After six days at sea where we ate, played trivia, ate, played table-tennis, ate, listened to lectures, ate, watched comedians, ate and listened to lots of music, we finally hit land today in Brest, France.
Brest is a large commercial and naval port, in fact it’s France’s second largest military port after Toulon. As we had berthed in the commercial container port we were not allowed to walk from the ship to town due to Health & Safety considerations, instead we caught a shuttle bus for the short ten minute ride into the city. The coach dropped us off outside the National Maritime Museum which is housed in the medieval castle of Brest.
Today, however, was not a museum visiting day as after six days on a ship we needed a walk so instead we headed to the Rue de Siam, the main shopping street of the city.
Much of Brest was destroyed in World War 2 after the Allies had landed in Normandy, but the centre has been very well redeveloped with wide streets which act as tracks for the tram system.
The weather,after a misty start to the day, had turned out lovely with a bright blue sky welcoming us as we walked up the street. Over the river we could see the Tour Tanguy, a 600 year old tower that now houses a museum (which incidentally like most of the rest of the town was “Closed on Mondays”).
Around the town we found various monuments mostly remembering its liberation in WW2.
In between the modern buildings we did come across an 18th Century arch.………
……and a very modern looking tree.
Unfortunately as well as the museums being closed on Mondays so were most of the shops. I do feel that Brest has missed out big time today as over 3000 guests off our ship were walking the streets desperate to spend some Euro, to no avail. A couple of souvenir shops that were open became packed with British visitors and did a roaring trade. We found a nice little sweet shop where we sampled some of these chocolates….
….they were delicious and yes some will be coming home.
Tomorrow we visit our last port of call, Cherbourg, before returning to Southampton. It’s strange because in some ways the 31 nights of the cruise have flown by while on the other hand it seems ages since we first boarded. I’ll give a run down of my cruise recollections after tomorrow’s visit.