After the final part of our tour of the Falklands War battlefields at Mount Harriet we were dropped off back at Stanley close to Memorial Park. From here we would have plenty of time to be able to talk a walk around the capital of the Falklands with camera in hand and to check off a goal of ours, that being to have a drink in a pub of some description. There were barely any clouds in the sky and with the low volume of traffic on the islands the level of pollution in the atmosphere was noticeable by its absence. The sky was incredibly, almost painfully blue and we were warned that we should be careful with exposure to the sun. We ignored it and got a little bit burnt. That’s so us.
Falkland Islands Museum
We briefly popped into a souvenir place with the aim of getting something memorable from our trip to the Falklands but it seemed so did nearly everyone else from the Star Princess so we quickly left and headed to the nearby Falkland Islands Museum instead where we could see people milling about.
There were a smattering of military and maritime exhibits outside the museum with some lovely views across the harbour but it was inside that we wanted to visit. We entered and saw what looked like a ticket desk only for the woman behind to smile and gesture for us to step through and look around without paying. We thought that was odd but did so and came to wonder as we wandered around whether she had mistaken us as part of a tour group who were also exploring since we were still wearing our excursion stickers from the completed battlefields tour. We shrugged and agreed that the museum would do alright out of us anyway as we’d seen they had a shop and we had every intention of spending cash there as we’d been too impatient to wait in the souvenir shop. For the record we followed through on our intention, bought loads of little things, and even got some Falkland Islands change for our holiday money collection.
The museum was excellent and arguably one of the best we’ve visited, covering every aspect of Falkland Islands life from the people across different periods to the wildlife and geology and history, including the war, naturally. Highly recommended.
We carried on along Ross Road which runs along the harbour front in Stanley passing many buildings built in the style typical for the islands: white with coloured roofs, usually red or green. We also passed the mizzen mast of the SS Great Britain which had been damaged in a gale around Cape Horn in 1886.
Christ Church Cathedral
The next place we came upon was Christ Church Cathedral, famous in many pictures of the Falkland Islands because of the whalebone arch that decorates its entrance. The bones are from the jaws of two blue whales and the monument was put up in 1933 for the centenary of British rule and if you find yourself visiting Stanley on the Falkland Islands then there’s a very strong possibility that you’ll end up taking photos like this too. You won’t be able to help yourself.
Globe Tavern
This concluded our exploration of the interesting parts of Stanley on the Falkland Islands but did not conclude our time. We wanted to say we’d had a drink in a bar on the Falklands and just around the corner from the cathedral we spotted a gathering of like-minded people at the Globe Tavern. We initially thought everyone there would be from our cruise ship as it was the only one out in Blanco Bay and we could see nothing else in the harbour but this turned out not to be true.
Our tour guide had told us that many Argentinian people visited the islands (something we found surprising) and this was the case with a sizeable number of patrons in the bar clearly from the closest mainland. Indeed, the staff and possibly owner too were also all Argentinian. Despite this and despite the very pro-British sentiment displayed prominently there seemed no issues with anyone. Smiles and close proximity to a family of Argentinian tourists led to me being asked to take their photos and I happily obliged. Our tour of the battlefields and its reminder of reasonably recent warfare between our two nations contrasted nicely with the pleasant, joint effort of ordinary people to make a living and run businesses.
Refreshed, we walked the short distance down to the jetty to catch the tender boat back to the cruise ship.
