First stop for us was the Cathedral.
From the outside there is nothing remarkable about this building, in fact it looks like a small provincial church rather than a cathedral. However when you go inside its a different story. It's simply a riot of colourful frescos, stained glass and a quite astonishing painted ceiling.
It is simply lovely, the columns and roof supports are cast iron, the roof is corrugated iron clad on the inside with simple wooden boards, seemingly not a single square inch of which is unpainted.
You can get a real crick in your neck looking around. In the above photo the Saint in the first fresco on the right is St Benedict and the next one along is St Therese de Lisieux. I have to rely on Lynne for in depth information like this.
Hidden in a corner by the door was a statue of St Lucy.
After whom of course St Lucia is named.
We walked back out into the heat and light of Castries, it was a Saturday so the markets were in full swing, the streets crowded with stalls and people. We were given the usual hard sell from the stall holders, we are getting used to this slowly and Lynne has evolved some rules for avoiding hassle.
1/ don't touch merchandise. It's fatal.......
2/ don't look too long at merchandise......
3/ don't stop moving.....
4/ avoid eye contact....
5/ if all else fails chat politely for a minute or so then apologise and claim you have no more room in your luggage for anything and no you don't need any more luggage.......
Theses few rules assimilated it's possible to negotiate the labyrinth of Castries market and hold on to most of your money!
It was while exploring the market we stumbled on Dave and Carol enjoying a beer in one of the many " grog shops" appropriately enough called " Pensioners Corner " .
Just up the way was a band playing a selection of reggae tunes. They were visually impaired and actually quite good when they could stay in tune, we popped a little change in their box anyway......
Of course what Lynne and I really wanted was some fried chicken, you can get four pieces of chicken and chips from the street vendors for $10 EC or £2.50, it's some of the cheapest and tastiest food you'll ever eat. Unfortunately we had to wait 10 mins for ours, freshly cooked and piping hot. Luckily we could sit and wait in the al fresco dining area outside the serving grill.
As well as the main market there are stalls along almost every street, and selling nearly everything. You can get your mobile phone unlocked, root around a mountain of second hand chargers for one for it, get a colourful cover, buy a bag to put it in, some shoes to match the bag.....etc.etc..
And that's before you get to the foodstuffs, almost every vegetable you can think of and some I have still yet to identify are spread out everywhere.
When you get bored of shopping you can just look at the buildings, it has been said of Castries that it lacks a unifying building style, that's true, but the resulting mish mash is very interesting and always surprising. The example above is usually referred to as " gingerbread".
The decoration is sometimes a bit garish, but the colours are always bright.
Of course it being the weekend there a fair number of " tired and emotional " people lying around sleeping one off. But that seems to be part of life in cities.......
Castries is the biggest small town I think we have visited, it's a colourful, noisy, maddening, frantic place that you will either love or hate. I loved it!
Of course we took our eye off the ball and Carole ignored the rules heading back to the dinghy and Dave bought Carole a dress she didn't know she wanted !
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