Chris & Kelly's Travel Adventures
Day 4: Monday, Aug. 14
Guernsey — St. Peter Port and Castle Cornet
Chris, Dad and Sandy wanted to explore this port, but I needed a decompress day. So I decided to stay aboard ship and explore it more, discovering some of my favorite places (which I would use a lot more throughout our cruise):the gym, the international cafe, the library, a gelato shop and the walking deck. And I even did a load of laundry!
St. Peter Port
As it turned out, all the tours offered by the cruise line were completely booked, so instead we hired a local company, Guernsey Tours, directly. Our local guide was a very personable young man who had grown up on the island. He met us (Dad, Sandy and Chris) promptly at the St. Peter Port dock and gave us a good half-day look-see (and for a much cheaper price than the cruise-sponsored tours).
Next our guide took us across the waterfront esplanade, which, like everywhere else you look, is decked out with flowers.
Even the public mailboxes are beautifully kept
—even decorated with a bit of knitted whimsy....
Our first stop was at the harborside WWII memorial, the Liberation Monument. (That's our guide on the steps, facing our little group.)
Like all the Channel Islands Guernsey was occupied by German forces during the war. (A recent film about that is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.)
This long, sweeping pavilion commemorates the suffering—and the liberation. The standing obelisk acts as a sundial whose shadow falls, at certain days and times, onto notable names and dates etched into the marble.
Everything is uphill from the water, of course. The town is stacked up on the hillsides, and so often it's easier to climb stairs between the main avenues rather than hike up steep cross-streets.
This view from High Street, looking back down to the harbor, also shows Victoria Marina, an artificial "harbor within a harbor." (The boats nearest you are moored inside it.)
It's a basin that's been built like a giant bathtub with a notch on the outer edge. You can't see the notch in this shot, but you can see the outer rim of the "tub" (with vehicles parked on it), and the outer harbor beyond.
Whereas a bare beach would be dry at low tide, the "bathtub" still retains enough seawater then to keep smaller boats afloat; they can't leave this basin until the next rising tide floods into it and raises the water level.
High Street was also where our guide gave us some basic background about Guernsey. It's a British protectorate ("crown dependency"), but its roots are Norman (French and Danish/Viking). Its currency is the British pound.
The other major Channel Island is a separate crown dependency: Jersey. These two are semi-friendly rivals. Jersey residents call Guernsey residents "donkeys." Originally, it was descriptive of the necessary mode of transport for goods up and down the steep hillsides around the harbor. Now it's just a snarky nickname.
Guernsey's tax laws make it an attractive place to bank and manage money; financial services are a big part of the local economy.
So it's a small place, but prosperous. There's even airline service to the island, though it's just one plane that flies back and forth to England. (During the tour, we saw it approach to land; later, it departed again.)
The Moores Hotel has this painted mural depicting some of Guernsey's more famous citizens, including Victor Hugo (far right), who wrote Les Miserables, among other works, during his 15 years of exile on the island.
At the lower (south) end of High Street, we stopped at the historic Town Church, which also serves as a sort of civic hub that hosts concerts and other events—all surrounded by beautiful stained glass.
Then stepping back outside the church, we saw this pub, the Albion House Tavern, nearby. Very nearby....
That's the pub on the left, and the church on the right.
And there's an official placard on the outside wall of the pub.
Well, this we had to sample....
We knew we'd be going out to see Castle Cornet first, but this seemed a cozy place to seek out later for a hot lunch on a cold, rainy day.
We planned to return.
Castle Cornet
There's no doubt about the purpose (and success) of Castle Cornet. It sits on a promontory overlooking the coastline behind it, as well as the main harbor of St. Peter Port. The castle's lookouts and cannons could guard all.
To reach the castle, we had to walk out from town over a long, exposed causeway (at lower left on the sign below).
At the castle, we toured the ramparts and admired the view. We had arrived just before 1:00—in time for the daily ceremonial gun salute, when a cannon is fired to let everyone adjust their clocks. So we stayed for that (rain pretty well pouring), then had a good look around the gardens and inner buildings, which were the offices and residences.
With the drenching rain and long walk to retrace our steps back uptown, we decided to skip the pub lunch and just get back to the dock. Hopefully we could catch a tender promptly out to the ship and have a good hot lunch onboard.
Hopefully....
"Meanwhile, back at the ranch...," I had me a "puttering" day—I went 'splorin' around the ship...
One of my first discoveries was the gym. (I took this pic when we were first onboard but I hadn't really done much more than look in one door.) It is a very well equipped facility—really great! There are treadmills, stairmasters, rowers, ellipticals, stationary bikes, weight machines, and sets of free weights—all in a big space with daylight windows. There are also inner rooms for stretching and yoga classes, plus lockers, showers and sauna facilities.
And speaking of "cleaning up afterwards," I should also put in a good word here about the laundry options onboard—also quite accommodating. Laundry rooms with washers, dryers, and even ironing boards are centrally located on each stateroom room deck, and they are very easy to use. You can use your medallion to obtain special tokens for the machines and to buy soap.
This was a big plus, especially for us on our extended 21-day trip, because it allowed us to pack fewer clothes. An added bonus: Because we had booked rooms amidships (to reduce sea motion in case of choppy water), our laundry room was just steps away down the corridor.
The International Cafe is my favorite place on the ship—and although it's located right on the floor of the central atrium, few passengers seem to realize how good it is.
It's open 24/7 and offers specialty coffees and teas, plus small sandwiches, mini desserts and some good, healthful breakfast offerings.
On many mornings before we went ashore, I'd have them pack me several to-go sandwiches (all no-charge with our meal plan ;).
Ah, but never mind breakfast.... You can also find premium dessert cake choices here....
Trust me—these slices of seven-layer cake, as tall as a dinner plate is wide, are worth it!
The red velvet cake (bottom shelf at left) was quite righteously good, for sure.
But the real scandal was the fudge-chocolate cake (middle shelf). I must have had a slice of that at least 8 times in 12 days! :D Chris agreed and in fact developed his own well-fed addiction.
In fact, he reported, every time he was ferrying one or more slices from that cafe's counter back up to our room, invariably in the elevator he'd get people crowding around, drooling and joking and demanding to know where that cake was to be had.
As I say, for some reason, the International Cafe was a "secret in plain sight." Go figure.
When It Rains, It Pours
Lots of good things to see and do, of course, but still we just couldn't seem to shake the "snafu deluge." Ever since the Boston airport mess, things large and small seemed to go awry along the way, and sure enough, it was another "roll with the punches" day today.
The first issue could have been a lot more serious if the weather had decided to get really nasty.
It decided to settle for only somewhat nasty....
To shuttle back out to the ship, Chris, Dad and Sandy were due to board a tender boat leaving the shore dock no later than 2 pm. At 1:30 pm, the ship's captain announced over the intercom that the windy rain storm had produced such high waves that no more tenders would be sent out from the ship; those already enroute back/forth would be held at the ship or dock. All passengers still ashore (that was many of the official cruise tours as well as private-tour parties like ours) would have to remain there until the weather calmed down a bit.
We don't know what the plan would have been if the storm had worsened. The cruise line is responsible for all aspects of the officially-sponsored tours, so they would have needed to alter the ship schedule or something—couldn't just strand everyone overnight while the ship sailed away.
The rain and wind gradually tapered off, though, so the tenders resumed their trips. But meanwhile, passengers were queued up for a quarter-mile on the dock and down the street, for over an hour. It was still raining much of that time, and Sandy's feet were hurting. But someone was nice enough to find her a place to sit; Chris and Dad held their place in line, trading humorous chat with fellow passengers and the cruise guides.
Chris hadn't told anyone yet, but that morning on the tender boat headed ashore, he began to feel a head cold coming on. It was in full rage by the time finally made it back on the ship, so Chris took cold meds and went to bed, skipping dinner.
The headcold thing became an unwelcome pattern over the next few days; one by one, we each came down with it to some degree. We did manage to knock the symptoms back enough to take day excursions still, but by evening, having just three of us together at dinner became routine.
Also, there wasn't enough cold medicine to go around. We went through our own packed supplies pretty quickly and because the cold was making its way around the ship, the onboard store was also sold out...of course!
To make things even more fun, my bladder infection was back.... Luckily Sandy had brought general antibiotics, so I was taking those.
On the bright side amidst all this, Dad was finally sleeping better.
So... win some, lose some, I guess.