St. Lucia - Chocolate, Murals, and Boats

Day 7 – 14 December 2025 – Castries, Saint Lucia

 

We docked at Pointe Seraphine, just outside the capital city of Castries, Saint Lucia.  Many of the islands set up touristy shopping centers right outside the dock, knowing that some tourists want to shop and buy inexpensive souvenirs.

 

This mini mall was designed in traditional island cottage architecture, 
and included a shop "Hotel Chocolat" – they have classes in making chocolate, as well as a full meal where everything is infused with chocolate.  I didn’t sign up for the classes, but tasted their lovely very dark 
chocolate, and promised to buy some on my way back to the ship.

There was a fascinating mural outside a pyramid-shaped building which is the school where children learn French.  St. Lucia was colonized by both the British and the French, with constant changing hands depending who was winning which war.  It was eventually ceded back to Great Britain in 1841, though it became an independent nation in 1979.  Though it is still considered part of the British Commonwealth.

 

Anyway, this mural – the artist seems to have used photos of people, cut somewhat in half.  Each panel shows the top and then the bottom half of the same person, making a quirky and at first confusing line of huge faces.  The colors aren’t realistic, and the style is somewhat like Andy Warhol’s series of pop art portraits – one color for shadows, one color for highlights, one color for background.  (My former students did self-portraits something like these, it’s an interesting project.)  It seems to have been a collaborative project created by local and Caribbean artists, as well as at-risk teens.  VERY cool project!

 

I found a boat harbor just outside the city itself, complete with a homemade bench for viewing the boats.  So I sat and painted an edited image of the scene – focused on a few boats, left out others, and ignored the buildings up and down the hills.  It was a super windy – I couldn’t keep my hat on my head, and when I was sitting on the jerry-rigged bench, my water cup was blown over!  Also waves of ants kept running around on my bench – yikes!  Not sure if they wanted the water, or the watercolor paints (made with honey as a binding material).

 

Once I finished my little painting, I walked back to the mini mall, bought some chocolate bars (made in St. Lucia), and wandered on back to the ship.

 

It was the first night of Chanukah – Lido buffet had potato latkes, jelly doughnuts (sufganiyot), and challah, LOL!  (We laughed because challah, the braided egg bread, is NOT a Chanukah food.  I suspect the kitchen regularly makes challah for the Sabbath service on Friday evenings, so they just made challah as a generic Jewish celebratory food.)

 

The cruise line also set up a room for anyone who wanted to celebrate lighting the Chanukah menorah, complete with an electric menorah so people would just twist the lightbulbs to turn on the right number.  On the first night, 51 people showed up.  (Subsequent nights had fewer people.)

 

I packed my travel menorah – well, part of it.  I took the little metal tubes used to hold the candles, which have magnets on the base.  I found a small metal box, and each evening would set up the metal tubes.  Now, cruise ships pretty much ban anything that could start a fire – open flames, irons, etc.  (I’m not sure about curling irons.)  So I didn’t pack candles for our menorah.  No, I drew and cut out paper “candles” with lit “flames”, colored with marker.  I’d roll up the paper on the bottom of each flame and stuff it into the candle tube.  It was pretty funny looking, but it definitely looked like cartoon candles in the menorah!  All the others who joined in lighting the electric menorah appreciated my homemade candles, so I brought it down for the blessings and Chanukah songs each evening.