(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)
I recently reviewed my site traffic and discovered something very interesting about my posts. For the past three years, the most popular ones have been a series of posts I wrote in 2015 on the remote French islands of St. Pierre & Miquelon. The traffic on those posts is remarkable – it far surpasses anything else I’ve written.
I think this is mostly attributable to visitor numbers: millions of people visit places like Switzerland and Italy, but the visitor numbers to St. Pierre & Miquelon are considerably lower. The tourist season is also quite short, with relatively few visitors outside the May to September high season. And, of course, with fewer visitors, there are fewer bloggers. It also didn’t hurt that a St. Pierre & Miquelon discussion group posted a link to one of my articles!
The most popular individual post, by a considerable margin, is my report on Bastille Day 2015 in St. Pierre & Miquelon. Which leads me to a discussion of Bastille Day 2018…because we will once again be in France! As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I found a great summer airfare to Paris for the two of us. At the time, I was still a little unsure of what our itinerary would be for that trip. However, in the meantime, the picture has become considerably clearer.
Lithuania and Latvia remain on hold. Instead, I have booked accommodations in a number of towns in Normandy and Brittany. We will be travelling by train and staying in small and characterful local hotels. And we will be spending this Bastille Day (a.k.a. le 14 juillet) in an ancient Brittany town called Vitré! I didn’t know anything about it until I started researching this trip, but a number of sources (including the Michelin Guide) rank it quite highly. It looks like a great place to spend France’s national day.
Having booked the accommodation, my main task now is continuing to work on my French language skills. For the past month, I’ve been spending at least 30 minutes each day on on-line French courses. Reading French is not a problem but I need to work on the other elements of speaking, listening, and writing. However, with a goal in mind, developing language skills is much more enjoyable!
To celebrate our upcoming trip to France, I’ve included some of my favourite pictures from St. Pierre & Miquelon and my 2014 trip to Reims, France. In the meantime, stay tuned for some general posts about travel and a focus on some local destinations!
My wife and I just returned two weeks ago from our second visit to St. Pierre, our first having been in 1998. It is truly a unique place with a fascinating history, but I’m amazed at how few Canadians outside of Newfoundland (where I’m originally from) have ever heard of it. Back in the pre-internet days, I actually had a Quebecois acquaintance tell me that I was lying about there being a French controlled archipelago a few kilometres off our coast, and that no such place existed! I do hope to be able to celebrate Bastille Day (coincidently my birthday) there some year with a few glasses of vin d’honneur 🙂
It really is an anomaly…but a very interesting one. If you are able to spend Bastille Day there, keep an eye open for the location of the vin d’honneur…there was a lot, but it disappeared very quickly!