Thank God our favourite restaurant was open and we were soothed and satisfied by the silkily delicious food that they provide.  I went for the scallops again  because they are to die for, Bob chose asparagus with that fascinatingly tangy French creamy sauce and Matt had the moules in saffron and cheese, strange but tasty, I tried some.  The boys then went for the fantastic entrecote steak accompanied by a heap of frites while I had the sublime monkfish with saffron sauce.  We couldn’t resist pudding.  I had a tarte tartin all to myself, absolutely no sharing, Bob settled for a creme caramel made with coconut milk and Matt for profiteroles which he had never had before.  A couple of bottles of Muscadet and we were feeling a lot more cheerful.  We all slept exceedingly well.

This morning we awoke to a most beautiful sunny day, blue skies, a new day.  After a relaxed and slow start we set off for a bit of sight seeing, checking in and out most conveniently at the Tourist Information Office very easily, despite the AZERTY keyboard, and picking up the relevant brochures.  We then followed the very helpful woman’s directions to find the car hire place, which took us into parts of St Pierre that we had not visited before, found it (eventually) but there were no cars to hire.  We trekked back to the main part of town and had a beer to think about it.  Deciding on a taxi instead, we were directed by a very helpful chap with dreads to meet a potential candidate.  Imagine the most belligerent Parisian waiter combined with a stony faced Caribbean man.  That was him.  We discussed what we wanted to do but with much shrugging of shoulders and pantomiming grimaces he seemed to find our plans totally unacceptable, the conversation was limited because he spoke not a word of English and my French is somewhat limited.  There was no other taxi drivers so the choices were limited.  With exceedingly bad grace he agreed to take us, and we agreed to go with him.  Our first stop was the rum factory.  We hadn’t asked to go there but it seemed that that was where we going.  Actually it was quite interesting, particularly the sampling of the rum itself and we had a nice lunch of grilled snapper accompanied by a ti punch (rum, lime, cane sugar syrup and masses of ice).  Our next stop was the botanical garden, which we had wanted to visit, with deux minutes spent by the taxi driver attending to his two cows that were tethered at the side of the road.   After a visit to the air conditioned visitor centre, really interesting, we followed a beautiful trail through the rainforest and listened to the call of a bird that sounded like a child hesitantly learning a new instrument.  We then had another deep and meaningful discussion with the taxi driver who declared that we could now visit the volcano (Mount Pelee) which we declared a good idea but were then told that it was too cloudy so we couldn’t.  We returned to St Pierre via a minor road through an incredible river valley, stopping off to say hello to a waterfall, diverting to see the observatory where they monitor Mount Pelee for any further activity, seeing the Fromager tree, the only one to survive the eruption, and taking up a few photo opportunities along the way.  Despite our inability to understand half of what the man said and his super dour demeanour (the only flicker of a smile was when Bob tried to get into the driver’s seat, forgetting that this was a French island, and looked horrified when he was met by the incumbent’s  face) we had really quite a nice time.  Back on WIndy, the rum from the rum factory has been blended with coke and we are relaxing.  Bob hasn’t had his head down a bilge, in an engine or at the bottom of a lazarette all day.