It really is lovely to wake up and find yourself in another country!! We were now in France. Weather-wise it was a very foggy and quite chilly too, but there were glimmers that the sun was trying to break through. After the narrow escapes of yesterday, we decided to explore Le Havre … and it didn’t take long.
There was a very picturesque square in front of the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) with waterfalls and statues, then we walked down the “main” shopping street to the Notre Dame Cathedral. Outside, the church still had signs of its wartime history with bullet holes/marks to the stonework. Inside the restoration from WW2 had only been relatively recently been completed (in the mid-70’s) and was very plain but stunning never-the-less. A few stained-glass windows remain but the rest were simply plain glass with a border pattern. There were no gold/gilt embellishments and the vaulted ceiling was elegantly carved from wood and its beauty shone through.
Le Havre does seem pretty concretey – weirdest building has to be the “Le Volcan” centre – it literally looks like a concrete volcano. Wouldn’t exactly call it a wok of art :).
We tried to grab a bite to eat in a small square just off the Hotel de Ville Square but the service was diabolical (we counted ourselves lucky to have been served drinks!). In the end we gave up trying to order food and headed back to the ship instead. We tested out the Sidewalk Cafe, followed by Afternoon Tea sat out on Pennants Bar.
We met in the Crows Nest for pre-dinner drinks and to watch the sailaway from Le Havre. However, we didn’t survive long with the smoke! Plus point for our next cruise – that whole bar will be a smoke-free zone!!
Dinner once again was lovely, although felt very sorry for Aly. Three out of the five main courses either contained pork or bacon, then to add insult to injury, the potato accompaniment also included bacon! No wonder they ran out of bacon half way through breakfast service this morning – they needed it all for dinner!
Chrisley and Sumanto had done a great job of getting to know us over the last couple of days and had a great sense of humour. Chrisley presented his fruit platter each evening with the phrase; ”would anyone like some fruits from my garden” and Sumanto by the end was pre-empting any of those little requests that we had – like sugar for Aly’s fruit salad! Hope the guys we get in May are as nice as these two!
Callum had zonked out in Toy Box but he woke up before we could get him settled in Night Nursery. For some reason, he didn’t want to go to sleep in the night nursery - all he wanted to do was head back to our cabin. I left Jon holding the fort at the Syndicate Quiz Night and retired back to the cabin to put Callum to bed and finish (well start) the packing!
The gang got 9 answers right in tonight's quiz. Nic and Jon brought me up a rather large glass of wine to keep me company so they checked out if I knew any of the answers they didn’t! We would have got three more points if I’d made it down, but as the winning score was 15, we wouldn’t have won.
Sadly, we’re now packed and will be heading home tomorrow.
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