October 2, 2016. Learning more about St. Pierre

LOCATION:  St. Pierre Island, France.  Off the coast of Newfoundland

WEATHER:  Another unseasonably warm beautiful sunny day. Highs in 60s

We had breakfast, rich French yogurt and slices of a baguette, in the restaurant associated with the hotel where Al Capone purportedly stayed during Prohibition.

At the town's excellent museum, we signed up for a guided tour.  The guide walked us around the museum, explaining the island's history, then took us for a 2-hour walking tour around the town.  

One of the things we learned is that the city used to be quite drab.  Later, homeowners coated their wood houses with cod liver oil as a (stinky) preservative colored with a reddish ocre color.  Colored houses became more popular, and now the French government subsidizes paint, encouraging homeowners to paint their houses in lively colors.

 

We learned about the traditional "tambours", entryways on houses built to keep out the cold.  Tambour means drums.  It is thought the name came from the custom of drumming loudly on the doors to enter the houses.

Our tour guide was excellent.  He was very dramatic...I think he must have attended acting school.

This is the town's main cathedral.

We learned about the island's historic fishing industry.   Since the 1500s, the islands went back and forth between ownership by England and France.  Along with much of Canada, France lost ownership of a lot of the Maritimes, but negotiated to keep St. Pierre et Miquelon due to its rich cod fishing.

Later, cod dwindled and the economy tanked.  In came new prosperity in the form of rum-running during the USA Prohibition era.  Liquor was still legal here, so men like Al Capone ran liquor transport based here.  We saw several liquor warehouses from during that era.

After the tour, we rested in the room, and George watched golf on a USA station, the first USA TV we have seen in 8 months. We haven't missed much.

The entire town was very quiet all day. Its mostly Catholic population rests on Sundays.  Almost everything is closed up.  We had reservations for dinner at one of the only restaurants open on Sundays.  When we arrived, we found it closed due to an emergency.  So, we found another one and shared a delicious French-style pizza.