P&O MV Arcadia; Saturday, 25 October, 2025

We were already pulling into our final port stop of the trip, Cherbourg, when I woke up and so Breakfast was taken with views of the grand Art Deco Gare Maritime Transatlantique a combined railway station and transatlantic steamer terminal that had once been the most important port in France. The current building was completed in the early 1930s but prior to that the harbour had been the penultimate calling port for the Titanic between Southampton and Cobh and its eventual demise in the North Atlantic. After being damaged during the war the building was reconstructed but fell into disuse and closed in the 1990s.

In the early 2000s the main trainshed of the complex was converted into a museum and more recently, with the boom in cruise travel, the ship side of the terminal has been brought back into use, making it, by a long way, the most impressive terminal on the cruise.

After breakfast I stepped off of the ship and wandered through the spectacular terminal building before starting the 15 minute walk into the centre of town, stopping off to take several photos along the way.

I spent a couple of hours wandering around Cherbourg before heading back to the ship to meet mum for lunch.

After lunch I headed back out of the ship, though this time only the short distance into the former train station, now the Cité de la Mer museum. The museum is made up of three attractions – an aquarium, a museum on the history of the Titanic, which normally would include a wander around the art deco baggage hall of the ship side of the terminal, but this was closed today because it was being used by a cruise ship…, and the French Nuclear Submarine, Le Redoutable.

I spent a good couple of hours looking around the site, and I still didn’t really get to see everything, but by now it was time to get back on the ship, have a quick afternoon tea, and then watch the final sail away of the journey from my cabin.

A couple of hours later it was back to the routine of a drink and into the virtual queue for the restaurant, which once again placed us 103rd, the same position we’d always ended up in.

After dinner it was back to cabins to pack, pop our luggage outside the room for collection and a relatively early night as we had to be up early for breakfast and off the ship by 9, though with the advantage of a double time jump.