Friday: Dave and I arrive in Noumea the capital of New caledonia. This country is owned by the Kanak (local) islander people but was used as a French penitentiary during the French colonisation. Bits and pieces of the land look like Thailand/Malaysia
all the signs here are in French. We check into the hotel La Promenade at 5:30pm. The room is humungous for just 2 of us, with a large combined dining and lounge room, and kitchenette
and a big bed room.
We get the top floor with a large balcony where Dave and I have had coffee and desserts. We had to make a booking for an upgraded room for the 2 for 1 special.
We headed out using our map collected from the airport and our lonely planet guide which recommends this place Casa Italia listed as a must try. Dave sitting by the window.
It was fully booked but we were lucky to get a seat. The menus were in French/Italian or Japanese, waitress thought I was jap! snob owner refused to speak any english even though she knew what we were talking about. Good thing the waitress was very nice and with my limited French i.e. I know food names, fromage = cheese, canard = duck etc.. We ordered yummy duck salad with roasted potatoes, bacon bits and tomato.
Ham/artichoke/olive pizza
And the best lasagne (salmon & prawn) I've ever had.
Not to mention for dessert the best tiramisu.. I'm inspired to try to make it now
Even the warm bread on the side was great!!!! droool... of course we couldn't finish it.
Funny looking pacific francs which are giant sized notes.
Belly full and happy to hit one of the must dos on our first night we headed home for an early night.
Saturday:
We woke up bright and early to be greeted by the fantastic view from our hotel balcony. Our hotel
There was this really cool french restaurant called Le Roof which is in an overwater bungalow..
woohooo.. thinking of going there for dinner one night.
Set off to attempt to take the bus to the city centre, prices are 200 FCP /person fixed price no matter where you're going. Red and white public buses, we noticed only the tourists & the local Kanak people take it, the poshy French drive their Peugeots & Renaults.
We were so hungry so after we ordered a chicken panini and some coffees.. Coffee was disappointing but the bread.. wow! I guess that's what happens when the french are involved.
Full stomached we walked around doing the city walk as recommended in our lonely planet guide.. I kept going off track once I spotted food places. My nose led me to the famous french bakery Boulangerie Marie
the best Baguettes, croissants, eclairs..
My good husband getting me some goodies ..
We followed the recommendations from lonely planet and tried food from the local shops (something like Singapore's kopitiam but no where to sit) poulet au curry ( chicken curry melanesian style) nems ( Vietnamese spring rolls) but missed out on garlic prawns (crevettes).
Its so funny, don't speak a word of french but in these 3 days just to order food I've picked up what is necessary.. Oui means Yes! Duh means two. marche = market, Poisson = fish etc.. plat du jour - meal of the day
Observation: everyone says bonjour to you and are very friendly and helpful(when Dave and I are lost) everyone eats giant baguettes with filling for lunch,life here is very very relaxed people sit in the park in Place de cocotiers for lunch, the french here are super fit, so many hot bods running on the beach, everyone thinks I'm Japanese and we always get bread with our meal, its very strange to see poshy french bakeries and chocolatiers in the midst of some run down old shop houses.
Super marche!!!! Casino Johnston supermarche where you can pay in US,AUD, Euro instead of pacific francs, the tags even show the prices in aussie...I went crazy, Dave had to control me when it comes to food. Wah lau eh.. I bought like the local prawns to try and we paid almost $10 for 10 prawns... so expensive! apparently New caledonian green prawns are smaller than Aussie prawns but taste a lot sweeter.
As expected they have thousands of cheeses in the market
and lots of varieties of salad, terrine and foe graie are sold like it is an everyday commodity. What was gross was that they sold BRAIN, tongue, kidney, liver, rabbit and quail (not that gross) in the supermarket...
Took a siesta midday when we got home and went for a nice long walk by the beach in front of the hotel, it stretches all the way around, took us about 2hours to walk back and forth from our area Anse Vata to Baie de citrons (lemon bay
People playing the local bowls game & so many fit French men and women running and cycling along the bay!
Went home to eat our purchases from the supermarkets and leftover lunch/pizza.. Yum!
Good first 2 days!
Tried making Jamie Oliver's beef stew on the weekend, this apparently is his wife's favourite stew, I used gravy beef instead cos I love the taste of tendon and cartilage that has been cooked to soft jelly..
