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Martinique #2
Dec 08 - Dec 30 2022
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1
Sainte-Anne
Dec 08 2022

After months and months around British islands, we were ready for French wine, cheese and baguettes. Martinique, here we come!

How you doin?

We’re just warming up

St Anne by night

Our baby captain, right before he lost his drivers licence

With Grandma and grandpa en route to Martinique, we had to declutter boys bedroom, so they didn’t need a shovel to find a bed.

Before

Midway

Ready for guests

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2
C4R8+F8 Sainte-Anne, Martinique
Dec 12 2022

Long awaited day finally came. Grandma and Grandpa arrived in St Anne. They immediately started socialising with the crew.

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3
C4R8+C5 Sainte-Anne, Martinique
Dec 13 2022

As soon as Grandma and Grandpa got their official safety training, as well as explanation of other dos and donts, we put them to work. Chop chop, Christmas is around the corner.

Boys enjoyed playing board games and chess with G-Pa

We all got to socialize with other sailors at a weekly Thursday bbq. Between, Polish, English, South African, Canadian, American, French, German, Duch and few other, we had a pretty diverse crowd with a wide range of languages. Kids were less impress with linguistics so they quickly formed an alliance and walked to the water park, which happened to be closed to the non-paying customers.

Luckily the complimentary rope swing was available to those without income.

Boys couldn’t wait for G-ma to make pierogies. They even helped (with the first batch).

Christmas without cookies and friends decorating them would not be Christmas.

They’re always happy to make Christmas cookies “for Santa”. Too bad no cookies were left for the fatso in red suit.

Sad looking cookies

Shopping with G-ma and educating her on 50 kinds of non-potato potatoes

60 ft above water, fixing the radar like a pro

And the view from up there is breathtaking

No wonder we’re not picking up local chanels

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4
Le Vauclin
Dec 22 2022

The first week of my parents visit went by so fast. We went to te beach, met new friends, made pierogies and even snorkeled on the reef. G-ma discovered that swimming with a snorkeling mask is not that bad, and seeing corals and fish was totally worth the stress of getting into the water (or so we tell her).

We got to visit a small private botanical garden JARDIN de la Mondagne, where the owner didn’t speak a word in English, but was extremely nice, so between google translate and international hand language we had a great tour of his garden, complete with tasting of home made lemongrass tea.

We also visited our favorite rum distillery Habitation Clement, where after visiting the beautiful garden, we got to taste variety of rum and rum punches.

My dad, a social butterfly, took boys to a bakery, and found us some polish friends, Aga, Wojtek and their 3 kiddos: Bruno, Jeremy and Norbi. Sadly, the polish family only visited Martinique for a month, but we had plenty of opportunities to hang out, socialize and practice boys’ Polish. Aga and Wojtek had even more friends Ewa and Dzidek, with their daughter Zosia and 2 sons. The polish crowd was growing.

Sometimes we behaved well

… and sometimes we looked just normal

Happy birthday Bruno

Polish pool party

Serious dabates about life and… who knows what.

Polish gang

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5
Sainte-Anne
Dec 24 2022

Polish Christmas Eve is a big deal. After the whole house gets cleaned spotless, windows are shiny and clean and fresh “firanki” are hanging, we can start making mess and cook Allie there’s no tomorrow. Except tomorrow, we have the Christmas Eve, the first official day when pierogi, karp, poppyseeds and sourkraut can be eaten without limitation and guilt and they don’t add up to our body weight. Wrong!!! Each and every Polish who celebrated Christmas Eve the right way (ate all 12 polish dishes plus some extra helpings because you just can’t say no to pierogi, in 1 sitting, without enema) basically doubles in size within the 3 day long holiday… and for the polish tradition to continue in the Carribean, we sliced, and diced and cooked and spilled and burned and cut and bled for the 12 vegetarian

It’s my personal Christmas tradition. Water has spill when cooking wild forest mushrooms. Christmas would be ruined otherwise.

The next two pictures show sensitive content, that may be traumatizing or disturbing to some people

A piece of a finger that did not end up in a vegetarian dish

Christmas Eve oopsie

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6
ALTITUDE CACAO
Dec 30 2022

My favorite part of visiting tropical islands, are cacao plantations. We got to take my parents to one, \240called Altitude Cacao. The plantation is owned by a very nice couple, that bought it 30 years ago, but didn’t start making chocolate until just a few years ago, as a retirement hobby. They gave us a great tour of their plantation, showed how they made chocolate and let us enjoy samples of fresh fruit, chocolate and rum. They also made some irresistible dark chocolate Nutella.

G-ma and G-pa learning about cacao trees

Watch out, snow

Home made chocolate - from the tree to the table

Specialty chocolate infused rum

Boys didn’t know yet that those oranges were really lemons

Drying cacao beans

We also learned about a very special herb called Leaf of Life. It’s an herb that is used to treat all sorts of ailments, including headache, bumps and even cough. All you have to do is to apply the leaf to the affected area and wait, just like that:

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