New Plan: Saint Pierre, France

 The Captain came on the speaker in the cabin last night after I posted my day's blog.  That's never a good sign.  Most announcements are made only over the speakers in the common areas and they only disturb passengers in the cabin for something serious.  So last night he announced that in consultation with bar pilots, the people at headquarters in Miami, and his own staff, it has been decided to skip Greenland altogether.  We were to go to two ports, Nuuk and Paamiut, and sail the Prince Christian Fjord.  The forecast for the next few days is for high winds and seas and there is ice in the area, so in the interest of safety, we will pass on Greenland. This is a bit disappointing, but understandable.  We have been to one port in Greenland before but were looking forward to seeing others.  Ah well, ship happens.  So now we will sail to Saint-Pierre, France which is an island about 20 km off the south-central coast of Newfoundland.  We've never heard of it but it sounds like an adventure, so off we go.  And, interestingly, although it is longitudinally in line with the center of the island of Newfoundland, the time is 30 minutes later.  So when it is noon at St. John's (to the east) it is 12:30 pm in Saint Pierre.  Sounds like the French making sure they aren't in line with the Crown.

This morning was leisurely including another lecture on the Vikings, this time by Diana Preston.  It covered the same things as the lecture the other day, but her presentation was a bit easier to follow.

We docked at 2 pm and took a walk into town, about 30 minutes.  There is really not a lot going on here.  The latest census from 2016 had only about 6,000 people.  There are 2 main islands, this one and Miquelon, which make up the Territorial Collectivity (basically a colony of France).  Saint Pierre is the smaller with only about 26 sq mi but has the vast majority of the population.  They have a bit of tourism (including 11 ships a year) and some fishing, but other than that ...  Anyway, it seems a sweet place to visit once.  While I was waiting outside for Michael to use the toilet at the ferry building, I witnessed two people leave their parked cars running while they ran inside for something.   It turned out to be another beautiful day for the weather so we shed our coats as we walked around town.

The Ford dealership.  Couldn't tell if it was in business.

Wood garbage container with recycling bin attached.  The wooden bins were in various shapes at different houses.

Typical home

Children's carousel in center of town

Saint Pierre is the bottom island.

While in town we discovered that the ship had arranged for a local school bus to be used as a shuttle, so we caught that back to the ship. 

Dinner tonight in Compass Rose with Mary and Jack from Arizona.  I learned that they are in a trivia team of only 4 so I said I'd join them tomorrow.  And we actually made it to the show tonight.  Nicky Bennett from Newcastle is a singer of classics, mostly from Divas.  She was quite good, I just wish the band was a bit more in the background.