We headed over to the French side today, first to Grand Case, a town renowned for their restaurants. There is a long sandy beach that has homes propped right against the sea. There are narrow passages between the jumble of buildings to reach the water, but there is basically no room to leave your gear while you jump in the ocean. So we didn’t go in the ocean here.
We wandered around the town, where everyone speaks French. Some have very poor English, but it was a nice little town. We had lunch at a “Lo-Lo,” an open air snack shack with large open barbeque pits. They offer quick, cheap Caribbean fare, including ribs, jerk chicken, creole fish and shrimp and homemade ice cream. Maggie was unable to resist the smell of “Germain’s Place”! Their plate of ribs was large and delicious. I had the creole shrimp and they were served in a mild curry scented creole sauce. Very delicious too.
We piled back in the car and headed to Marigot, to check out the large open air market and hunt for deals. And we’ll have to keep hunting! There were no deals to be had in Marigot! The same Rima Hawaiian shirts that sell in downtown 
Philipsburg for $8.95 each, or three for twenty dollars were offered in the open market for fifteen each! You can get them to come down to ten each, but that’s it.
One woman offered me one shirt for ten dollars, and when I said I wanted to buy two, she said, “Ok, twelve dollars each!” Naturally, we bought nothing! Although there was one very cool thing – little tiny guitars in their own little tiny hand stitched leather cases. Each was about 10 to 12 inches long – perfect replicas of the guitars of famous stars. Too funny! But at 60 bucks, a little too pricey for my tastes.
We checked out a hilltop fort, built in 1789, and named after the French king Louis. There are crumbling walls, and a few rusting cannon laying around. But there are impressive views of the harbor, the town, and nearby Anguilla island, however, making the climb worthwhile.
We returned to home base and staked our claim to a seat in the hot tub. It was happy hour, of course, so in honor of all the snow in Calgary, we decided to only drink iced drinks today, like pina coladas, mudslides, and daiquiris. Cheers Pete! But we nearly all got frost bite, so we’ll have to curtail that tomorrow!
We tried the Infinity restaurant again with their special Creole menu. The food was different, but not memorable. A small storm sprang up during dinner, and the outdoor floor show was moved indoors. It became quite noisy so we got the heck out of there.
