Cherbourg - France

Cherbourg

We had another grey day in Cherbourg and it was super quiet.  We walked through the older part of town.  The houses are mainly attached row house stone construction with narrow side walks.

This is the Basilique Sainte-Trinite which was finished in the mid 1800's, but was the site of other churches as far back as the year 841.

I am used to seeing the iconic clam shell with holy water at the entrance of churches, but usually, they are carved from marble.  This church had the real deal.

We happened upon Parc Emmanuel Liais which was a lovely surprise! Lately, our style of travel is not to research too much about a place in advance of seeing it, so that the travel can unfold naturally and spontaneously, rather than always being held to a strict agenda.  Part of the rationale for this is to avoid the feeling of being rushed, because there is always more to see and therefore miss out on, but also, it adds to the sense of discovery. The cat pictured above is high up in the tower, pictured below, and he looks a great deal like our Kika, back home.

The park had winding paths, trees, shrubs and flowers of all kinds, a pond, an ancient tower (with a cat!). All this, coupled with the freshness of the air and the ever present cheerful bird song made this place a truly wonderful find!

See how I am dwarfed by the size of the plants in the park's exceptional greenhouse!

As mentioned before, the houses are all joined together.  The style is plain and simple...nothing too ornate.

Cassio has perfected the art of pulling the camera out of his pocket, turning it on and capturing a fleeting moment with a great deal of success.  This rare mini Cooper wagon was speeding around the corner and it was gone in a flash.  Lucky!

Note the chimney style...it appears there is a separate shaft for each fireplace.

This was another, smaller park, that we happened upon.

And finally, this was a nice surprise.  The access back to our ship had to be through this really interesting deep diving equipment museum/exposition.  Really impressive how deep people ventured inside really small and fragile apparatus.