A Christmas walk on Mount Royal, Montreal ... to burn some of the calories added over the last few days.

Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noel! Frohe Weihnachten! Feliz Navidad!

This year Christmas takes place at Marleyne's sisters'place in Laval, Quebec. It is a white Christmas...and the food more or less traditional ! Yesterday we had a Caribbean pork roast, we drink Rhum agricole de la Martinique, and tonight Heiner is preparing his Koenigsberger Klopsen...and as a dessert, it will be the traditional Buche de Noel....
So, we hope you all have a very nice Christmas!

Cette annee, les Fetes se passent chez ma soeur a Laval...nos traditions culinaires ont change...avec un roti de porc a la caribeenne, du rhum agricole de la Martinique, des Koenigsberger Klopsen allemands ce soir et la traditionelle buche de Noel comme dessert...Alors nos meilleurs voeux de Noel a vous tous!

Alles gute zu unseren deutschsprechenden Freunden!

Back in Kingston, Canada from Martinique ...

It is about a week ago that we were sitting in Castries, St. Lucia (due to an airline strike) on a terasse overlooking the harbour.

Today, we walked through one of our parks in our neighbourhood (Collins Bay) and enjoyed the deep frost and the surroundings.  What a change!

This is a "stitched" photo thanks to our Android application (in this case: 2 images).

When it became clear that we would not catch our American Airlines flight from St-Lucia to Canada, we had to find an accomodation near the airport.  While I waited for the Liat employee to give us some news about our flights, Heiner went to the Tourism office located in the Vigie airport and chatted with a couple - also stranded - and with the office employee. He found us a really neat guesthouse, at 5 minutes from the Vigie airport with a view of the ocean! for $59.00 US! The lady, Merlin, picked us up at the airport! What a neat place...http://www.casadelvega.com/index.htmlwe had brought food along (we now know that you get nothing on AA flights...) and we just relaxed on the terrasse chatting with Lud and Cathy and enjoying Pitons beers and rum. Life was good after all this stress...

And so ends another Caribbean sojourn...

Now that we are back in our cozy home, we can enjoy our "memories"...We had 5 days in Martinique, most of them in Ste-Anne. The weather was rather rainy and when we hiked to the beaches of the Salines, we walked in the mud for hours before reaching the beaches. What else did we do???? Oh, it was easy to spend time "liming" on Aquataurus or on land...Heiner got a fresh baguette every morning: this time I went with him and as I was about to take a picture, somebody else wished to be in the limelights...

Antoher day, we walked on the beach of Ste-Anne and found ourselves in the resort of Club Med Les Boucaniers...Très chic, merci bien. The resort is built amindst a 23 hectares park and surrounded by this magnificent coconut plantation!

On other days, we went to the little market of Ste-Anne to get fresh products or fish (announced by a fisherman blowing in a conch shell)...And on Saturday afternoon, there was this romantic creole styled wedding in the small church of Ste-Anne...

After a long and tedious wait at StLucia AA tickets office,we got onto our plane 2minutes before take off, rushing through. the airport and all security checks with Mr. Delisle from American Airlines leading us by the hand! This man has worked on our "case" for 3 hours half nonstop and while exhausted, we were very thankful for his help. LIAT airlines owes us money!
And so we are back in Canada, sitting in the hotel breakfast room and enjoying our 4th cup coffee...Just yesterday at that time we were on a street corner in Castries drinking fresh coconut water!

Pilot strike at Liat airlines delayed our flight to Toronto....we are stranded in Castries at an hotel with ocean view...will try to get flight to Toronto tomorrow.

After a quiet night in StLucia ' Anse la raie, we motored along the west coast of the island and had almost settled for anchoring in Rodney Bay due to a total lack of wind when a south westerly breeze came up and made us decide to sail the 20 some miles to Martinique! The lure of French delicious food and wine was strong and the weather great: we had a great sail up to 10 miles from Martinique when the wind stopped. It seems that the trade winds were disturbed by a strong cold front pushing far south and creating a troph with its squalls, t-storms, heavy rains and abnormal wind patterns. Whatever...we anchored in Le Marin at the end of the afternoon and Marlyne went right after the apero to Leader Price in order to buy saucisson, rillettes and cheese! We had a delicious supper!

We went back for more delicacies on the next day and sailed to Sainte-Anne in order to be in a prettier anchorage where swimming is possible.

Here in Ste-Anne, one feels like in a French village...with its backeries, cafes and rotisseries...Heiner is getting us French pain every morning from this little backery shop.