#6 Gustivia, St. Barthelemy (St. Barts)

The pictures above are: 1. Our tender headed into St. Barts (The second large yacht from the left, the white one belongs to Russian oil magnate Alexandrov).  2. Part of the harbor showing the Swedish colonial warehouse (the grey stone building at the water level) and Fort Oscar (now the police station, the long, low structure on the top of the hill).  3. The island's airport.  The runway really is steep.  You can just see the largest type plane at the top of the runway waiting to take off, a DeHavelland Twin Turbo

 

 

March 15 – Gustavia, St. Bart's.  Even though this island's capital has a Scandinavian last name it's French.  In fact it is France.  It's holds Department status just like any other area of mainland European France so the currency is the Euro, they vote in French elections just like the people of Paris.  Technically we are in Europe at the moment.  The capital of Gustavia, named for King Gustav of Sweden came about because in 1784 the French wanted a port in the Baltic and they traded St. Barts to Sweden to get one.  Almost 100 years later the Swedes realized it was not economically viable for them and they gave it back to France.  It was named by Christopher Columbus for his brother, Bartholomeo and was first settled in 1659.  At that time the main source of income was smuggling and pirates.  They raided ships heading from South America to the Bahamas.  It has a well-protected natural harbor which they used for ship repairs and reprovisioning. 

 

There are still a few buildings from the Swedish colonial period.  On the waterfront there's a stone warehouse that is now a museum and the Swedish fort at the harbor entrance, Fort Oscar, is now the police station.

 

The main industries now are fishing and tourism.  It's a very expensive place to shop, eat or live.  The largest hotel on the small island has 70 rooms and they only allow bungalow style, no high-rise.  There are also no large chain restaurants or hotels.  Only chains like Cartier are allowed and the stores are small.

 

We took a taxi drive around the entire island.  The roads are steep and narrow, there's very little flat land, so even though the island is 4 miles long and averages about 1 mile wide the trip took an hour with a few stops for pictures.  It's the dry season so much of the grass is brown.  Despite that we had a short and very refreshing rainstorm pass over us.  The airport is interesting in that the runway goes downhill at a pretty steep angle, which complicates both take off and landings.  Commercial pilots that fly here are required to have a special training certificate to operate at the airport.  As we drove by a twin-engine turboprop, the largest plane allowed in, took off going down the hill and out over the sea.  That was fun to watch.

 

Once back in the capital we elected to head back to the ship for lunch.  We ate here once and, while the food is good, a hamburger is 15 Euros; about $20 depending on the exchange rate, and the burger was nothing special at all so back to the ship it was.

 

This afternoon I decided to go to see The Bounty Hunter with Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston.  It's only an hour fifty minutes so if it's not very good I'm not stuck for too long.  It takes a lot to get me to walk out of a movie; I want to see if it can be bad all the way to the end.  Christine Baranski plays Jen's mother so there will be at least two attractive women to distract me even if the movies not so hot.  Turns out the movie is a cute, entertaining and funny romantic comedy with dramatic overtones.  I had a good time and it didn't seem that long a sure time I was enjoying it.  Critically, it was not meant to be, nor was it, an award winner in any category.

 

Tony Pace entertained us.  He's a Las Vegas performer and has a very nice voice.  He does impression singing as well and some humor thrown in.  He sang as Louis Armstrong, Willie Nelson, Julio Iglacias, Cher, Michael Jackson, Neil Diamond and Elvis.  His Armstrong was very good and he sang the For All the Girls I've Loved Before duet as Willie and Julio.  He was excellent at both.  When he finished his Cher song in a long curly black wig he asked if he didn't look more like Howard Stern.  Since everyone was already thinking that it got a big laugh.  Best entertainer so far.

 

Another early day tomorrow so it was time to do some reading and writing and then hit the sack.