When I first traveled with my educator parents, they determined the destinations and introduced me to their favorite cities as well as a few cities on their Bucket List. While at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, I traveled to see great architecture across Europe Then later, I traveled to see a specific form of architecture – exhibits in museums.

 

Having visited great architecture and great museums in 117 countries, I hate to admit it, but I became a “travel snob.”   If there is no great architecture and there are no great museums, I’ll skip it.    Therefore, I have never seen the Grand Canyon, never been to any national park and never been to the Caribbean.   I have flown over the Grand Canyon many times.  If the cliffs on the Grand Canyon had carved busts like Mount Rushmore and its Presidents, I might have been in more of a rush to visit it.  If a national park were like Manhattan’s Central Park – bound by great museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the East and the American Museum of Natural History in the West, I’d have visited every national park.

 

When I tell people that “I’ve never been to the Caribbean” they’re in awe – as in “awful.”   I have lectured on visiting “Cities with Beaches,” such as Nice (France), Rio de Janeiro and Chicago.  The “city with beach” solution solves the problem for couples where one person loves the beach and the other loves museums.  However, to me Caribbean Islands were primarily just beaches.  I couldn’t see being beached on a beach for a whole day and a whole vacation.   (Shame on me for adhering to travel stereotypes).

 

However, this European travel expert (who even leads tourist-office press trips to Europe) is now viewing the Caribbean in a whole new light – as “European” – “Colonial European.”    When I was 8 my parents took me to Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia – I was enchanted.  I was too young to even realize that what I saw was really English “Georgian Architecture” but on a smaller scale – “Colonial English Architecture.”  Now let’s adapt that early rapturous Virginia travel experience to the Caribbean.

 

I’ve decided to take a new look at the Caribbean islands instead of merely beaches with the “3 Ss” – Swimming, Snorkeling and Sunbathing.  Just as I discovered in Colonial Williamsburg, the Caribbean islands are also colonial outposts of the colonial culture of France, the Netherlands and the Great Britain and reflect the architecture and culture of their “Founding Fathers — and Mothers.”

 

The French Island of Martinique has many sites that are compelling to this architectural historian.   In 1886 a massive iron structure was created in France and then shipped to the US to be reassembled.    You guessed it, the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.   Martinique’s unique Schoelcher Library has a history similar to Ms. Liberty’s.   The all-metal library was created and assembled in France as a pavilion for the 1889 Paris Exposition celebrating the Centennial of the French Revolution and the rise of another metal structure for that event – the Eiffel Tower.  This world’s fair building, like Ms. Liberty, was taken apart and also reassembled in the New World, the French Caribbean.

 

Martinique also is the birthplace of Josephine Bonaparte (Napoleon’s first wife) in an estate her father called “Malmaison,” which you can visit.  I must visit Martinique’s Malmaison before I return to the magnificently decorated home of Napoleon and Josephine just outside Paris, the more famous “Malmaison.”    (See photo.)

 

Paris’ most famous site, the Eiffel Tower, would be very difficult to take apart and reassemble in Martinique.   However, if you visit the church of Saint Louis that’s the impression you’ll get upon entering the church’s interior and viewing its crossbeams and columns that look as if they came off the Eiffel Tower, constructed just a few years earlier.

 

Another French Island, also still a possession of France and part of the EU, is Guadelupe.   Early in this century I created an idea for a Detroit PBS travel series, “Location Vacation” – filming where movies were filmed around the world.  Sadly, at that time movie companies were charging PBS too much for clips.  Today with movie theaters closing, those movie companies would probably just give movie clips away.

 

One of my favorite BBC TV mystery series, “Death in Paradise” (Amazon Prime in the US), was filmed in Guadelupe.  And for those who like the series as much as I do, there are “Location Vacation” tours with a church doubling for the series’ police station.  How’s that for combining religion with politics?

 

America’s New Orleans was also a French colony. I really like the architecture of New Orleans Bourbon Street with the emphasis on wide hangovers — second-story balconies. Marigot the capital city, of France’s St. Martin, has similar architecture. I’d like to see Marigot’s buildings’ hangovers rather than drink too much there and see my hangover.

 

Just as the French Caribbean is part of France, the Dutch Caribbean is part of the Netherlands.   When I led a press trip to Indonesia, I especially enjoyed its Dutch Architecture.   Good news!  You needn’t travel half-way around the world for a Dutch treat.  Instead, a visit to the much nearer Dutch Caribbean Islands of Curacao and Aruba should prove even more rewarding. In fact, if you’re in Marigot in French St. Martin, you can travel just a few miles south to see the Dutch side of the same island, which they call “St. Maarten.” In Europe if you want to travel from France to see Dutch architecture and art, you have go through Belgium; in the Caribbean you can even walk from one country to the other.

 

The most picturesque Dutch Caribbean Island is Curacao, Since Amsterdam was the home of Anne Frank, I was also very moved by its old Amsterdam Synagogue.  Willemstad, Curacao has a site that sets a record.  The Mikve Israel-Emanuel Synagogue is the oldest continually functioning synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, dating from 1732 (the year of George Washington’s birth).    Looking at the photos of Dutch Willemstad’s brightly painted Dutch Colonial buildings, with Amsterdam-like gables, I believe I saw what another Dutch colony, “New Amsterdam” on another island – Manhattan, would have looked like had the Dutch not surrendered it to the British in 1664.

 

And if you like brightly the painted Colonial Dutch buildings of Curacao, it’s worth a stop at yet another Dutch island, Aruba.  Oranjestad (meaning “orange town,” named after the Dutch ruling royal family, the House of Orange), Aruba, which also has picturesque gabled, pastel Dutch Colonial buildings.  (And in keeping with its orange name, it’s even got a few orange-pastel buildings, too.)
When I was 9 years old, my parents took me on my first trip to Canada.  One of my favorite sites was a stop on the way back at New York’s Fort Ticonderoga.  Now let’s visit the British Caribbean Island  St. Kitts, which is called, ‘The Gibraltar of the Caribbean” with a terrific UNESCO site with the 18th-century Brimstone Hill Fortress dominating the Caribbean Ocean for miles.  Besides the actual fortress at the end of the cliff – on a mountain overlooking the fortress is Fort George Citadel, a magnificent polygonal structure — a building to look up to in many ways.

 

When I was a teen on my first trip to London – my most memorable site was the mid-19th-century Houses of Parliament in Victorian Neo-Gothic style. (And not just because the architect’s name was “Barry.”)  Bridgeton, Barbados has its own 19th-century Neo-Gothic Parliament.   Just as London’s Houses of Parliament’s tower dominates its 19th-century building, so does Barbados’ Parliament Tower. To me, it’s worth the trip just to see the British-style Parliament building’s Neo Gothic windows with – shutters – to keep out the hot sun.

 

I left out a great Spanish Caribbean city that was once a Spanish colony – San Juan, Puerto Rico, which is an American city in an American territory.  It looks even more Spanish Colonial than my favorite Spanish city in an American state, St. Augustine, Florida.

 

Please note that this column on the Colonial Caribbean didn’t include a single Caribbean beach.  I just added all of the French, British and Dutch Colonial islands to my “Bucket List” and took them off my “Fu_ket List.”    .