One Thursday morning, I was getting up and dressing up for school. When I went to my mom’s room, I saw a suitcase on the floor. Mom, Dad, and Evan told me I would not be going to school because we were going to Martinique for my birthday! I was overjoyed (understatement)! We packed up, ate, went to the airport, and then we were sitting in our airplane and flying through the air.

We landed at 6:30 PM after a 4-hour flight. We were exhausted. We rented a car and drove to the place where we were going to stay. We met the host of our house and checked out the place. It had a balcony from which you could hear and see the waves of the ocean, where we lived. Birds came in to the house to drink water.

The next day when we woke up we were stunned by the view! We could see far, far away into the sea. We could see the island of St. Lucia on the horizon, as well as the famous Diamond Rock and the mountain shaped like a sleeping lady. It was simply amazing.

We went to the pool first thing in the morning (after eating, of course!). The pool was an infinity pool with a view of the ocean and hills. We swam, went to the beach, then back to the pool. I called it the water cycle (ha-ha:). We went along the water cycle the whole day.

On Saturday we took to the water cycle again, but when we went to the beach, we decided to take a walk along it because Dad said that there were palm trees that were bent so that you could climb them. We went and noticed that there were crabs. We went to catch them, like we did in Valencia ( Here’s a link: http://www.optimaltec.com/blog/2017/05/25/crab-catching-on-the-rocks/ ). We caught three, watched them for some time and let them go. When we came to the bent trees, Dad went to get coconuts. The drink was so refreshing! I climbed two palm trees. It was awesome.

The next day we went to Mt. Pelee, the local volcano (you see volcanoes every day, don’t you?). It is a dormant volcano, and it is the highest point of the island. We first went to the museum of vulcanology (). It showed lots of artifacts from the 1902 eruption, where 28,000 people died in 2 minutes. My favorite was a church bell that fell from the bell tower in the eruption and melted a little from the lava. There was also a picture of one of the survivors of the eruption (legend is that only 2 people lived, but it is not true), who lived by being in a poorly ventilated dungeon-like jail cell. Weird, right?

After that we went to see the actual volcano. We couldn’t see the peak because it was covered by the clouds, but I was still excited. We didn’t climb to the peak either, because it was cold for Martinique (normal is about +29 Celsius). We still had an awesome view.

Our last day on the island was MY BIRTHDAY (calm down!) my birthday!! Yes, yes, I know, you are going to comment “Happy ninth birthday!”. Thank you for doing that if you do that/did it. We celebrated by eating French cake, the best ever! I also got a keychain and a 8-color pen, and Evan got a kickboard for swimming. We swam with it all day. It was the best birthday ever!

The next day we were so sad to be leaving. It was so hard to leave!

We had the best time ever in Martinique. We will come back soon!