Celtic France

Yesterday we passed by the Channel Islands of Alderney, Guernsey, Herm and Sark but due to storm-force wind conditions, we could not land in St. Peter Port, Guernsey. As a result though, our passengers had a taste of what expedition cruising is all about! 

The winds continued overnight and made for a bumpy sleep.  Again, our passengers experienced “expedition cruising” at its best!

By early morning it was clear that either the winds had calmed down or we were in sheltered waters. This was a nice relief. The calmness in fact was a result of us entering the estuary that contains Brest, our next port of call.

Brest is the largest city in Brittany or en français- Bretagne. The name gives away a clue- Brittany was inhabited by Celts and then celtic Britons moved to this western outpost in France to escape the Anglo-Saxon hoards after the Romans left Britain (as did the Welsh and Cornish when they moved to their respective, current lands). So Brittany is a Celtic enclave in a Latin country.  The Brittany language shares similarities with the extinct Cornish language and the very much alive Welsh. It was interesting to see many street signs in Brest, written in French and the Brittany language. A sad program to quash the Celtic culture in Brittany was mounted by the French in former times, but it was totally unsuccessful in killing the language and culture.

Place de al Liberté

Brest's modern tram

People have lived in Brittany and Brest for 1000s of years and the city is old- the Romans were there 2000 years ago. However, you would never know its age by looking at it. During the occupation in WWII, the Germans built an important submarine base there, which attracted the interests of the Allies, who eventually bombed the city to oblivion. Very few old buildings exist. One, the castle-like “Chateau” was too strong to be destroyed, although the Allies attempted it.

Two interesting excursions were offered today. Your faithful blogger was lucky enough to accompany the “Panoramic Tour of Brest and the Mythical Coast”.  Here are some images from the tour to give you a flavour of what we did and what we saw.

The lovely harbour of Portsall at low tide 

The ruins of Saint Mathieu Abbey 

The anchor from the famous Amoco Cadiz. The oil tanker ran aground near
Portsall on the Brittany coastline on 16 March 1978, spilling a vast amount of
oil into the sea. Much of this oil found its way to the Brittany shores.

The Land of Beer

Wine is to France what beer is to Belgium. And here we are in Antwerp, a beautiful city in the Flemish part of the country. It seems there are more types of beer in Belgium than there are leaves on the trees. Each town seems to have it’s own specialities and some are really way out. Take the Lambics for example. They are brewed in open vats where the natural yeast from the River Senne around Brussels settles onto the malt sugars and starts the fermentation process. Then there are the blondes, the dubbels, the trippels, the Trappiste ales, and so it goes on. Some bars boast over 300 varieties and all have to be served in their own special glass. I’ve heard that is the law in Belgium!

We sailed up the River Schelde towards Antwerp in the early morning. The mouth of the river is actually bordered on both sides by the Netherlands. Once we sailed into Belgium we found ourselves amongst a large industrial complex, dominated by oil refineries. Indeed, Antwerp has the largest oil refining facilities in the world next to Houston, Texas.

Once we docked we could see that we were very close to the old centre of the city, dominated by the Catholic Cathedral of our Lady spire.  Many of us took advantage of a guided walk through the old city, a highlight of which was the Rubens mansion. Here are a few images to give you a flavour of this amazing city.

A prominent feature of the central square is the bronze statue of Brabo. Legend has it that the giant “Antigoon” charged for passage across the river and those who did not pay had their hand cut off and thrown into the river by the giant. Brabo, saved the day by doing the same to the giant. The bronze features the young hero Brabo holding the hand of the giant, throwing it away into the river. The coat of arms of the city features two hands to commemorate this legend.

Amsterdam!

We are really hitting the highlights of continental Europe! Today we found ourselves in Amsterdam, the capital city of the Netherlands. Unusually, the city is not the seat of government for the country; this is The Hague. In the early morning with started sailing up the North Sea Canal. On each side we past fields, highways, houses and then more built-up and industrial areas of the city.

Amsterdam is a joy. The city really shows off the golden age of the Netherlands, when the city was the richest in the world. It got that way over a few hundred years first as an exploring and whaling nation and then as a trader in spices and other valuable commodities in the east and west indies. Over this time the country acquired many colonies overseas. Many of the buildings in the central part of the city reflect this richness.

Many of us took part is a very interesting tour of the city by coach and canal boat. This is a great way to get a sense of the real character of this place. With over 100km of canals Amsterdam is rightly referred to as the “Venice of the North”. Public transport by bus, street car and rail seems to be very popular as is travel on bicycles, of which there are 800,000 in the city, or about one for every person in Amsterdam proper (“metro” Amsterdam boasts a  population of about 1.5 million inhabitants).

Anne Frank was a native of Amsterdam

Of course, the Netherlands is noted as the world capital of bulbs. Here is a tiny selection for sale in the floating flower market.

One noticeable feature of almost all the buildings in the inner city was the hoisting beam sticking out of the top floor of each. Old warehouses on the shore line of course would need these beams to hoist goods from a ship or the dock, up into the building. The existence of hoisting beams on residences is a little puzzling however. It turns out that the stairways on these old residences are often so narrow that furniture and other large items need to be hoisted up to the upper floors, as if they were barrels of fish, salt or whale oil!

Hamburg!

So today we found ourselves sailing down the River Elbe towards Hamburg, the largest city in Northern Germany and the second largest in the country as a whole, behind Berlin. As an indication of the size of the River Elbe, we started sailing down the river at 03:00am this morning and only reached Hamburg at 09:00am. 

As we sailed we pasted some huge cargo ships, underlining the fact that Hamburg has the second largest port in Europe, next to Rotterdam.A mist hung over the shores of the river. 

Hamburg is a good “segway” from Bergen, our last port of call, as they were both important Hanseatic Ports. In fact the official name of Hamburg is “Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg”. The Hanseatic League was a cartel of merchants and the market towns from which they traded.  In a sense it might be considered an early form of free trade. Yesterday was a holiday in Germany and today many people we out and about in the bustling centre of the city. Whether on foot or on a bus tour the splendour of this city shone. This is remarkable since it was almost completely destroyed in WWII.

The North Sea and whisky!

This is the big day for our short Fram Whisky Tour as we will have the opportunity  to taste both the 21 and 25 year old Fram Expedition whiskies and make a purchase of either…… or both! And as if to foretell of what was to come, the sun put on a wonderful display as it rose in the morning of this fine day!

Through the day we sailed on a pretty flat North Sea. Those of us who know what the North Sea can be like were very grateful. We saw a few seabirds long the way, mainly gannets.

The afternoon was the time for the tasting. We started with some tunes by our pianist Bjørn and also from Beastie McGee (Bernie’s wife).  Then a surprise- the whisky barrel entered the room and told us about his adventures with his brother on board the Fram. He looked older than his 25 years, maybe because he has aged so much during the voyage. His contents certainly had. Being sloshed around a barrel rather than sitting quietly in a stone cellar, makes for an optimal extraction of all the magical contents of the toasted wood barrel, that, by the way, would have originally contained American bourbon.

Then the tasting began. With great anticipation, drams of the straw-coloured 21 year old Fram Expedition Single Malt were served to all our passengers (it seemed like the whole ship was up in our Panorama Lounge for this once in a lifetime experience). Our Captain looked on like a father waiting for his wife to give birth! He has had a lot to do with this unique event. We carefully followed Bernie as he looked at the colour of the ambrosia in the small glass, smelled it, and spoke to it- “Hello, how are you?”.  Then the reward for all this effort- the taste itself.  The malt is smoother than it should be for an “overproof” whisky at 51% alcohol- cask strength as it is called. This is undoubtedly due to the extra aging provided by its long voyage on Fram. The whisky is very complex as well, and of course will continue to age in the bottle.

After, many took the opportunity to purchase a bottle, but there are still many to go yet (about 190 bottles of each were produced and individually numbered). This is the first time a scotch whisky has ever been taken on a voyage to mature and no doubt there will be high demand for this precious malt.