2 Best Sights in Castries, Saint Lucia

Under a brilliant orange roof, this bustling market is at its liveliest on Saturday morning, when farmers bring their produce and spices to town, as they have for more than a century. (It's closed Sunday.) Next door to the produce market is the Craft Market, where you can buy pottery, wood carvings, handwoven straw articles, and innumerable souvenirs, trinkets, and gewgaws. At the Vendors' Arcade, across Peynier Street from the Craft Market, you'll find still more handicrafts and souvenirs.

The city's green oasis, bordered by Brazil, Laborie, Micoud, and Bourbon streets, was formerly called Columbus Square but was renamed to honor the late Sir Derek Walcott, the hometown poet who won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature and one of two Nobel laureates from Saint Lucia. (The late Sir W. Arthur Lewis won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Economics.) Some of the 19th-century buildings that have survived fire, wind, and rain can be seen on Brazil Street, the square's southern border. On the Laborie Street side, there's a huge 400-year-old samaan (monkey pod) tree with leafy branches that shade a good portion of the square.