All I Knew About Cherbourg Was a Pretentious Film About Rain or Something

Little Cherbourg was not impressive as we docked at the venerable passenger terminal pier, the departure point of many ocean crossings during the first half of the 20th Century

No, no, it's really Silver Whisper we've come on

Cotentin Peninsula seaside towns were really lovely from the tour bus

The tour guide was a more precise driver than historian as we transited a small town on the way to the "second largest lighthouse in France."

All the statistics of this lighthouse were inspired by the calendar, or so it seemed

Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue's name was inspired by a 1692 battle. This oyster village's harbor was the first to be freed by allied forces in 1944.

I want the rabbit chopped liver. 

St-Vaast's major product for sale

Downtown Cherbourg was pleasant enough for a short walk

Sweet breads with cream is today's special at this Cherbourg cafe

These ramps and nearby terminal were used by trans-Atlantic passenger steamers including the Titanic on its only stop in France. Note Silver Whisper at left choosing to use its own ramp (with elegant astroturf carpet).

Thursday - 15 May 2014 - Cherbourg, France

Shortly after boarding Silver Whisper in Lisbon we were advised that the St. Malo port call had been cancelled due to "a damaged pier". Cherbourg would be substituted for today, the last day of the cruise. A quick look at the map indicated that while the distance from Bordeaux to Cherbourg was similar to the distance to St. Malo, the crossing from Cherbourg to Southampton would be considerably less from this stop. So we were now going to Normandy instead of Brittany and might stay a bit longer in port. 

With an early 7 am arrival, the timing was as expected. The town looked mighty underwhelming, and the now 11 pm departure from Cherbourg would allow for a morning tour and plenty of time to pack for disembarkation the next morning as well as to visit the town before sailing. See, I still plan when I'm on a cruise. It's just very linear.

We blew the rest of our on-board credit on a morning excursion of the Cotentin Peninsular, the protuberance of "Lower Normandy" that is in the North of France and actually further north than the British Isle of Jersey. Before boarding the tour bus, we noticed an alarming sign and hoped that Silver Whisper was not being confused with a ship that had sailed out of this very pier 102 years and some weeks earlier. 

During the drive through the lovely Normandy seaside, the tour guide/bus driver regaled us with an alternative history of the Battle of Hastings, clearly at a different place than the one Barbara and I visited a couple of years ago in England. The winner was the same, but the details of the war were very different. No matter, the lovely French accent and the excesses of the previous evening made it easy to nap on the bus.

We did pass through some lovely seaside towns and made a detour off the main road through a small town that tour buses were not really designed for in order to stop at a very large lighthouse. The guide explained that there are "365 steps to the top, like the days in the year; 12 stories, like the months in the year; and you can see the light from 7 kilometers out to sea, like the days in the week", or maybe it was 52 kilometers, like the weeks in the year, or maybe 57 kilometers like the degrees in a radian. I forgot already. At any rate, such time wasting "photo stops" do not bode well for the rest of the tour. But after "looking up" at the lighthouse, things looked up. 

After another half hour or so of farms and sea landscapes we stopped at the fishing village of Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue. This is the location of a great amount of oyster farming. We didn't see the oyster farms from the shore, but we saw lots of authentic looking fishermen and a bunch of tourist oriented expensive food shops as well as fish markets featuring the town's major product. 

We returned to a narration of the history of Cherbourg which included mention of the overrated 1964 movie and learned that Cherbourg had the "largest man made harbor in Europe" (due to a set of very long manufactured sea walls.) The town had apparently not fared well during WW II, the harbor and associated navy base being a choice target for the Allies. No mention was made of the famous beaches of Utah and Omaha which were just a short distance south of Saint-Vasst. Guess this tour was not the guide's major gig. Perhaps he was better versed on St. Malo.

Returning to Cherbourg we had lunch and packed as planned and headed into town for a nice walk. The town was nice enough, what little of it there is. We passed a cafe promising a special of sweetbreads in cream sauce. Sure beats what seems like the world wide touristic fare of mojitos and pizza we've seen advertised everywhere else we've been. The French have very high standards in theirs as well as others behavior.

We walked back through the docklands to Silver Whisper for the last time on this cruise in time for cocktails and stopped to admire the actual ramps used by Titanic on its first stop after leaving Belfast on its only journey. (Silver Whisper's crew decided to employ the ship's own ramp instead. Maybe a superstition thing.) This dock was the last one of Titanic in France, of course, but also of our cruise as we arrived in Southampton pre-dawn the next morning and returned to Boulder the same (long) day.