Wanderung 34

Linda and Jerry took off as soon as they could disembark in order to take the tour of Normandy beaches that they had booked. [If we get Linda and Jerry's story of the day, it will be inserted here] I have a harder time emotionally coping with battlefields and war memorials, so we decided to do something different.

We had considered taking the local train over to Bayeux and looking at the tapestry there, but we were pretty worn out after a long, active day in England and instead opted for the relaxed walk around the port city of Cherbourg where the Zuiderdam had docked. In fact, the Zuiderdam had moored alongside the old cruising terminal, which dated at least back to the time of the Titanic disaster in 1912. The old terminal has both been preserved and turned into a maritime museum with a large submarine dry docked at the seaward end of it. That looked interesting, but for our first visit to Cherbourg we decided to walk around the city and get a feel for that.

Fortunately the city government had created a very nice, concise map of downtown Cherbourg and was distributing free copies of it as we exited through the new terminal. Armed with a good local map and having our European GPS zeroed in on Cherbourg, we headed off along the pier to walk to the old town area, which was located across a long, narrow marina.

The first thing we saw was a large, concrete bunker or gun emplacement of some kind, which we assumed dated back to the German occupation of the city during WWII. Such a waste of time, money, effort, and concrete! Just down the quay from that was a small memorial to the victims of the Titanic, which had stopped in Cherbourg to pick up some more passengers before it headed westward to Ireland and its fatal meeting with an iceberg in the North Atlantic. The memorial was nice, but the flowers at the base of the rock were somewhat wilted and I just wish that I had found a shop in town where I could have purchased some nice silk flowers to put there in remembrance of the victims of that disaster.

Crossing Pont Tournant, the swing bridge that separates the Avant Port (outer port?) from the Bassin Du Commeerce (commercial port?), we had a good look at both the outer marina section that opened directly out onto the English Channel and the inner section which contained a nice collection of fairly large sailboats.

We branched right into the Old Town area at a rather large, ornate old Bank building that had been converted into a factory for manufacturing umbrellas, I think! Our port lecturer Ian had explained that a popular romantic movie featuring umbrellas had been filmed in Cherbourg, ultimately making the umbrella the unofficial symbol of the city. Apparently umbrellas are made in Cherbourg to sell to the tourists who have seen that film, although they are reputedly rather expensive.

One block into the city from the marina we came to a the Place de Gaul, a plaza anchored by the Le Trident theatre on one side and a pretty fountain and charming little carousel on the other. Here tourists mingled with the local folks with children, as it was Sunday, and enjoyed the beautiful cool but sunny weather under clear skies.

Then we meandered the Rue des Portes, which had been converted into a pedestrian zone during the day, and into some very narrow but intriguing interior alleyways like the Passage Aubry. We were attracted simply by the cobblestones and the way the light reflected down the covered alleyway , but once inside we were rewarded by seeing some very old buildings that looked like they had been built in Medieval times up against the back of the old stone city wall.

Curling back around Place Notre Dame, where I had expected a church but found a big parking lot instead (Note to self: all Notre Dames are not churches!), we zig-zagged northward to the Baslilique Ste Trinite (Basilica of the Sacred Trinity?), which looked very impressive from the outside, sporting some of the intricate stone carving around the entryway doors. A mass was being held, so we tiptoed silently into the rear of the nave just as the offertory was being collected and taken to the altar by a cute collection of young boys and girls. Trying not to disturb the devotions of the local folks, we tiptoed right back out after a couple of quick pictures.

We crossed the street to a nearby statue of Napoleon on a horse being upstaged by live horses pulling a cart with tourists. I'm not a fan of Napoleon because although he was militarily brilliant, he also single-handedly depopulated France of many of its able-bodied young men in his continual wars plus the final disastrous march into Russia, where he lost well over 400,000 men. But he also didn't deserve to be slowly poisoned to death by the British while incarcerated in St Helena, and some French folks obviously loved Napoleon enough to make and install the large bronze statue there.

We continued walking along the seaside bicycle trail, taking a pedestrian way whenever we could, until we reached the Naval base on one edge of the city. We had hoped that tourists would be allow to wander about the old fortifications there which included a moat and an old, high wall that had a walking path on top, I think. Unfortunately, civilians were not allowed inside as far as we could tell, so we turned back out of the set of ornamental old gates in front and veered straight back into the city rather than take the boulevard trail. That trail was, frankly, rather boring and the intertwining of footpath with bicycle path led to the constant danger of collisions with speeding bicyclists.

Going straight through the small city turned out to be a great decision because we saw a huge variety of old residences on our way back through town. Cherbourg had clearly suffered a lot from the battle for control of the harbor after D-Day in WWII, and we thought that we could clearly see a couple of places where the bombed-out houses had been replaced by modern houses with lower roofs in between the older, taller houses with sharply peaked roofs.

We also came across both a small elementary school, and a larger Lycee or college-prep type of high school similar to the German Gynasium type of high school. Both schools were empty of children as it was Sunday, of course, but were nicely built.

But we needed that little energy boost to walk the final mile or so back to the ship. We were truly footsore, and Monika figured out that we had been continually on our feet for around 4 hours! You really don't notice time passing when you are walking amongst interesting things, I guess. We trudged back up the gangplank, dropped our stuff off in our cabin, and proceeded up to the Lido deck for a belated lunch.

We rested out on the balcony afterwards, and kept a sharp eye on the buses arriving as the time came for the Zuiderdam to sail away. Fortunately, Linda and Jerry made it back on time and we all crowded onto the open bow area to watch the Zuiderdam pull out of the harbor and head out into the channel. Ian was narrating our departure but the quality of the sound out on the bow was poor and we had difficulty making out what he was saying. Apparently, some of the harbor fortifications had been constructed long ago by Napoleon and then added to by subsequent French governments.

Once out to sea, we repaired to the Lido for dinner and a discussion of what Linda and Jerry had seen of the Normandy beaches and adjacent areas. That kept me going for a while, but after dinner Monika and I just collapsed back into our room. I finished bringing the journal up to date and mended a sock, and then we just rested and watched the sun set until it was time to turn in.