Up for an early breakfast, then checkout and head down to the harbour for the ferry across to St. Pierre. The ferry was a large catamaran looking more like a private yacht. The journey took about 50 minutes at 50Km/h, and apart from some nice swells close into shore it was a fairly smooth crossing (what a shame!).
We arrived pretty much in the city centre of this island with a population of 6500. 
Immediately we appeared to be transformed from North America to rural Europe, narrow, hill cobbled streets in some areas, with house doors opening directly to the road. The only difference being that many of these houses are brightly coloured. The voltage is standard 220v / 50Hz as in Europe, the phone numbers are all French and even the cars carry EU licence plates.
The internet here has been hijacked by two high school soft ball teams so I am going to call it quits for now, I’ll finish this off tomorrow sometime. In the meantime some reading on the history of the Islands: READ ME.
OK, kids have now invaded the breakfast room, luckily we got there while supplies lasted! You can still read about St. Pierre from the link above, it will save me some typing.
We walked all around the “downtown” area just taking in the ambiance. The place was amazingly busy, not with tourists, but with locals going about their daily lives. Then at noon, someone pulled the plug. People disappeared, stores closed, there was no more traffic… it was siesta time or whatever the French call it. No more activity for a couple of hours, with of course the exception of restaurants. Below are a few more general pictures.
They Like Their Colours
Church
We headed off to lunch, and met up with the two couples who were at the B&B with us! They are staying on the islands for a few days.
After lunch we headed back to the tourist information office to catch the hop-on-hop-off bus, well the St Pierre equivalent, a mini van. We were given a tour of the island, that is the parts where there are roads, which isn’t very much. The island produces it’s own hydro and and drinking water, and all houses are connected to these utilities. Kids go to school on the island up to the end of high school, then it’s off to university in France. All schooling is free, and the kids get one free trip home from university each year. We asked a number of people what the main source of employment was, and we never got a straight answer, but I think it goes something like Federal government, followed by Island government to support the Feds, followed by Municipal Government to support the Island government to support the Feds, followed by Public Works to support everyone leaving 1 person to do the rest of the work.
More pictures.
Hospital
Specialist are flown to the Islands from France every two weeks to support the local doctors.
Local Fishing Boat (Dorey)
Site of the Old Fort
All in all I am glad we did the trip, it had it’s ups and downs with the weather and the ferry cancellation, but that also had positive side effects as I said yesterday.
We headed back to Canada, where we had to endure the slowest customs agent in the universe, I am convinced he got paid by the hour, and the slower he worked the more he earned.
The Ferry
Sorry if this is more disjointed than usual, but the internet was a pin to deal with and I kept losing bits of the text.