Spent a few hours in Akaroa, an ostensibly French town in the caldera of an extinct volcano. There was no one there except for me and about 17 billion other tourists.

The setting is stunning. The rim of the volcano forms a harbor of beautiful blue-green water.

In 1838, Captain Jean François L’Anglois bought most of Banks Peninsula from the Māori, then returned to France to find people willing to start a French colony. The British heard about this and, never missing a chance to stick it to the French, claimed the territory and set up a regional government, which the French colonists found waiting for them when they arrived in 1840. They stayed anyway, and Akaroa became a French town with a Māori name in British territory. Today, though, the only noticeable French influence is some of the street names.