Castries, Saint Lucia

The square is the historic core and the shaded place to start. It is named for the poet who was born in this city and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and on its eastern side stands the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception — plain enough outside that many visitors walk past it, and startling within: the walls, ceiling and altar are covered in murals by Dunstan St Omer, who painted his figures with Caribbean features in strong ochres, greens and golds. It is the most distinctive interior on the island. Around the square sit some of the few pre-fire buildings left in the centre, along with an enormous samaan tree that has stood there for well over a century.

Two blocks north of the square, the market under its red steel roof is where the city actually meets. Saturday morning is the full version, when growers come in from the interior: mangoes, breadfruit, dasheen, green figs — cooking bananas rather than the fruit an outsider expects by that name — plus cocoa sticks for making cocoa tea at home, bay rum, hot pepper sauce and bundles of herbs sold for their medicine as much as their flavour. An adjoining arcade sells craft and souvenirs at a steadier pace. Prices in the produce hall are what locals pay; in the craft section a polite negotiation is normal. It is a working market first, which is exactly why it is worth an hour.

The road climbs sharply south of the centre to Morne Fortune, the ridge that overlooks the city, and the reason to go up is the panorama: the harbour and its ships directly below, the Vigie peninsula and its airstrip reaching into the sea, and on a clear day the coast running north towards Pigeon Island and, beyond it, Martinique on the horizon. The ridge holds old stone fortifications, now quiet and partly absorbed into a college campus and gardens, along with the official residence grounds. Taxis will wait while you take the view, and most Soufrière-bound tours pause here on the way out of town.

Castries has one of the better natural harbours in the eastern Caribbean, deep and sheltered, which is why cruise ships berth directly beside the town at Pointe Seraphine and La Place Carenage — both duty-free shopping complexes, and both a short water-taxi hop from the market side of the water. That also means the centre's rhythm changes with the shipping: two or three ships in port is a busy, crowded morning, and an empty berth is a quiet town. North of the harbour, the Vigie peninsula carries the regional airstrip along its spine and a long grey-sand beach on its far side, close enough to the centre to reach on foot.

English is the official language and you will not need another, but the language of the yard, the market and the joke is Kwéyòl, a creole built on a French lexical base. It is why the map of an English-speaking island reads the way it does: Soufrière, Gros Piton, Anse La Raye, Vieux Fort, Marigot, Micoud, Choiseul. Visitors with French will catch fragments and mistake the rest, which is the usual and instructive experience. Jounen Kwéyòl, in late October, is the national creole day — dress, food and language celebrated across the island, with the villages taking turns to host, and it is the single best day to be here for the culture rather than the coast.

Green fig and saltfish is the national dish and the thing to order first: boiled green bananas with salted cod, onion and pepper, sold at lunch counters far more often than at hotels. Around it sits a whole everyday kitchen — bouyon, the thick one-pot soup of provisions and meat that Saturday belongs to; callaloo soup; bakes, the fried or roasted breads eaten at breakfast with saltfish; breadfruit roasted over coals; and cocoa tea, which is a spiced drink of real grated cocoa rather than anything like hot chocolate from a packet. The market's food stalls and the small lunch places behind the harbour do all of it better than the tourist strips, and the fish comes in at Vigie and Gros Islet each morning.

Two airports serve the island and the difference matters: George F. L. Charles, on the Vigie peninsula minutes from central Castries, takes regional flights, while long-haul services land at Hewanorra at the island's southern tip, around ninety minutes away by road. Castries itself is walkable, and shared minibuses run frequently to Gros Islet, Rodney Bay and along the coast — cheap, informal and worth trying. Taxis are unmetered, so agree the fare first. Driving is on the LEFT, and the mountain roads take far longer than the distances suggest. From the city, Rodney Bay and Gros Islet are twenty minutes north, Marigot Bay south, and Soufrière and the Pitons about ninety minutes down the west coast.