Monday, July 5 Exploring Papeete

Monday, July 5- Arose to clear skies and met Hil and Ann at 8:30 in front of the hotel and Hil drove us to downtown Papeete. The town is swarming with traffic but we fortunately found an underground garage on the waterfront and an attractive café, Le Retro, on the other side of the street. Once again we had confusion trying to order: I ordered the café breakfast of an omelet, tomatoes and the local dish of raw fish in coconut sauce and Bob ordered a croissant as he expected to share my food, but somehow I ended up with a very plain omelet, some French bread and nothing else and he received two tiny croissants. Even with Hil’s French we couldn’t get any jam.

We set off exploring the small bustling town, stopping in shops to look at the famous, and very expensive, black pearls, and internet café, and recovering from the heat in the cool gardens of the government buildings. We stopped in a nice outdoor café for lunch. Bob and Hil ordered chicken sandwiches which were priced at only $5, very inexpensive for Tahiti, and were presented with foot and a half-long baguettes filled with tomatoes, hard boiled eggs and chicken - very good! I got a salad with goat cheese toasts and Ann got a Greek salad..

After lunch we drove over to the Intercontinental Resort to visit Arnie & Anita and/or Kent & Alice but they were both out. The hotel is much larger than the Radisson and has some bungalows built out over the water. It is also quite French as several of the women sunbathing around the pool were topless!.

We returned home and swam and read until seven when we met up for dinner at the tiny, elegant Restaurant "le 5 sens" at our hotel and had our best meal yet! Crispy duck spring rolls, Thai soup with prawns, grilled beef, banana fritters with vanilla-coconut soup - all great!