We’d visited Cherbourg once before – see: Arcadia France posts – and been a bit disappointed with what the place had offered a cruise visitor, particularly given that it had been on a Saturday. Subsequently, with a second visit taking place on a Sunday our expectations were as low as they could be that Cherbourg would interest us more this time around.
On this occasion we were on a weekend taster cruise aboard MSC Virtuosa to get a feel for the line mostly and we knew that it might be a bit boisterous aboard. And it was. We’d also booked it fairly late on, so that, coupled with expecting we might be a smidge hungover (and we were), eliminated the option of taking a tour of some kind while docked in Cherbourg. We decided instead that we’d simply walk in and look around, and we didn’t want to simply repeat the few activities we’d found to do on our first trip there so Parc Emmanuel Liais and Cité de la Mer were off the cards.
Cherbourg does have a reasonable variety of styles of architecture which is because the bombing that took place here in the Second World War was mostly limited to military areas, leaving some of the older buildings intact. This gave a nice way to get a feel for when buildings were erected during the city’s history but it also stripped the place of a definite identity. The deep water of the port made it important militarily for many centuries but it’s not a large port so it’s never become as busy as some other locations along the French coast. It’s a hard place to love.
Our time in Cherbourg coincided with a Polish sailing vessel, Pogoria, leaving the basin which did require the road and pedestrian bridge linking the basin to the open water of the harbour to be opened up so that the boat could leave. I’m not sure this really counts as an activity to see in Cherbourg but it was about the most exciting thing we’ve seen happen there across two visits to this point (and two more since).
We did have a place we wanted to visit and while we were waiting for it to open we found some sculptures and street art around the area. We like both, so this was a nice sight and made for a small point of interest. The sculptures were by Christine Larivière.
The place we wanted to visit was the Thomas Henry Museum. Did we know who Thomas Henry was? No. Do we just like to visit museums because we’re not cultural heathens? Yes.
The museum is home to hundreds of artworks, mostly from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and a large portion of them were donated to the city – initially anonymously – in the early 1830s by Thomas Henry, a painter, art critic, and one-time town councillor, who wanted the young people of Cherbourg to develop an interest in or appreciation for art, having lost his sons who he possibly would have otherwise kept the art for.
We definitely have certain tastes when it comes to art – as I’m sure everyone does – and there was a lot that was not quite for us, but there were enough more surreal or modern-feeling pieces to make this an enjoyable way to spend some time in Cherbourg.
We concluded our time ashore in Cherbourg with a wander around the main square of Place Général-de-Gaulle with its nice late nineteenth century, cast iron fountain and the carousel ride while we selected from a few drinking establishments in the area and treated ourselves to a beer. Not a good beer, as it turns out, and in a location that attracted smokers with no consideration for which way the wind was blowing, so we drank up as quickly as possible and left.
So, that was our time in Cherbourg. There’s not a lot to do there simply because they don’t really make any effort for the cruise ships coming in by opening up places we’d be interested in outside normal hours for the locals. We do get that, and from a chat with a local a year later we learned that the only time that some places open a little early for ships is if the vessels are large and with English people aboard. German ships? Not a chance. Not a war thing, though; just a case of who will actually spend time and money ashore. An understandable business and personal way of doing things, therefore, but not a great port for general cruisers unless you’re really keen to do any of the tours quite some distance from Cherbourg. On a weekender “party” cruise, that’s not likely, so the port is not the best for this type of cruise experience.
To read what we thought of our first time on Virtuosa take a look at the cruise review. What I would say, though, is that our feelings about the ship, MSC Cruises as a line, and Cherbourg now do not quite reflect what we thought at the time we took this trip. We’ve subsequently had far better experiences with all three elements.