This week’s dream: Martinique, a taste of Europe in the Caribbean
Wishing you could find a Caribbean destination still capable of surprises? asked Eric Lipton in The New York Times. “Martinique is just that kind of place.” On the French-speaking island that remains part of France, the small capital is wealthy enough to support an arts center, the count of all-inclusive resorts stops at one, and “you can go days without running into any Americans.” Despite the island’s sizable population, nearly half its landmass is tropical forest, and when my family and I visited earlier this year, we learned to embrace the unexpected. Once, our GPS told us to cross the mountains to reach the blacksand beaches of Saint-Pierre. After the road instead dead-ended at a trail head, we left behind our beach chairs and took an unplanned hike through towering ferns and wildflowers. “I found myself introducing a new word to our daughters: ‘serendipity.’”
“Again and again we were struck by such sweet surprises.” On Martinique’s east coast, the Caravelle Peninsula offers quiet beaches dappled with tasty lunch spots, plus swaying cane fields and an 18thcentury plantation called Château Dubuc. Near Les Trois-Îlets, a group of small towns on the west side of the island, we found beaches with calmer waters as well as “enough wine bars, high-end restaurants, and boulangeries for any Francophile.” At L’Amandier des Îles, a seafood place right on the beach, we enjoyed an outstanding mahi-mahi with capers, lemon, and onions. The Creole food on the island was generally better than the French bistro fare, yet “it felt like we were in mainland France.”
Martinique, however, also has its own rich history and culture. One day, we met a dance instructor whose small studio offers demonstrations of bèlè, an Afro-Creole drum-and-dance routine that dates to the 1700s but remains popular in certain clubs. In Fort-de-France, the capital, we loved the covered grand market that sells a dizzying array of fruits and vegetables as well as the spices for any attempts at Creole dishes of your own. The city of 80,000 is always lively by day, but “there is nothing pretentious about Martinique. And that is just what I liked about it.”
At Fort-de-France’s Hôtel L’Impératrice (limperatricehotel.fr/en/), doubles start at $179.