Day One Hundred Twenty Seven - May 12

Today we arrived in Brest France after spending a sea day sailing in the Bay of Biscay. This area of the Atlantic Ocean extends from Spain to the south and France's west coast.

Our arrival time is 08:00 with an inter-port shuttle bus service that provides service to the following stops: (1) Navy Museum (Castle), (2) Place de la Liberte (Tourist Office) and (3) Quay de la Douane (Marina).

Only four tours were made available today so like other days we've decided to explore the city of 359,000 inhabitants on our own. Brest is located in a sheltered bay that is home to the French Navy and second in importance after Toulon.

The previous day's research provided some interesting places and areas to visit. Leaving the ship around 10:00am we were greeted by a tourist official who provided us with several maps of the area.

Our first stop after taking the shuttle bus was to the Musée national de la Marine located inside the Brest castle, an impressive medieval fortress. We could see the castle on our way into port. Here we saw a collection of replica ships from the french fleet as well as ocean paintings.

From the castle walls we saw the Pont (bridge) de Reouvrance which is one of the highest vertical lift bridges in Europe. The lower road can be collaspsed to allow approaching sea traffic to pass under the bridge. This portion of the bridge connects Rue de Siam to the Recouvrance quarter of the city. The main portion of the bridge would be raised only for French Naval Vessels.

A second point of interest for us was to find Rue St. Malo. With our mapping skills or lack thereof and some help from a local we were able to find it. This street is the only medieval street in Brest that was not bombed during World War II. Here you will find a street with just the shell of the buildings remaining but the locals are trying to give it the same feel as it was back then. The window sills are brightly coloured and plants line the street. This is all done by locals living near this street. Janice was happy to learn and see that forty cats live in the area and that they are well feed by the locals. The cats have places built for them where they can go when the weather turns bad. So Janice was able to get her cat fix for the day although we did only meet around 6 of the 40 resident cats.

It is now time to walk towards the Marina for a bit of lunch. When we arrived at the Marina we turned to right where the more modern restaurants were rather than turning to the left where we could have found find older more traditional restaurants. The view was still very beautiful.

Janice still wanted to find some wine to bring back to the ship but unfortunately what she bought was too sweet even though it was a Pinot Grigio. Too bad as her wine supply is getting low. All the other shops were closed for the afternoon for the daily siesta. The downtown area actually looked like a ghost town for a Thursday afternoon but it is the same as you find in Spain, Portugal and Italy.

We returned to ship in time for Trivia where our team had a first place showing. It might be due to some of teams being short players who have come down with Covid.

Insignia leaves the port of Brest at 17:00 to make its way to the final French stop on this segment, St. Malo - 206 nautical miles away.