St Pierre and Miquelon…The Morning Sun! Part III

Friday, July 26

Our room overlooked the Main Street and the bay. Early this morning, I pulled the curtains to view what I could see. Voila…the sun was shining and little to no fog present. Wow! There… was a large portion of St Pierre that I hadn’t even seen yesterday because of the fog. The restaurant was open down stairs and we got breakfast out of the way. After the croissant along with a fresh baguette, juice and coffee our day would be filled with walking many streets to see what the neighborhoods were doing. People were doing everything you would expect in a small town… clothes being hung on the line,

Me with a Gendarme...You can't see the handcuffs!

maintenance crews watering  the many flowering planters and so on. Some were going to work on their bicycles. All of this happening, as I am trying to capture that unique shot with my Nikon camera.

St Pierre’s Cathedral was in front of us and I tried the door and it appeared to be locked. We stopped a nun and asked if the church would be opened later. She said, “it should be open now.” She tried the door and it opened. The problem for me was that I was pulling outward and the door opened inward. This is a bad “faux pas” back in the good old USA. (Code violation…all public buildings must have doors that swing out in case of fire). The old church had vibrant stain glass depictions. The house colors in town were very bright in every rainbow color…some times on the same house.

Later in the morning, we joined Catherine and Leon and walked over to the Canadian Consulate to check it out. Not much action there, but they did have a healthy vegetable garden.

Picture taken before the one with Gendarme!
Leon, me and the wine!

Catherine gave us some chewable seasick pills for the ride back. This time we skipped lunch. Our departure for 1:30 pm was only an hour away and everybody picked up their luggage stored at the Hotel Robert. They had us checkout for 10 am in order to clean the rooms and setup for the next group of tourist.

Leon and I had a great time chatting about our military careers and also discussing the French way of life. I didn’t mention this before… I don’t think, but everything thing shuts down from 12 noon to 2 pm.

Oh yes, one last thing that was on my mission list… if you remember, was for me to get a picture with a gendarme. Not only did I get a picture, but on a different occasion Helen did also.

We went through customs with nothing more to declare than two baguette breads. On boarding the ship, we noticed that the crew was not standing at the front of the passenger area. The trip back to Newfoundland was as smooth as glass.

We invited Catherine and Leon to visit us back in Berlin, if they are ever that way. I know Leon will be reading this blog and I must say, I truly enjoyed talking to him. I enjoyed his accent especially how he would hold his last word of a sentence.  If you ever heard Forest Gump say…and that’s all I have to say about thattttttttt. We parted ways in the parking lot. We headed up the road and parked off the highway for the night!

That is what we did and saw!