17 Dec 2016 - Cruise Day 5: Tour of Noumea, New Caledonia

We arrived at Noumea, the capital city of the French special collectivity of New Caledonia, early this morning.  This is our second and last Port of Call before heading back to Sydney.  From the port, we took the bus transfer to Noumea city centre.  We were glad that we did not book any shore excursion from the cruise because it's cheaper to book a similar tour here.  We booked our tour with the Green Choo Choo Train from Lyvai Tour.  It's nicely decorated with Christmas theme.

So here we were on board the train and began our Noumea tour for the next 1.5 hours.

We were surprised to see a Chinatown on this island.

The train travels along the roads to the historical sites around the city.

Our first photo stop was at the FOL (Fédération des OEuvres Laïques) Theatre.  The view here was simply amazing.

Lots of street paintings by the very talented local youth on the walls of the building. The Christopher Reeve painting is stunning.

After 10mins of photo taking, we continued our tour to the next stop.

We had another photo stop at Hill Ouen Toro.  The view here was awesome!

At the top of the hill are 2 x cannons from WW1, which provide an interesting historical insight.

Below is Hilton Hotel.

Not surprised to see Carrefour on this island since it is a French territory.

That's the Yellow Tchou Tchou Train if we were to book the shore excursion from the cruise.

After the tour, we went to a nearby supermarket to see any goodies to buy.  Though the supermarket accepts Australian Dollars, any change will be given in French Franc.  Along the way, we saw a familiar teddy bear in the display window.  It's the exact same one that we bought in Tasmania one year ago.  :-)

We decided to head back to our cruise for lunch.  Our cruise actually docked at the container pier on Noumea island.

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