Today is our only tender port, and we are interested to see how this goes. Our plans are to take the circle the island bus to see the sights, then go to the German Occupation Museum, and hopefully the Hospital Museum as well. The challenge are the buses – which only leave every hour and can make or break our plans. We are hoping to catch the first #93 (counter clockwise direction) that leaves at 8:40, but tendering doesn’t start until 8:15, so we’re thinking we might be a little pushed for time.
The tendering ends up actually being the least of our worries. We are on the first tender and it leaves with only a handful of us on it. We’re starting out well. We meet a lovely lady, Nancy, who lives on Guernsey and is going home to finish up some things she forgot to do before she left. We tell her our plans and she tells us that Richard, the owner of the museum, is her friend and he loves her cat. So we are to tell him hello from her. Will do!
We land at the dock and make our way toward the bus station – we can see the #93 bus at the stop, but I make a huge tactical blunder. Ed wants to go around the traffic circle to catch the bus – but there aren’t any cross walks and I’m a little leery of doing that with traffic whizzing around the circle on the “wrong” side of the road – so I pull him along to follow the cross walk which takes us way out of the way and…you know what’s coming…we subsequently miss the bus. I tried to flag him down, but he wouldn’t stop. I swore he was looking at us coming around the circle – but apparently, he either wasn’t really looking at us or couldn’t wait. I could use an expletive here – but I won’t. You can be sure though that I did use a few expletives in real life at the time.
Thus – I’ve now blown our entire day’s schedule. Instead of being on the first circle bus leaving us time to go to both museums, we are now forced to wait for 30 minutes to get the other circle island bus (clockwise direction) – which will get us to the German Occupation Museum 30 minutes before opening time. Thus, effectively wasting 30 minutes of precious touring time. Crap.
To add insult to injury, we are the first ones waiting for the #92 bus, but end up in the middle of the queue of late comers that have arrived. And, I don’t have exact change for the bus – well I do – but I didn’t think I did. Guernsey has its own currency which isn’t good anywhere but Guernsey, so now I’ve got 3 Guernsey pounds I need to dispose of. Not an auspicious start to our day.
After some discussion about whether to just stay on the bus and go around the island, we decide to get off at the museum first and figure it out from there. We hop off at the airport and walk the 10 minutes down cute little tree lined lanes to the museum, which as we knew, wasn’t yet open. So, we cooled our heels on a bench outside the front door, then wandering around the little courtyard with artillery and a little boat that was used to help resistance members escape the island.
The story of this museum is pretty interesting. The island was occupied by the Germans from 1940 to 1945, with over 12,000 troops stationed on the island. When they left, they left behind tons and tons of, well, stuff. Richard, who was born during the Occupation, became fascinated with all the war paraphernalia and began collecting it at age 17 (can you just imagine the conversations with his parents – Richard, you are NOT bringing that anti-aircraft gun into this house!). This fascination (dare I say obsession?) grew into the museum, with everything catalogued and organized, and a story woven around each object. As word spread across the island, people would just bring more war memorabilia over for Richard to display, the result of which we are here to see today.
Richard shows up, but he has 2 visitors who have come to see him and go on a walk with him, so we don’t really have the opportunity to chat with him. His assistant Terry shows up right around 10:00 and after getting a quick overview of the layout of the museum – and the new annex Richard has just added – we start our journey back through time exploring the multitude of wartime remnants.
We start in the military room with more guns and ammunition than you can even imagine. On into the Equipment room we examine all the radio and medical equipment collected. Even a horse’s gas mask – seriously! Terry has pointed this out to us specially, it is apparently one of his favorite oddities here in the museum.
Next is the civilian room with the Occupation kitchen, a great representation of what it was like to live through the Occupation. There are old newspapers and resistance memos and crystal sets as well as diaries kept by the islanders. Amazing.
Then there is the fortress room which displays the aforementioned anti-aircraft gun and maps of all the fortifications across the island.
There are the prison rooms (they really executed a guy for releasing a pigeon?), the transport corridor and then an entire street recreated to look like it did during the occupation.
There is a propeller from some ship that has a bullet embedded in it and then there is the new “extension” – various transport that was used during the Occupation. Where did he keep all this stuff?
We are just in awe. This is truly an amazing display – and the time and effort that has gone into the planning and exhibition is incredible. The sheer number of items is mind boggling. You could truly stay here for hours looking at everything on display. We wish we could stay longer and chat with Richard, who is expected back around 11:30, but we have a bus to catch! So off we go, back through the pretty lanes with the typically British stone houses to catch the #92 bus from the airport.
We are in time for the bus, but sadly, as we were afraid it would be, it is standing room only. The only bonus is I can get rid of 2 of my Guernsey dollars! The island is quite pretty and we get to see all areas on our circumnavigation, from sweet little neighborhoods and flower covered lanes, to the rocky coastline dotted with German fortresses everywhere. We eventually get seats and watch the island slide by our windows. It is a huge bummer that this is such a short port call, and the bus is so infrequent. We’d love to get out and explore some of these fortresses and fortifications. But, there is no way we’re getting off this bus. That would be suicide!
So, we make it all the way around the island without incident, hopping out on the main seaside street in St. Peter Port. We meander a bit, stopping in a small grocery store and picking up some Guernsey cream caramels and alleviating ourselves of our last Guernsey dollar. Yes!
We visit the town church, simple and unadorned, but with great stained windows.
We toy with walking up to Victor Hugo’s home, but you need an appointment to visit and we really aren’t all that hep on climbing the hill. So, we meander through town at sea level a bit more, then hop on the tender and head back to the ship for sail away.
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