Papeete: the market of the Pacific

The Papeete Market, spread over two floors in the heart of the city, sells tiare flowers, local vanilla and hand-painted pareo cloths alongside fish just unloaded from fishing boats at the nearby port.

The Cathedral of Notre-Dame, built in the mid-nineteenth century, preserves paintings that reinterpret biblical scenes set in the Tahitian landscape, with palm trees and lagoons replacing the original Middle Eastern settings.

The Bougainville Park, along the city's waterfront, is named after the French explorer who in 1768 was among the first Europeans to describe Tahiti as an earthly paradise to his continent.

The harbor waterfront, where each evening food trucks called roulottes gather, offers local and Chinese cuisine side by side in front of moored boats.

The food trucks that gather every evening on the harbor tell a daily Tahiti far different from the postcards of empty beaches with which the island is usually depicted elsewhere.

The park dedicated to Bougainville instead reminds us where that image of paradise actually came from, more than two and a half centuries ago.