The USS Torsk is a diesel-electric submarine that saw service in World War II (receiving two battle stars) and was the American naval vessel to sink the last enemy ship – a Japanese coastal defence frigate – in the conflict.

We’d showered, changed, the ship had started moving away from Puerto Montt, and we were killing a little bit of time before we were planning to head off to a quiz. My wife was reading her Kindle and I was contemplating whether to take a few last pictures during the sailaway when I suddenly became aware that the ship had stopped. Heading out onto the balcony I saw a very unexpected sight, rushed back, and persuaded my wife to put her reading material down and join me. She harumphed, sighed, stepped out, opened her mouth, ran back into the room, and returned with her phone to take some pictures too of the surprise awaiting us on the starboard side of the cruise ship: a Chilean Navy submarine was entering the port as we were leaving and we’d obviously had to stop to let it through the relatively narrow passage.

Seeing a submarine at sea was just another in a great series of memories from a fabulous cruise on the Princess Cruises ship Star Princess. A wonderfully-coloured sunset then started to appear in the sky as we completed our departure from the Chilean port so we headed off to the aft of the ship to take a few photos and another bit of video on my phone before making our way to the quiz.

As you approach the main building have any bags on you open for inspection. You’re in a foreign country and the people there will speak their own language before they usually switch to the one you’re familiar with (if they can) and a blank look as you try to replay what you heard in your head hunting down key words you might remember from GCSE French at school will only lead to a repetition of the phrase and gesturing before your wife slaps your arm and says “Let him see inside the camera bag dumbass!”

Inside the main building you’ll discover a lot of exhibits on show without you needing a ticket. These will be submersible craft for the main part that have played key roles in exploration of the undersea kingdom. While these might provide some distraction they weren’t what we were there for. In this area there are also toilets and a café.

Paying for your ticket lets you exit the main building into the enclosed external area where a number of other pieces of maritime history are located and where you can gain access to the Titanic exhibition, the aquarium, and the nuclear submarine. Of these three things it was only the latter two we were interested in during this trip; we’re always fond of aquariums and if we can set foot on a historic vessel then we always will too.

Le Redoutable Nuclear Submarine

The main thing we wanted to see at Cité de la Mer was the submarine museum Le Redoutable. It is the largest and only nearly-complete ballistic missile submarine open to the public and we are always keen to do the firsts, lasts, largests, longests, etc. whenever we travel to places around the world.

An audio guide available in several languages can be picked up as you scan your ticket in at the entrance to the submarine and it provides one of the most informative descriptions of the places you explore as you make your way through the impressive vessel. One thing to note, though, if you’re the sort of person who likes to ignore the audio guide and wander around on your own is that the passageways through Le Redoutable are narrow, often only permitting one person to pass and this, coupled with the guide often telling you to stop and look at certain things, means that you won’t really be able to progress any faster than those with the guides ahead of you on the boat (not ship). You may as well use the guide and you won’t be sorry that you did.

Commissioned in 1971 and decommissioned twenty years later, Le Redoutable was the first of the Redoutable-class submarines constructed for the French Navy. She was fitted with 16 ballistic missile launchers and being in the section where each of the missiles could be independently launched was very impressive. Each missile tube had its own controls, its own computers, and seemingly anachronistic brass tubes to ensure communication could be maintained even in the event of failures there. The audio guide went into some detail about what and how long it took to launch a nuclear missile (something no submarine has ever done), making a mockery of most of the movies or books that might have implied some rogue person might be able to do it on a whim. Did you know that a compressed air bubble is in the tube with the missile so that during launch it expands and keeps the missile completely dry until it ignites its rocket upon leaving the water?

Le Redoutable was a very functional boat for the most part with little room given over to the niceties of life under the water for months on end. The submarine produced its own fresh water and oxygen, could manufacture and replace any part, needed to be able to cope with compression and expansion of the hull of several centimetres when attaching fittings, and had plenty of protection against heat, noise, and, of course, radiation. The reactor section of the submarine had been removed (obviously) but had it been still there and operating it could have powered the entire city of Cherbourg. A walkway allowed you to wander through where the reactor had once been.

My favourite part of Le Redoutable was the very, very 1970s decor of the meeting room area. Looking like something straight from UFO this really appealed to my love of that period’s style.

The audio guide tour of Le Redoutable takes about 35 minutes so you can add on another five or ten to that to cover stepping through doorways, taking photos, etc. Dropping off our guides and stepping away from the submarine we were afforded views of our cruise ship, Arcadia, showing just how close to the attraction ships dock before we made our way to the next point of interest in Cité de la Mer. I can see our balcony in a couple of these photos.

Aquarium

As I’ve already mentioned we are keen on aquariums and you can almost guarantee that if there’s one in a city we’re visiting then there’s a good chance we’ll end up paying to take a look around it. Like everything else in Cité de la Mer the aquarium was on a grand scale, obviously designed to cope with a huge number of visitors at a time. Because of the time that we visited it, perhaps, the place was mostly empty and this suited us perfectly. The aquarium building is set over two levels with a number of marine artifacts and pieces of accompanying information along with some interactive components but it was really the sealife that we’d come to see. There’s something so very soothing about staring into tanks and watching the varied creatures swimming or crawling around.

There weren’t a huge number of tanks but the cleanliness of the glass was superb and the variety of sealife was enough to get a good look around and enjoy what was there. One tank did extend over the two floors of the aquarium building and it was possible to get partially underneath looking up. This produced an unsettling effect in considering just how much weight of water there was poised above you, but unsettling in a good way and one of the highlights of the visit.

Prior to the aquarium in Cité de la Mer the last sealife centre we’d been to had also been in France – La Rochelle Aquarium – and that had been more of what we consider a traditional aquarium. The large tank was impressive but the small number of tanks and apparent waste of space, perhaps simply because we’d timed our visit to an exceptionally lucky quiet period, left us feeling satisfied but not blown away by the exhibit in Cherbourg.

A quick show of our cruise cards as we exited Cité de la Mer allowed us to enter the old cruise terminal and make our way back to the ship.

Conclusion

If you’re visiting Cherbourg then Cité de la Mer is easily the most interesting thing to see with the added bonus of having the most chance of it being actually open. As people who love naval history the price of admission was worth it just to explore Le Redoutable for us. Getting to see numerous other undersea vessels as well as an aquarium and the chance to explore a museum dedicated to the Titanic too should make this a no-brainer decision should you find yourself in the French city.

When we’d arrived in Amsterdam the day before, the Holland America Line cruise ship Nieuw Statendam had already been docked and we’d needed to slip past her and come alongside at the port, butt-to-butt (or aft-to-aft in nautical speak). The HAL ship had already left prior to our departure but its position had been replaced by the Viking Jupiter. Those ships had both been facing roughly west which meant they could simply cruise away from Amsterdam without any issue but our ship was facing roughly east with the bulk of the city on our starboard side and Java-eiland to the port. I’ve no doubt that the captain of Silhouette and/or the pilot could have negotiated the entire length of the canal and passage through the locks backwards but you usually have to pay extra for a Showing Off cruise and they don’t tend to include those sorts of manoeuvres on 3-nighters. Getting out, therefore, involved moving away from the dock, reversing back past Viking Jupiter until Java-eiland was cleared, then moving forward, putting Java-eiland now on our starboard side until the width of the waterway was sufficient for Celebrity Silhouette to perform a 180 degree turn.

Viking Jupiter

We happen to live just ten minutes walking distance from Portsmouth Port. What we’re really hoping is that more cruise lines start to use Portsmouth as a turnaround port rather than just a cruise stop to increase our opportunities to experience new cruise lines from a fabulous location for us. Sure, there’s the challenge of trailing cases through the edges of Buckland while waving a nail-studded club around threateningly to ward off the local youth but the convenience of being able to leave the car outside the home (or somebody else’s home in whichever street we managed to find a parking space in the night before travelling) would be worth it.

Why am I talking about Portsmouth Port? Well, very shortly before we took this taster cruise there was a new visitor to our local port, that being Viking Jupiter. Our local port can only take ships of a certain size and while there are plans for some expansion this will still leave it on the short side for our preferences. We’re Goldilocks cruisers, looking for something not too big and not too small, a not too young and not too old demographic, not too basic and not too pampered. Viking Jupiter is probably a little on the small side for us and perhaps a little too luxurious for us (read: expensive; we’re not tight-arses but we do like to get value for money) but it was nice to see her gleaming in the port and it was a pleasant surprise to then discover she’d followed us to the Dutch capital during our departure. She’s a new ship in the Viking fleet and a very attractive one too.

Leaving Amsterdam

Passing Viking Jupiter left us with views of the main part of Amsterdam with its canals and church towers prominent and also a large number of riverboats. Some people call them ships, some call them boats, some call them barges with ideas above their stations; whatever you call them, there were a lot of them and we saw examples from Viking river cruises, Amadeus, and Scenic, among others. We still can’t get excited about river cruising despite the obvious push from various lines in the early part of this year to promote them with TV advertising and appearances plus freebie trips handed out to influencers. The sea is in our blood; rivers are in the countryside. We want waves. We want uninterrupted views to the horizon under cloudless skies at night. I’m sure river cruising is just lovely but it would have to be a spectacular price in a spectacular location to tempt us and right now the former looks exceedingly unlikely and the latter is limited to Russia, India, and China.

On the opposite side of the ship (starboard if you’re keeping track) we passed the A’DAM Tower and the Eye Film Museum, both wonderful buildings from an architectural perspective and both places we’ve not yet visited on our two trips to Amsterdam. Should we return – the Dutch government seem to be going out of their way to reduce tourism to the city so that’s not a given – then there’s a good chance we’ll take advantage of the ferry that transfers passengers across the water to check both locations out.

Maritime Quarter

By the time I’d taken a few more photos around the ship and returned to our room to rejoin my wife, the ship was coming up on the Maritime Quarter of Amsterdam. My wife had shown no signs of having missed my company nor any remorse at failing to express joy upon my return when I mentioned it and so I felt justified in stepping straight out onto the balcony to grab some more photos of the ship’s passage along the North Sea Canal.

Not quite the first thing that caught my eye in this part of the city’s outskirts was a graffiti-daubed submarine in the water. My first thought was that this was most likely a floating museum but some research after the cruise has determined that this vessel is one of the last of the Soviet navy’s Zulu-class attack submarines, designated 4711 B-80, moved into its current position by owners who wanted to transform it into a party boat, said plan abandoned when it was realised that the risk of drunk people getting launched from torpedo tubes was something insurers were unwilling to cover.

The actual first thing that caught my eye in the Maritime Quarter was Botel, a floating hotel with views to the submarine just across the water from it. Its bright white exterior and fantastically funky font advertising its name and hinting at its functionality are pretty hard to miss. For people who like being on the water this could be an interesting option as a location to stay if visiting Amsterdam for a few days and the area has a regular ferry service running to the main part of the city.

Beyond the Botel was the marina. I love being on or by the water but yachting leaves me cold.

A lot of this area was formerly shipyards and some of that work still goes on to this day. Alongside the marina were a number of dry docks, some of them with vessels in being worked on.

The most interesting ship for me was the MS Deutschland, quite obviously a small cruise ship but one with a fascinating dual role these days and a history that is probably only generally known to German people (understandably, given its name). For part of the year the ship is named World Odyssey and is used for educational purposes taking students abroad to study, and sponsored academically by Colorado State University. For the remainder of the year the ship is chartered by the German company Phoenix Reisen, given the name MS Deutschland, and undertakes more traditional cruising. Until 2015, the ship was the primary filming location for a long-running German series, Das Traumschiff, and if you want to catch glimpses of MS Deutschland visiting exotic locations around the world, blatant product placement, and some horrible disregarding of international cruising regulations then the internet is your friend.

The appearance of the small piece of green land, Keerkringpark, marked the point at which I decided most of the interesting landmarks along the northern side of the North Sea Canal were at an end, plus there was trivia about to start so I took a break from documenting our departure from Amsterdam and returned to the room to gee my wife into action. We did horribly in the trivia but we still had that victory the day before to cling onto.

IJmuiden

I’ve written about IJmuiden before (on the approach to the Netherlands and departing from the Netherlands on P&O’s Azura in 2017). Now, when IJmuiden thinks of IJmuiden and wants other people to think of IJmuiden it probably thinks of IJmuiden in the sense of a port city with a beach and plenty of history and lots of places for tourists to come and spend their money. But when I think of IJmuiden I picture the complex to its north. I picture the beautiful, belching, brutal buildings of that industrial complex and it makes me feel warm inside. Is this because I grew up on a diet of science fiction TV and VHS movies in the 1980s predominately set in places like this and it happens to trigger pangs of nostalgia? I’d like to think so, but I’ll also take “It’s because you’re fricking weird, Mark” as I consider that a compliment every time it’s uttered.

Here’s some video (temporarily removed) of Celebrity Silhouette passing through the locks at IJmuiden in case you’re one of the nine people currently alive on the planet who’s ever wondered just what that’s like.

Something I’d not spotted before when we’d passed through the locks at IJmuiden was SHIP, a place to experience the construction of the new sea lock, the port area, port professions, and even hit the restaurant to watch vessels passing by. Something to bear in mind as a point of interest if you’re ever cruising to Amsterdam on a line that has decided not to pay the Dutch capital’s increased charges so that it can pass on the inconvenience to its customers and dock 45 minutes away instead. No names mentioned. Not even a pair of letters separated by an ampersand mentioned.

That concluded our time in the Netherlands aboard Celebrity Silhouette. There will be one more post covering our time on this ship which will go through the evening’s entertainment and dining and terrifying amounts of drinking. Was there dancing? Yes, there was dancing too, but you’re in luck because the only bits caught on camera were done by other people.

Breakfast out of the way, we left the hotel and headed south(ish) to take a walk through Plymouth Hoe. The Hoe is the public park on top of the (surprisingly to us) rocky mound that dominates the seafront of Plymouth and is probably best known as being the setting for the very likely untrue game of bowls that Sir Francis Drake had while waiting for the tide to turn so he could set sail with the fleet to take on the Spanish Armada. These days the Hoe is the home to a number of war memorials (including one by the architect Sir Robert Lorimer that is one of a set of three, with one of the others being situated in our home city of Portsmouth), houses a statue of Sir Francis Drake, includes the landmark lighthouse of Smeaton’s Tower, and provides fabulous views out over Plymouth Sound.

As we stood there, taking in the view in the pleasantly warm and clear day (the last such day weather-wise for our break as it would turn out) we suddenly heard a man shouting at us. Initial thoughts that we might be trespassing or taking a photo of something we shouldn’t proved to be wrong as it turned out he’d spotted my camera and wanted to know if I had a telephoto lens on it. I did have a telephoto lens with me for this trip but I’d decided that I’d leave it at the hotel today and use my workhorse lens, the 24-105mm instead. The reason this person had wanted to know was because he wanted to draw our attention to something we’d not spotted while gazing out across the water, that being a submarine. A telephoto lens, of course, would have given me the chance to see far more detail of the naval vessel but I had to suffice with wider shots instead. This was only the second time we’d seen a submarine cruising on the surface of the water, the first being several years earlier in Chile at Puerto Montt, and it was great to be reminded of that trip.

Smeaton’s Tower is probably the most prominent landmark on Plymouth Hoe and it’s certainly something we noticed on our first evening from the water on our harbour boat trip. The tower is not a working lighthouse but it once formed the upper part of the Eddystone Lighthouse which was in operation for over a hundred years from 1759 on the submerged Eddystone Rocks fourteen kilometres south of Cornwall. John Smeaton, the civil engineer tasked with the construction of the original lighthouse, used hydraulic lime to set concrete underwater and form the base of the navigational aid, and it was only erosion of the underlying rocks that necessitated the building of a replacement beacon and the deconstruction then subsequent repositioning of the tower in Plymouth as a memorial.

Tinside Lido was the next sight to greet our eyes as we progressed as far forward on the mainland as we could, and what a lovely sight it was too. We were lucky to see it on such a pleasant day, to see the cyan of the shallow pool contrasting with the deep blue of the sea, but it was the design that was most appealing. A lot of lidos were built in the UK in the 1930s and were pretty conventional, rectangular affairs, but Plymouth’s 1935 lido incorporates the fabulous curves and straight lines of the Art Deco movement and benefits from its location at the base of the surrounding cliffs with views out over Plymouth Sound. Portsmouth has a lido, too, but here’s an area where Plymouth beats our home city hands down.

Our walk along Plymouth seafront continued in an anticlockwise direction and took us past the imposing fortifications of the Royal Citadel. We’d wanted to take a look inside but it wasn’t the Covid restrictions in place that stopped us; rather, it was the requirement that all visitors have photo ID. For my wife this presented a problem since she doesn’t drive and the only photographic ID she has is her passport which didn’t make the trip along the coast with us on account of us not needing to leave the country. A stupid barrier to visiting a historical site, in my opinion. A small bit of history, anyway, since I like to share knowledge: the citadel sits on the spot of a former fort that had been erected in the sixteenth century. The English Civil War of the seventeenth century saw Plymouth take the side of the ultimately victorious Parliamentarians, during which it was besieged for several years without falling, but following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 construction of the Royal Citadel took place and the cannons were positioned facing both out to sea and towards the city on land, supposedly as a warning not to oppose the Crown again.

Our path took us sloping downwards back towards Sutton Harbour where we’d enjoyed some time on both of the previous evenings thanks to its attractive views and abundance of pubs.

The Mayflower Steps area of Plymouth includes a rather odd sculpture, known locally as the Barbican Prawn despite clearly not being a prawn at all. Its actual name is Leviathan and it was unveiled in 1996 during modernisation works along this stretch of the waterfront. Designed by Brian Fell, Leviathan includes an angler fish’s head with lobster claws, the fin of a John Dory and the tail of a plesiosaur, finished off with the feet of a cormorant, because of course it does. We liked it.

It wasn’t all just aimless wandering on this day of walking along Plymouth’s seafront; we actually had a tiny, tiny plan, and that was to pay a visit to the National Marine Aquarium. We are fond of an aquarium when we travel around the world. Plymouth has hosted an aquarium since 1888 but the National Marine Aquarium was built and opened in the mid-1990s during the Barbican modernisation works and it is the UK’s largest aquarium. Arranged around specific zones and featuring some huge tanks to house the thousands of creatures this was a lovely place to visit. I could sit and stare at an aquarium tank of fish swimming for hours and fortunately several tanks had seating in front of them to allow just that. Obviously, we didn’t spend hours here, though. This is definitely something worth hitting if you ever find yourself in or around Plymouth.

This wouldn’t be the only aquarium we’d visit during our West Country short break as Weymouth, where we’d be off to the day after this gentle amble around Plymouth, also housed one and, as I’ve mentioned, we are a sucker for them.

It was the afternoon by now so we grabbed ourselves some liquid refreshment from The Ship (where we’d paid a visit previously; see: A Few Plymouth Pubs) then hunted down a shop we’d spotted overnight in the city, a wine and spirits specialist called Barrel & Still. Fabulous range of alcohol for sale plus the ability to have some free samples too. Which we did.

Not wanting to lug our bottled purchases around we decided to head as directly as possible back to our hotel to drop them off. This took us in a westwards direction along Royal Parade, more-or-less the main road through the centre of Plymouth and one lined with some sights of interest. First up was the Minister Church of Saint Andrew. Externally, this church looks the same as it did in 1500 even though it was bombed during the war and required significant rebuilding in the years afterwards.

The two buildings that really leaped out at me because of my fondness for architecture were the House of Fraser and the Pearl Assurance buildings either side of the precinct bisecting Royal Parade. The House of Fraser building was formerly the Dingles department store and it was the first building to be designed as part of the complete redevelopment of Plymouth after the war. There is an absolutely fascinating PDF that explains the architectural visions and plans for the city – Plymouth: Vision of a Modern City – and if you’ve any interest in town-planning or architecture then I can’t recommend that enough, but since you’re you and I know you well enough to know you don’t have that sort of attention span then I’ll give the short version here: Scottish modernist architect Thomas Tait, more widely known for his Art Deco works, at the end of his career was brought in as design consultant for the new plans for Plymouth in the late 1940s and produced the Dingles store as well as associating with designs for several other buildings. Individual architects and building owners were free to create their own designs within the style guidelines so as to produce something not strictly uniform but that fitted together; new buildings with a sense that they’ve stood for far longer. You can see some modernist, brutalist elements in these buildings despite the classical decorative pieces and use of Portland Stone. It’s all a wonderful testament to the changing times and rebuilding for the future taking place post-war.

There were plenty more buildings encompassing brutalism, modernism, and Art Deco styles to gaze at on the walk back too.

Finally, there were some public pieces of art to admire. Or not. I like street art and I know that art is subjective but what we saw in Plymouth was some of the most uninspiring work. It felt like someone had broken out some oversized set squares and geometric templates and just filled in the spaces. Personal opinion, but yuk. The somewhat abstract sculpture was more to my liking. This was the seven-metre-high bronze called Messenger by Joseph Hillier; apparently a woman crouching and inspired by an actor preparing for a role, this more closely resembled an American Footballer in a three-point stance at the line of scrimmage to us.

We dropped off items at the hotel, checked that my wife’s niggling injury wasn’t too problematic for walking some more, then headed off again, this time southwest from our hotel as there was an area of land near the water there that we hadn’t checked over which might have been hiding a fabulous pub. It wasn’t. In fact this turned out to be uninteresting as we approached so we veered south to the seafront once more to see what might be of interest down there and to see how the sun might affect the look of the shoreline as the sun started to sink towards the horizon.

We spotted a fairly lively-looking place by the waterfront actually called The Waterfront but there was a queue of people waiting to be seated so the option of enjoying the sunset with a drink evaded us. However, we also saw what appeared to be a security guard in front of an interesting-looking piece of sculpture in iron resembling a block-type figure staring out to sea. We didn’t know it at the time but this was LOOK II, a work by Sir Antony Gormley.

We found an empty bench and enjoyed the Plymouth seafront view for a while in the warm, early evening sunshine. We were quite surprised by the number of people swimming in the water and spent quite some time being entertained by humans and dogs leaping from the stone pier near us into the sea.

With dining and drinking options looking sparse along this part of the coastline we decided that we’d head back around to Sutton Harbour again where we were certain we’d find something. This gave us a chance to see the Belvedere Wedding Cake (to give it its local name) up close. A belvedere is a type of open summer house and this three-tiered building was constructed in 1891. The site on which it stands was formerly a camera obscura offering views over Plymouth Sound, below which there was a bullring (where bulls were tied up and baited by dogs for entertainment and to tenderise the meat; indeed, butchers were fined if they killed bulls without baiting them).

With the sun at our backs we retraced some of the day’s earlier walking route along the seafront, enjoying the views down to the rocky shore and the people taking advantage of the warmth to bathe or swim.

Our last meal in Plymouth was at the Pier Masters House. It’s a very nice-looking building on the waterfront with plenty of seating outside and in and we elected to dine inside as the sun was disappearing from the sky by this time. A warm welcome was sadly the best that can be said of the experience with service being perfunctory (and barely even that when it came time to pay the bill) and the fish being disappointingly overcooked and dry.

We grabbed a couple of final drinks near the harbour and called it a night.

That brings our stay in Plymouth to an end. It was certainly not what we were expecting geographically but there were lots of historical and architectural elements we enjoyed a lot and we wouldn’t be averse to visiting again when this pandemic is under control and life is a bit more normal.

The following morning we would be relocating along the coast to Weymouth for three days as part of our West Country break and we’d be making a stop in Sidmouth to break the drive up which will be covered in the next post in this travelogue series.