How to get around the world without spending MUCH money

Blimey, but it’s tres cher here in St Pierre et Miquelon. Because everything is imported, but even so. The salaries of the employees here are as inflated as the cost of living, but what do the tourists do? Only gaze in envious awe as the St Pierre townsfolk drive around their tiny city in brand new 4×4′s, doubtless planning extensions to their brightly coloured clapboarded houses or thinking of when they will next visit the brand new hospital- or maybe the vast, heated and under used swimming pool, or perhaps the sparkling Francoforum for language studies.All in all, I’m rather reminded of my visits long ago to the former Soviet Bloc when the denizens rolled around under the impression that everything was sorted, enjoying the myth of 100 per cent employment and inhabiting lovely large State buildings rather cushioned from the reality which was that it had all  come about as a result of the patronage of the State and would collapse the minute the subsidies melted away.

Us? Well, after our swim in the giant empty piscine, we are staying put in our motel room, listening to Michael Rosen’s poems on a CD player and practising days of the week in French. Our nightly menu? Foie gras and brioches? Hardly. Take a look at the photo. That’s what we have eaten now for four nights running. Mega cheap and the kids like it. Salut!