Monday 7 July

(Another honeymoon posting)
We started off the day relaxing around the pool at the hotel, Rachel reading her book and me learning Talmud, when it began raining, so we went to a table beneath the canopy. That is, until the wind took the rain more horizontally, so we then went inside and sat on couches in the empty hotel restaurant, with the rain falling around us.
After learning, I then went back to the hotel room and set out to get an electric adapter. After walking about a half hour, I arrived at the hardware store, but it wouldn't reopen [from lunch break] until an hour later. It wouldn't make sense to go back to the hotel and back, so I continued walking into town, looking for a place that would sell adapters. Although I found no such place, I did get to see how small Ste. Anne, the nearby town, was. I then returned to the hardware store, getting an adapter and a file to get it to properly receive cords. I then walked back to the hotel and we relaxed and read in the afternoon.
In the evening, we showered up and headed back to Bas-du-Fort to go to the kosher restaurant for dinner. We took a taxi and went to the gate of Fort Fleur de l'Éépe, finding that it had closed one hour prior. Not that it mattered, though, since we weren't there for that, anyways, and we probably only missed out on a great view.
Up until this point, this day was the most relaxing day of our trip.
We then headed down the road to hopefully find the kosher restaurant beneath the synagogue. We didn't see a restaurant, so I went up to the synagogue (Or Sameah). When I arrived, I found them about to pray minhah, so I joined them. Between minhah and ma'ariv (the evening prayer service) (or 'arvit), I inquired of someone regarding food. It turns out that there is a restaurant open for lunch, but not for dinner. But, after talking to this person, I was able to talk to the pizza maker. So, we returned for 'arvit. At 'arvit, not only were there many more men, but there were also a lot of women who showed up (and there were none for minhah). Afterwards, the rabbi, Rabbi Benisty spoke and I thought we would then get pizza. Nope. Another guy got up to speak for 5-10 minutes. And then another, at which point I left, mainly because I didn't know what was going on and to check on Rachel, but also because I was too hungry to try and concentrate on the words I could understand. After departing, we asked what was going on. Apparently, a community member had died eight days prior and this was a special evening for him. Had we only known. Then the pizza maker lady informed us that she had to set up food to follow the speaking.
Finally, at 8:20, we went with the pizza maker lady, her husband, and three small kids into their car for a brief car ride to their apartment. She told us that they had had a dairy/pizza restaurant up until four months ago, but there were not enough people interested in keeping kosher for dairy, but they are interested in making sure that the meat they eat is kosher (although there are people like that in America who do that, I realized that halav stam is in America, but not Guadeloupe, France, etc., so kosher cheese and milk are neither common, nor inexpensive), so she didn't have enough business to keep her pizza store going. When we arrived at their apartment, we saw that they still had all of the equipment from the restaurant at their house, including the refrigerator for drinks (a "souvenir", said the pizza maker's husband). We chatted mostly with the pizza maker's husband while she made the pizza, speaking in Hebrew, French and, when necessary, English. At almost nine o'clock, the pizza was ready, although, for the two medium-sized plain pizzas (or, as Rachel called them, personal pizzas), it cost 26€ (although, I figured, the cheese had to be what was particularly costly about it, having to be halav Yisrael, coming from, perhaps, France). On our way out, the pizza maker's husband told us that the blessing on the pizza was mezonot.
We then got a taxi to take us back to the hotel.
Upon our return, we ate our pizzas (three and a half hours after we had planned to eat dinner), which were actually tasty.
We were kind of tired and Rachel fell asleep, whilst I watched a movie I would never have otherwise watched or of which I have heard - Raw Deal, a 1980s Schwarzenegger movie (which made me appreciate his acting in 1990s movies).