Flower Market

The flower market is right in front of this beautiful church.The inside of the church was a big surprise: a metal framework in the style of the Eiffel Tower. After one of the many earthquakes (Guadeloupe has an active volcano), the church was rebuilt to withstand some shaking.

Two charming tourist helpers in the flower market.

Fancy ginger

What a cool idea to use banana flowers for decoration!

Pointe-a-Pitre

In Pointe-a-Pitre, we were the only cruise ship. Young people in yellow polo shirts helped us in the city and bade farewell on the pier.

Unfortunately, this port city is no obvious beauty. Small pearls of splendor are hidden in a maze of busy streets, water stained concrete walls, and flat roofs.

The better part of the harbor front.

The yacht club

Guadeloupe

Point-a-Pitre was the only harbor where we were greeted by a welcome committee.

In town, stores were filled with madras dresses for the upcoming carnival.

This lady sold dolls we had already seen in St.Lucia. The woman in the foreground jumped on us demanding money for another photo.

Anse-La-Raye (1)

Anse-la-Raye is a small fishing village with traffic jams. The bus dragged us across the island to Anse-La-Raye. Every bus on the entire island took tourists exactly here.

A beautiful church for a small place.

At least three fishermen are busy at their job.

The waterfront will be elegant one day.

Somehow, the St. Lucian government has convinced Japan to build this spiffy waterfront.

One previous government had the Chinese build a psychiatric hospital which was finished by the Taiwanese when the Lucian government changed. Never mind that the hospital is big enough to treat all of the Caribbean islanders.

Anse-La-Raye (2)

St. Lucia has many cute homes and many more shacks where we would only store garden tools, but here people live in them."Downtown" Anse-La-Raye

Castries

Castries is the capital of St. Lucia. Destroyed by hurricanes and fire, it was rebuilt in an ugly after WW2 style. This is the fishing harbor right next to the cruise ship docks. Waterfront

Pullmantur pulling in.

The market is to the left of the pullmantur cruise ship.

Another view of Castries.

St. Lucia (2)

The Sandals Resort used to be a hotel. We stayed there about 18 years ago. St. Lucia is a lush island.

Expensive wood carving

St.Lucia (1)

A Celebrity ship pulls into Castries harbor.

Ship and plane at the same time. The red roof is part of the shopping center where salesgirls chat on their cell when customers are in the store. We still managed to buy rum, rum punch, a cloth backpack, banana kerchup and banana essence. However, we could not pay with our Eastern Caribbean dollars because they had changed the pictures on the paper money.

Peaceful entrance to Castries harbor.

We approach our pier.

Early morning in Castries.

The second and smaller airport is right at the harbor.