June 8 – Cherbourg, France

Weather – 16º, rain with periods of deluge, the sun came out eventually

German bunker

Steps – 7,519

Humidity – 80%

We are visiting Cherbourg (pop. 25,000) for the first time today. We’ve been to the area when we visited northern France about 10 years ago, but not to Cherbourg. I shouldn’t really say we visited Cherbourg today – more accurately would be to say that we docked here and visited outside Cherbourg. This isn’t any different to other ports, if what we want to see is outside the town. It’s always nice to at least meander through on the way to wherever…today we got out right away.

When choosing this tour, it seemed like the main attraction would be a visit to Utah Beach, but the focus was more on a stop in the tourist town of Sainte-Mère-Église.

Utah Beach memorial

The last time we were here, we visited Omaha Beach – all American, but the tour takes you where the tour takes you and when our travel companions are mainly American that’s where you go. In the end we technically visited Utah Beach, but due to the weather and the design of the tour, we didn’t spend nearly the time we expected at the Beach and accompanying museum.

Utah beach flags and memorial

The day started out with cloudy skys but then turned to showers throughout the morning. Despite our crossed fingers, our afternoon tour was wet. The wettest part of the tour was while we were on the bus, so that was a blessing, but we didn’t do as much outside as we would have had it been dry.

As we drove toward Utah Beach, Emanuelle our guide, described what life was like in this part of France during the occupation and subsequent liberation. We learned about D-Day and John Steele, an American paratrooper who had his parachute hooked on the spire of the church in the small village of Sainte-Mère-Église where he hung for several hours before being taken prisoner.

pretty cool Utah Beach cafe

replica parachute up there

We made a stop in Sainte-Mère-Église (pop. 2,896) for longer than we should have. Sainte-Mère-Église is basically a town built on the tourism of WWII and the John Steele story. We visited the church where he caught on the spire while Emanuelle described stained glass and other items inside the church. Then we wandered with
her through the town to the city hall and that’s about it.

We had an hour here when 30 min would have

sufficed. We filled the last 20 minutes sipping a cloudy French cider which I’ll never be sad about, but it seemed like the time could have been better spent on the Utah Beach museum which for some reason wasn’t part of the

city hall

tour.

cool tree

There are bunkers all over the place between Cherbourg and the 5 beaches where landings were made – we stopped to see a couple bunkers. Bunkers are super interesting with their 3-meter-thick walls, but the interesting parts are inside which we didn’t see – plus, it was raining, so I was happy to be back on the bus.

At Utah Beach we were sent on our own to walk the beach, see the gift shop and use the facilities. This was a bit of a let down compared to our last visit to Omaha Beach, and…no visit to the museum. Had it not been raining, we would have

I'm in the back

spent more time outside, instead we sprinted the beach, saw the memorials and found the café and shop for a wine, a beer, and a poppy scarf.

June 7 – Guernsey, UK

Weather – 16º (real feel 10º), partly sunny

so close to France

Steps – 12,997

Humidity – 87%

We were half expecting to wake up to another sea day this morning. The rocking and rolling had all but stopped last night, but the wind was still howling, and the swells remained high.

Luckily, things were calm enough for the tender boats to run us the 10 min to shore.

Guernsey (pop.64,000) is the second largest island in the Channel Islands, the largest being Jersey. Guernsey much closer to France (27 miles away) than it is to England (Jersey is even closer to France.) I need to learn more about the history of that.

The plan today was to stretch our legs with a good long walk and then find a pub for a pint and a meat pie or fish and chips - 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

expensive!

There was a market along the waterfront which was fun and interesting to wander through. I think we heard a local saying that yesterday was supposed to be market day, but due to the high winds, it was postponed until today.

flowers everywhere

It was a typical market very similar to one you’d see at home with handicrafts, baking, food trucks (we had a ‘French hot dog’) and an eight-piece drum band. It made for what would otherwise probably have been a quiet Sunday in town with most shops closed quite lively.

Once on shore, we wandered through the market and then picked up our pace along the waterfront path. Eventually, we found ourselves back at The Albion House, a pub we visited on our last trip to Guernsey. Unfortunately for us, this

St Peter church

pub doesn’t have a kitchen – a bitter for Chris and a cider for me (both local) and we were on our way…not before paying $12CAD for each pint! WOW!

While it wasn’t hard to find places serving food it was hard to find food that was in our price range…fish and chips for $30CAD was a bit much for us. We went back to the French hot-dog seller and split one…I’m not sure what makes it French, other than 2 British guys, pretending to be French working the place, but it was tasty! More like a sausage in a baguette topped with caramelized onions.

one and done at the Albion

A quick second pint at a pub where we almost won the meat draw and we headed back to the ship. Meat draws seem to be all the rage in Guernsey pubs. We didn’t really almost win, you have to play to win! We had visions of carting slabs of meat back to the ship.

Guernsey is a much more expensive place than I remember. A pint for 12CAD…wow!

roadside chien chaud

Before we left, we had to pop into a Boots the Chemist to see if we could find and new flavours of crisps – Worcestershire and Spicy Paprika, not bad.

We also saw plenty of palm trees which can grow here because of the Gulf Stream and mild winters.

Once back at the ship, we ordered room service of cut up veg, and chips and salsa to tide us over until the next feed.

BTW – despite this room being a tight squeeze for us, the shower is great. I’d say it’s about 1x2m (about the size of a bathtub) with a great shower head (an actual shower head plus the rain head for those maniacs out there that like those!) a door that doesn’t leak, and hot water almost on demand. It’s no

5 pounds, a bit better

hard to find new favours 

Princess shower, which was definitely the best shower I’ve ever had the pleasure of using, but great.

palm trees in the UK

June 6 – SEA DAY,was supposed to be St-Malo, France

that's a big boy!

breakfast

Weather – 12º, real feel 4º! Wind gusts up to 72Km! It rained at some point.

Steps – 3,859

Humidity – who knows%

I usually love a sea day and today was pleasant, but I never thought I’d say Regent was lively! The trouble with a sea day like today is the weather – even if we did have a balcony, we wouldn’t have used it today. We read, and blogged, and napped, which is exactly what we’d do on a sea day in good weather, but it just doesn’t feel the same doing it inside.

spying!

We’ve experienced sea days like this in the past, so we knew

Edi is taking good care of us!

it’d be dull, but we’ve never had a poor-weather sea day on Windstar. They organized a few activities throughout the day, but beyond trivia and a line dance class…there was little to do.

I learned to use Google Reverse Image Search to figure out what yacht we were bobbing around with…it is the Savannah, an 83m superyacht.

Dinner was what the ship calls “Windstar’s Signature Galley Market: Step into the heart of the kitchen for a vibrant, market-style dining adventure with live music” Dinner was buffet style set up in the ship’s galley (interesting!) I think had

welcoming chef

the weather been good it would have been a deck BBQ, but the weather was…not.

We tried to guess when the best time to go would be, we tend to eat late, but even then, things can be busy. It was a kind of a zoo. We don’t tend to eat

galley set up

with others – we’ll chat at the bar or on a tour of course, but dinner is a bit of a commitment, plus the fact that we eat late and we eat by ourselves – not tonight. We sat with 2 couples who as soon as we sat down warned us that actually getting food would be a challenge.

Not ideal, but we had a glass of wine and felt like we had only just eaten lunch! We chatted for a while and then hit the buffet. By this time, things were completely civilized.

olives, olives, olives!

The galley was set up as serving stations – some serve yourself, some the staff served. It was super interesting to have access to a ship area we normally wouldn’t. In the end it was fine – had I come much earlier and didn’t know about the alternative format to dinner I’d have been a bit peeved, but we were completely fine about it.

Chris filling his plate

We knew dinner would be a different format because we read. Windstar doesn’t distribute paper copies of each day’s itinerary like Regent does. In fact, Regent is a late adopter to technology – no app, no onboard website where all of the info can be found like

Guernsey sun set

Windstar has. Everything you want to know about the day’s events, excursions, your account, food/menus throughout the day etc. is on a website only accessible onboard. This is where we learned dinner would be different – people we talked to were surprised they arrived for dinner. This is all on your TV if you don’t want to use your phone. We won’t even talk about Princess – we were spoiled by the tech they use.

Guide to British English

We came back to the room after dinner to find chocolates and this funny guide to “British English” – there were phrase guides for Portugal, France and Spain…this was funny.

Christina - I love the tea towels too!

June 5 – AT SEA

delicious cheese

Weather – 16º

Steps – 2,883; this has to be a record low!

Humidity – little%

Motion of the ocean says it all about last night and today. Again, there was a lot of rocking and rolling, but I felt fine…that is until I got up and moved around. By the time I’d had a shower (where I had to hold on, especially anytime I closed my eyes) and was ready to leave the room, I was feeling a bit queasy. Not too bad, but something wasn’t quite right – I got a bit to eat and sat for a while and felt better, but still a bit off.

We read for most of the morning, ate lunch, and went back to bed. It wasn’t warm enough to sit outside and there was little for ship activity (not that we partake much anyway) so I figured horizontal was the position I needed to take. After a nap I felt better, but still not 100%.

The star of tonight’s dinner was French fromage. Apparently, the chef went on a cheese run yesterday in La Rochelle. All 3 cheese were delicious!

turn down treat - post-its

The star of tonight definitely wasn’t the ship’s Asian restaurant. Although we had a reservation, they had no room for us because earlier reservations came late and others stayed too long. We were asked to wait in the lounge, but eventually
we bailed and went to the main dining room. When I went to tell them we were bailing, they were mortified and extremely apologetic, but come on…you can take the reservation, but you can’t hold the reservation!

Earlier we learned that getting into tomorrow’s port of St. Malo, France would be unlikely due to the weather and the fact that we would be tendering – rough seas and tender boats don’t mix.

turn down treat - eye glass cloths

Tonight, during dinner that was confirmed - we will be going straight to Guernsey, UK. However…Guernsey is also a tender port, and the weather isn’t expected to improve for at least a day. We’ll bob around in the English Channel gazing at Guernsey dreaming of all the pints in pubs we’ll be missing.

The cruise director (or entertainment manager as Windstar calls them) put on his own after-dinner 30-minute show of a handful of songs that would fit right in on Regent.

By the end of the day, the seas had calmed a bit and so had my belly. I was glad to get back to horizontal and call it a day.

No photos today, so I thought I'd add some of the turndown treat that have been left for us.

June 4 – La Rochelle, France

Weather – 18º, WINDY! a few sprinkles

cool door in courtyard

Steps – 9,442

Humidity – 30%

Rocking and rolling doesn’t quite describe how last night’s motion of the ocean was. The captain warned us that there would be motion, but WOW! We were soooooo confident what ever the night brought us, we’d have experienced worse…I’m not so sure.

I’m not sure if it is the small size of the boat (this is 12,000 tonnes VS Regent’s

town buildings

48,000) or the mechanics of it – over the years we have learned the importance of stabilizers. Apparently, this boat has them, but it doesn’t exactly feel like it. I suppose I don’t know what it would feel like without, I don’t want to find out.

Thankfully, we didn’t feel any seasickness. That

marina with town gates in distance

isn’t surprising, as we’ve never felt it before, but we always wonder if we just haven’t been in rocky enough seas.

The old adage “one hand for the ship” definitely applied last night when venturing to the loo – not much of a venture, kind of what I think the distance in an RV might be…this room is tight.

beautiful door

Speaking of room size, this one and the Regent room is about the same square footage – this 280 and Regent 300. This space here doesn’t seem to be used as well – about half of the space here is

the beautiful port & the STEEP gangway

used for a ‘sitting area’ and the rest for the bed, closet and bathroom. We trip over each other much more here.

We docked by 8AM and didn’t need to be off the ship until after noon, so showering wasn’t impacted by any rocking and rolling.

Before this cruise is done, we will be spending a day in Guernsey, UK – therefore we need a UK entry visa. Everyone not a UK citizen was reminded of this in a

Cafe de la Paix for Pineau

letter this morning which also told us we needed to prove it to the ship. We got the visa (2 year, £20) last year when we were in the UK, but Chris had to get a new one this morning because he has a new passport. – it was an easy online procedure. That was the extent of the morning’s activity.

We grabbed small breakfasts from the ship’s Coffee Corner of cappuccinos and pastries and sat in the lounge all by ourselves to read - many people are off on morning tours.

Bunker Museum

Our afternoon tour of La Rochelle (pop. 80,000) started with a 20-minute drive from the port to the old town. La Rochelle’s port lacked 100% of Bordeaux’s picturesque charm – you win some, you lose some.

This part of tours is always interesting, because it gives the guide a chance to talk about the town and area in general.

Once in the old town, Christine our guide, supplied all of us with listening systems – a device each of us wears around our necks with an attached earpiece. Surprisingly, tours rarely use these, but they are brilliant – no need to be close to the guide to hear.

Chris and Christine our guide

We followed Christine as she described what we were seeing

one of a few half-timber houses

We also visited the WWII Bunker Museum for a self-guided tour. This was very interesting - in an actual underground bunker built by the Germans in 1941 when they occupied La Rochelle. It was a good reminder that France was not just at war during WWII but occupied. There were about 20 of us down there, I’m not sure if the intent of the museum was to give a feeling of claustrophobia, but that was felt. There were displays of what the Germans used the bunker for, but also what life was like in La Rochelle during the war.

Under German occupation, bunkers were also built in the port area (La Pallice) for submarines. It was used for the movie Das Boot.

Hotel du Ville (City Hall)

After the bunker the walking tour continued until the last half an hour of the tour when we found a charming place (Café de la Paix - a beautiful 19^th century building with ornate decoration) for a Pineau - a local apéritif. Pineau is a fortified wine, made from unfermented or lightly fermented grape juice fortified with Cognac. It was lovely (€4.5) – sweet and cold.

so close I couldn't get it all

We missed the Captain’s welcome on the first half of the cruise, so went to it tonight. We usually aren’t big on these events but wanted to know who these folks were when we’ve seen them around the ship.

Lori - you got that right!!! One of the songs was Summer of '69, we were the only Canadians, of course Bryan Adams is international, but many didn't know him - she didn't.

the ship's excursion team 

June 3 – Bordeaux, France

St Andre Basilica

Weather – 22º, sprinkling of rain on and off

St Andre interior

Steps – 11,923

Humidity – 30%

I can’t say enough about how fantastic our docking position is in Bordeaux. From our room we can see the city and after a 5-minute walk, we are in the heart of the old town.

Today, is the first time, when organized cruise excursions are offered that I think we have ever found our own tour. We have occasionally not done a ship tour and wandered on our own, but this is probably the first time we’ve found our own.

St Andre bell tower

Being that we are usually on Regent where the excursions are included in the cruise fare, we would join one of those, but since Windstar doesn’t include excursions and because we’ve been here before, we found a ‘free walking tour’.

city gate

We’ve done many, many free walking tours when we are in a city on our own. Basically, it’s a regular walking tour that you pay for in the end. Most are pay what you want, with a few people not paying at all, but this one is a bit more upfront about the expectation of payment at the end, and suggest the average is 12-15 Euros per person – fine by us. These tours almost always have a big crowd, so we are wandering the tight streets with a group of 30, but Emma the guide, managed to stop in larger areas when she talked to us.

After the tour we found Totto for lunch. This place has awnings and chairs spilling

Place de la Bourse & Miroir d'eau

into a small square. We had pizza, croquettes, and wine – very good. Oh, and there was smoking – I know I have to accept that part of the European culture is outdoor (and maybe indoor, we just haven’t sat anywhere inside) smoking, but I don’t think I’ll every get used to it.

Then came the highlight of the day…tea towels! We finally found them – I bought 9, for about 5CAD each. The ones we

Place des Quinconces

bought about 10 years ago, we use every single day and are getting a bit threadbare, so I’m thrilled to have new ones – we’ll have to come back again in 10 years for the next set.

Just like last time (but this time we were at a

linens shop in background

different linens store location) Chris found a spot across the street to wait with a refreshment – a Sangria Blanche. He had one waiting for me when my shopping was done.

Back at the boat, I pulled up to our Juliett balcony to blog and Chris headed to the hot tub where he met a couple from Calgary.

should last me a while

Eventually, I tried to take a nap, but because it was embarkation day for many people, there was a long

you can really see him this time

security announcement which was hard to ignore.

au revoir Bordeaux