St George's
The picturesque hillside town of St George's surrounds a deep
horseshoe-shaped harbour and is widely regarded as one of the prettiest spots in
the Caribbean. It has a charming setting, steep twisting streets and pastel-hued
19th-century Creole houses, many of them roofed with red fishscale tiles brought
over as ballast on ships from Europe. Cargo vessels, cruise ships and
colourfully painted wooden schooners from Carriacou dock in the busy harbour,
known as the Carenage. It's surrounded by mercantile houses, warehouses and
quayside cafes, then by the steeply tiered streets of St George's and, finally,
backed by Grenada's lush green hills.
The winding maze of streets and alleys on the west side of the
Carenage are fun to wander around; check out the policemen directing traffic at
blind street corners. The Grenada National Museum in the centre of town
incorporates an old French barracks dating from 1704. Its hotchpotch of exhibits
include fragments of Amerindian pottery, an old rum still and a grubby marble
bathtub that once belonged to Empress Josephine.
The hilltop Fort George, established by the French in 1705, has fine
views from the harbour's western promontory across the town's red-tiled roofs
and church spires and over the Carenage. In the fort's inner compound you can
see the bullet holes in the basketball pole made by the firing squad that
executed Maurice Bishop. The spot is marked by fading graffiti reading 'No Pain
No Gain Brother.'
The late-18th-century Fort Frederick protects the harbour's eastern
entrance and has panoramic views of Grenada's southwestern coastline. The fort
is well intact, thanks in part to a tragic targeting blunder made during the US
invasion of 1983. The US intended to hit Fort Frederick but mistakenly bombed
Fort Matthew, just a few hundred yards to the north, which was being used as a
mental hospital at the time of the attack.
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