French Harbor Morning Fish Market

Wooden sailing boats named Marie-Jeanne, L'Étoile and Stella crowd a stone harbor, their masts rising against a row of stone townhouses with slate and tiled roofs. Striped awnings mark a boulangerie, a poissonnerie and a flower shop along the quay, while red, yellow, blue and green market umbrellas shade stalls of tomatoes, greens and citrus. Wicker baskets and crates hold lobster, crab and silver fish on ice at the dockside, next to sacks labeled fish and salt. Buckets of sunflowers, lavender, geraniums and poppies spill from wooden crates near a stall marked "Fleurs," and bicycles lean against the harbor wall. Shoppers in flat caps and aprons move between the stalls under the Café de l'Ancre sign, while stone houses climb the hillside behind the port. Each stall along the quay keeps to one kind of goods, so a walk down the dock passes fish, then flowers, then fruit in turn.