordable. 

And how delighted were we when we found this lovely looking Spanish tempranillo for just 23 EC.  I snagged a few of them! 

Only to get home and open our new bottle to celebrate our arrival – and it tasted terrible! 

Upon further inspection, it is not WINE, but WIN.

And 0% alcohol – “De-Alcholised Red Wine” they call it. 

And we had a few bottles of it.

Sigh.   

Thankfully, we noticed that even the best rum was less than the average wine (and even less than the olive oil), so we picked up a bottle of that, too.

Now THAT’s a Yacht!

Marigot Bay sees it all.  From the regal and historic Sea Cloud to giant mega yachts.  Plus lots of regular sailboats in between. 

We love to keep up with who is coming . . . .

And who is going . . . . .

The big yachts are fun to google.  You can learn the specs and maybe even about the owners.  One of the boats in our harbor is a charter boat – for $240,000 per week!!

You can tell when the owners aren’t onboard because the crew hangs out on deck themselves – and are very lively.  It’s like our own version of the “Below Deck” TV show.

But the most amazing thing I have seen – which I had never heard of before – is that the fanciest yachts come with their own support boat! 

See the yacht and the long skinny yacht next to it that looks kind of like a research vessel? 

They are buddy boats.  The long skinny vessel is the “support yacht.”  It houses extra crew, smaller boats, and – of course – the helicopter pad.  (We know this because the dock guard who lets Frank fish told us.)

Sometimes we have traveled with a dinghy towed behind us – and we thought that was something (especially if it had an outboard motor).  But now we’ve seen it all! 

P.S.  After I wrote this entry, an even cooler yacht came into Marigot Bay – a 116-foot sailing yacht.  Here she is leaving this morning –

And from her website – www.whisperyacht.com

Sea Cloud!

I woke up and glanced out of the windows to the balcony and gasped.  Then I got a huge smile and turned back and woke up Frank.  You HAVE to see this!  I may have had tears in my eyes, too – she is that wondrous.

This is our 3^rd sighting of Sea Cloud.  We first saw her in Dubrovnik, Croatia when we were sailing there.  I was awestruck. 

Then we saw her anchored out off Taormina, Sicily – I could see her from our window.  She was just as magical.

Sea Cloud was built in 1931 by E.F. Hutton, for his wife, Marjorie Merriweather Post (of the Post cereal fame – also the woman who built Mar-a-Lago).  Sea Cloud was her personal yacht with a crew of 72. 

And what a history Sea Cloud has had!  She was even painted grey and used in World War II as a weather ship.  After the war, Marjorie brought her back to her regal state and continued to sail in her.  Eventually, at age 85, Marjorie sold Sea Cloud.  The yacht went through a few hands before falling into disrepair, all but forgotten under a different name in a boatyard in Panama. 

But a group of investors from Hamburg who loved classic ships remembered her, bought her, and made her seaworthy enough to get to Europe to return her to her former glory.  She sailed across the Atlantic and finally had to be towed into Hamburg Harbour, where she was greeted by thousands. 

Now she is a very elegant small cruise ship.  It is my dream to sail in her someday.

But for now – we settled for sitting on the balcony just gazing at her.  I took lots of pictures as she swung around her anchor. 

Then we saw a tender come in right to the little ferry dock by our apartment.  So I ran to the window to see what people who sail on Sea Cloud look like!  Just like us!  : )

Maybe someday . . . .

If you want to read more about Sea Cloud’s history – here’s a link: https://www.seacloud.com/en/sea-cloud-history/

This week we celebrated Frank’s birthday – 86!

We kicked off the celebration high up on the ridgeline overlooking Marigot Bay at a very nice restaurant called “The Villa.”  They drove down and picked us up in a golf cart and spirited to the top, where we had a table waiting with balloons. 

And a 5-course tasting menu.

We continued the celebration by Zooming with the family back home. 

And then Frank spent the week engaging in his favorite activity – fishing.  He has been putting out feelers on his daily walks about good bait and the best place for a nibble.  He visited the restaurant across the street, which gave him fresh fish for bait (which he came home and cut up and put in our freezer – this is why I bring zip loc bags on our trips!). 

And then he set out.  He fished at the beach bar.  He fished at the waterfront restaurant.  He even got permission from the snazzy hotel to fish from their dock by the big fancy yachts (he got to be friends with the guard who is also a fisherman and looked out for him).  Alas, no prize catches.  But the fun part is sharing fish stories anyway.

After all that fishing – the best end to the celebration?

A beautiful sunset with a cold Piton beer on our balcony.

Happy Birthday Frank!  We love you!

Some of you have asked for more details about our apartment.  We rented through VRBO and live in the Marina Village at the Marigot Bay Yacht Haven.  This is our building – we are around the side.

This is our street – looking left and right.  The building with the blue roof is the police station.  The water taxi to the beach and restaurants is a few steps away. 

There is a Hyatt resort next door, but they are very picky about who goes there.  But that’s ok – our goal is to live like locals, not be tourists.  And we love the local hang-outs.  (We can spot the hotel guests because they have to wear a wristband and look a little scared to leave their compound.) 

Frank is the man about town and knows all the taxi drivers, gate guards, and dock guys – they all share fishing stories.  When I go out with him, they all wave and greet “Mr. Frank.”

There is a lot of action in the Bay.  New boats anchor every night.  We also get a steady stream of cruise ship guests heading to shore excursions, which is fun.  A few times a day big catamarans playing music do a twirl through the Bay for the cruise ship guests to take pictures of what they say is the most beautiful bay in the Caribbean (we agree!).

Now for a tour of the apartment . . .

We have a spacious lounge and well-equipped kitchen.  Plus 3 bathrooms and laundry.

We have two bedrooms, so we can spread out and I can use one as an office (I am still working remotely after all). 

But the best is the balcony.  It is deep and fully covered, so we can sit out here even in the rain. 

I am writing this blog as the sun goes down.

We have rented a VRBO apartment in Marigot Bay on the Island of St. Lucia.  We looked all around and thought this looked like the perfect place for two sailors.  Marigot Bay is a sheltered harbor with a marina, boat moorings, and a few small resorts.  It is away from the hustle and bustle of the big resorts and cruise ships. 

We rented the “apartment above the store” in the Marina Village (above) and can sit on our balcony and watch the boats come in all day long. 

There are seasoned cruisers who have sailed in from all over the world, bareboat charter groups, and even jaw-dropping mega yachts – more on that later.  Something is always going on in Marigot Bay.

There are 4 restaurants – two only accessible by water taxi or dinghy. 

The red boat below goes to Doolittles, across the way.

Then there is the general ferry, which can take you to the beach, other restaurants around the bay, or to your boat.

The big nightly action is at Chateau Mygo (below). They have live music most nights – from reggae bands to a steel drum guy, who will move his drum around and play at your table – he played “Fly Me To The Moon” for us. Dinghies tie up all along the edge.

Crocs are perfectly acceptable attire everywhere, and everyone trades boating stories. 

So we will leave the nightlife to the big resorts and sip a rum with the sailors as we watch the sun go down in Marigot Bay. 

Cheers!

The Two Fools are back – after some bumps in the road.  We decided to head to warmer weather for the month of February and rented an apartment in St. Lucia!

But – the night before we were to leave, Frank tested positive for COVID.

We have been very careful the last three years and don’t know where Frank picked it up. There is no good time for COVID, but within hours of our international flight seemed like a double whammy!  Plus Frank felt pretty bad.  It was our first time dealing with COVID, so things were a little scary the first few days. 

Fortunately, during the start of COVID when things were even scarier, we had drafted a quarantine plan – this is what you do when you’re married to a NASA engineer!  So we pulled that back out and retreated to our assigned spaces for 11 days.  We slept and ate in different rooms and wore masks if we were in the same vicinity.  I tested each day and continued to be negative. 

Finally, Frank was cleared to travel so we re-packed our bags, re-booked our flights, and got on the road. 

Our time in St. Lucia may be a little shorter – but it is a whole lot sweeter as we think about what might have been and how lucky we were compared to those who experienced COVID before vaccines and treatment.  We will savor this trip all the more.

And . . .  we will celebrate Frank’s 86^th birthday and our 8^th wedding anniversary!  Come along with us as go from this frosty scene . . .

To This One!

It has been a busy week. Frank and I flew from Sicily back to Paris, where we stayed over in the Sheraton Charles de Gaulle airport hotel so we could take our COVID test to get back to the US. (This hotel is a nice oasis in the middle of CDG, located in Terminal 2 where most international flights are, if you ever need an airport hotel in Paris.)

You have to take a test within one day of returning to the US. Since we were flying the day before, we had to take our test the day of our flight home, which was a little nerve-wracking. We scheduled a test at the clinic in the airport – which is one floor below the Sheraton – very convenient. We got the earliest appointment time and lined up with the other Americans needing to test. They swabbed us and made us all sit in a room for 30 minutes while we waited for results. Then they came out and announced results in batches – you either got a piece of paper that listed negative or you were whisked off somewhere else (we don’t know where!).

Thankfully, we were negative, so our flight was a “go.” We ran back upstairs to the Sheraton, grabbed our bags, and headed to check in for our flight.

So we are back home after a wonderful trip.  We faced uncertainty with COVID and were very careful all along the way – wearing our masks, foregoing museums or crowded spaces (we will have to go back for these), showing our CDC card everywhere if we wanted to eat indoors, and learning to be adaptable.

We also felt much closer to the war in Ukraine. We encountered refugees – the airports all had signs everywhere showing them where to go – but we also saw refugees sitting at the next table at dinner. They looked just like us. The war is not just on TV in Europe; it is on their doorstep. We got to know a waitress at our favorite local resaurant in Venice who helped bring her nephew from Kiev while we were there – we got the day-by-day update. Her son is in Moldova and she is worried about him, too – they are on the border and can hear the shelling from Ukraine. We traded contact information in case we can help. And all over Italy they are flying the rainbow flag to signify “Pace” or “Peace.”

We definitely will miss these views:

But also happy to back to our “new” view – HOME.

Thanks for following along with us.  Until next time!