We had a leisurely breakfast and headed into town with our luggage around 11 am. First stop was Condor Ferries to verify that the ferry was still scheduled for 3:55 pm, and also to drop off our luggage to avoid carrying it around town all day.
The Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey died last week, and today they held a memorial service for him in the town church, followed by transportation to the airport and on to England for his funeral. So we stood on the Seafront with the locals and watched the funeral cortege pass. All of the local dignitaries, police, military, etc. formed an honour guard along the street, so we got to see the leaders of this country of 67,000 people, all in one place.
The Lieutenant Governor's Honour Guard
After the cortege passed, we visited a few books stores and had a quick lunch before heading down to the ferry, one last time. My new friend, Cassie, was at Condor to check us in, and upgraded us to Ocean Club, so we rode very comfortably, with free hot drinks, on our one hour journey to St Helier in Jersey.
St Helier is not a quaint harbour town, like St. Peter Port, but is very modern and industrial looking. I guess that is what happens when you get too big (97,000 people packed into 112 square Km.) We are now 160 Km from England and only 14 Km from France. My friend May is in France on business this week, and it seems crazy that she is probably 3,000 Km closer to us at the moment, than when we are both at home in Canada.
Our B&B is a mere 3.3 Km from the ferry terminal, so we decided to walk it....big mistake from my perspective - tired and grouchy by the time we arrived (7 pm) and in need of food. Dinner was a takeout sandwich from the local cooperative store. Hopefully we will do better tomorrow night.
We will only have two full days in Jersey, as we fly to Exeter on Friday morning, so we will have to make the most of those two days. There is talk of major walking on both days, but the weather may not be entirely cooperative with that plan, so we will wait and see what tomorrow brings. We also have to get rid of all of our Guernsey and Jersey money, as we cannot use it in England, but can use English money here. Both Guernsey and Jersey use pounds that are valued the same as English pounds....they could probably save themselves printing and minting costs by just using the English money, or perhaps they print as much as they need :-)
I will close for tonight with a little toilet story - the photograph below was taken in the washroom of a cafe on the south coast of Guernsey. But what a good way to get a message across!
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