Mon Château sur la Plage

(My Castle on the Beach, imagine it sung by young Cosette from Les Misérables.)

I shall share Schœlcher on the sea shore.

A delightful aspect of the way John and I travel is that we have a lot of flexibility in where we go. The only place we “needed” to be was San Francisco at the end of February for a conference. So, we decided to plan the connection between Berlin and San Fran in an interesting way. John desired to get out of the winter life and I happily went along with that idea by researching Caribbean islands. We initially wanted to make Cayman Islands work because John had been before and loved it, but after realizing the flights between Europe and Cayman were ridiculous in expense and the amount of connections, we went for a more practical approach by finding the cheapest flight to anywhere in the tropics from Germany. We finally came upon Martinique, the beautiful French island which hit all our requirements for places we’d like to go: has beaches, has hot hot sun beams, has a reasonably priced flight, and isn’t suffering from major crime or poverty.

After all that we found a sweet Airbnb in Schœlcher which is a neighbouring town to the capital, Fort de France. This apartment turned out to be one of the most delightful places I’ve ever lived in, for many reasons but mostly because our host was like family to us for the month.

Now for some pictures of some cool things about this lil’ town and our apartment!

There’s a beach in the backyard!

That’s right! A beach was just a few minutes outside our apartment door. It was small and quiet and perfect for daily hangouts.

It does still get dark at night, even on the beach.

(click here for the panorama if the embedded one doesn’t work, or to see it full screen)

Our apartment was also home to CATS and chickens and birds and crabs and cows.

On top of being a delightful pink building we got to spot cats roaming around all day, the occasional chicken, and crab-de-terre! We even had a little bird that would visit us daily … like he would come into our apartment and hang out with us.

Our apartment opened up to a tropical forest which was perfect for all the animal watching.

Our backyard included banana trees that we watched blossom and produce fruit.

Schœlcher town stuff.

A small grocery store and the small town centre was just a 10 min walk down the road for us. We had access to many beaches and restaurants and an interesting town to explore.

(click here for the panorama if the embedded one doesn’t work, or to see it full screen)

Cats hiding around rocks = adorable.

A cemetery for me to explore

One of the most interesting and colourful cemeteries, with graves marked with shells and tropical flowers.

FOOD.

French Caribbean food is amazing. It’s such a mix, with African/Creole/Caribbean/French influences.

Our fav place was also the closest to us, it was right near the beach and was basically part of the jungle. Anba Fey tôl la is an amazing Creole restaurant run by this very kind and patient woman who applauded my garbage French. I dare say they have the best accras, bite sized pieces of salt fish rolled in batter and deep fried. Delicious. Why am I not there right now?!

I really enjoyed the local lager. There’s nothing particularly special about it, it’s just light and highly carbonated and it’s called bier Lorraine (my Grandma’s name). Perfect things for hot weather.

There was also a little brew pub near our place with beer called Kalinago.

We cooked at home a bunch including cocktails, giant avocados, and local banana bread!

To thank our host we made her a lil’ batch of Canadian maple cookies.

Next: We explore Fort de France!

~B~