Home, and a half year or so of cruising is over

We got home from Heathrow without any incidents or real inconveniences. The AA plane we drew had a smaller than usual premium economy section which placed our usual seats on the bulkhead. That was a surprise but only a small inconvenience as all the overheard bins were filled with big suitcases. We only had my purse and 2 small daypacks but since we had the bulkhead we had no floor storage. We eventually found space and kept my stuff on the floor or behind my back the rest of the time. We saw Pitch Perfect 2 and The Judge as movies. That was good because we missed them on release this spring. AA served beverages 3 times, hot lunch, an ice cream snack and a hot sandwich snack.

We were exhausted when we finally cleared immigration, got our rolling duffels and cleared customs. Though it was a beautiful day, we decided not to take the bus and walk home from the downtown bus depot. We could have taken the bus and then a cab the rest of the way, but Clay decided he'd had enough transportation adventures and we took a cab directly home.

All is well at home. The grass needed mowing and the cars need washing is all. It was good to sleep in our own bed. It was a luxury to be awakened by the sun this morning. To have stuffed French toast for a late breakfast with crisp bacon and a big mug of coffee and not to have to make small chat with strangers while doing it. Instead we watched the season premiere of Castle! We didn't have to rush to catch a car, a bus, a boat, a plane or a train. Did I miss anything? We have nothing we have to do and all day to do it. We have a one hour shorter weekend though. The time here changes tonight! So, one final and unexpected time change and then we can settle in at home for a while.

Next trip is my birthday to Universal Orlando's Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Diagon Alley. Diagon Alley has been built since our last birthday trip there! Looking forward to it. I will write about it back on the Road Trips with Bob blog.

This will be the last entry on this blog. It wasn't a 6-month World Cruise but we saw a lot. It'll do.

Day 28 - London

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Photo Slideshow

We were up early this morning and saw the earliest departing couple leave as we had breakfast. We were packed up and cleared out of the cabin before 7:30am. When we turned in our keys, she told us our driver was waiting. Departure was warm and thoughtful if a bit too much compliment begging which has been an annoying hallmark these 4 weeks. We were all early and we left. We walked past the dining room windows and waved a final farewell to our dining partner of the last few weeks.

Marseille is about 85 km away. We drove in moderate traffic on a motorway and made good time. We were inside Hall 1 of the Marseille Provence Airport before 9am and before BA opened their check in counters. I bought a Lyon Starbucks mug with some of the last of our Euros as we waited. It was good that we were so early because there was a very long line and wait to get through security and Clay got a random search twice! The flight was on time and fine at about 2 hours long. We had a 1 hour time change onboard. The flight was full with all seats filled. They served a light lunch and beverages. It was okay. The final 20 minutes of circling was tedious and the landing in a heavy cross wind was a bit terrifying. We had an excessively long wait to clear the UK border and go through customs. They didn’t give us as many questions this time as the last 2 times we came through though.  We topped off our Oyster cards and caught the Piccadilly Line to Acton Town. If you’ve been following along then you may recall Acton Town. Clay chose it to stay 2 nights earlier this year. Last time we were in a garret room of the old townhouse. This time we are on the ground floor of the new building down the alley behind it. Both are awful. The location and price are right though, so here we are. If we do this again, we need to find a nicer place and I am not really that picky about where I stay. We decided to go into town to visit the London Transport Museum. We had never heard of it before but when I Google mapped what was nearby, I found an Italian restaurant and the LTM’s Depot. I clicked the LTMD and found that the nearby Depot is only a storage facility to be booked for private functions and by appointment but that the public museum part is near Covent Garden. That is on the Piccadilly Line so we checked in and dropped the bags and went. The website for the LTM doesn’t get a high grade from me because I never saw anywhere that it was geared towards children. It is. Europe is in the middle of a 2-week school break. Admission for those under 17 is free. You can work it out. It was a nightmare. It probably would have been cool if you could safely move around in the 4 story building but you couldn’t. Clay got a senior rate. I paid full price. I got a Mind the Gap patch! We worked our way through more throngs of kids and rugby fans and theater goers and rush hour traffic to get to Leicester Square station since Covent Garden station is exit only for now and rightly so. We thought we’d never get out of that station! It was raining a light mist most of the afternoon and early evening. It isn’t too cold though. We went to Casereccio, a small casual Italian family restaurant down the street from the Tube station and our hotel. It was delightful and a delicious very thin crusted pizza. We have another early morning tomorrow and a long day ahead so I’ll try to post this now. Sorry, I can get on the hotel’s wifi but there’s no Internet service available so I don’t know when I’ll get this posted. Tomorrow night in our own bed!

Photo Slideshow

Day 27 - Avignon and Arles

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Photo Slideshow

Dinner last night was a bit different. The main courses were lamb shank or fish so I had to eat vegetarian. It was vegetables in a cream sauce inside a puff pastry covered with tomato sauce. I hadn’t seen that before.

After dinner, we and Graham took a short night-time stroll under the bridge right in front of us to see the pink-lit Pont d’Avignon. We are docked directly across the street on the riverbank close to the Pope’s palace and the city walls. It is most impressive lit up at night and we haven’t been parked this close to a city center since Amsterdam or Budapest. All our other mooring sites have been distinctly rural or industrial and remote. This last week has been closer to all of our expectations and so unusual for the final of our 4 weeks. Oh, when challenged, Graham found the public shipboard WC’s in one evening. I had been looking all week! They are tucked into the non-bar entry side of the reception desk wall. Hidden and we both swore we thought it was a staff only spot until we really looked for the WCs.

The Gipsy Fever was a group of 2 Spanish guitarists and a female singer. They are relatives of the more famous Gipsy Kings (which I never heard of either). It reminded me of the music we heard in Barcelona with a Cuban flair. None of which I would have associated with Provencal atmosphere. I guess we are closer to Spain than I realized. It was good until they started dragging audience members onto the dance floor. I hate forced participation. I left. They had a good turnout with a majority of the passengers and a good portion of the staff/crew. It was the largest audience I had seen in there to date.

As I understand it, this is the last cruise of the season for Symphony. We aren’t exactly clear on what they do with their boats when they are not sailing, but presumably maintenance and care. We are getting some weird dishes now, so I guess they are clearing out the pantry for the season’s end.

The temperature is in the 60’sF this morning and brightly sunny. It is hard to imagine that there are thunderstorms predicted almost all day and that the temperature is supposed to drop rather than rise. I’ll keep you posted and we’ll dress according to the forecast and not our observations and keep our fingers crossed for clear skies for another couple of days.

We were parked in the best possible spot today and when we sailed away, there were 5 riverboats parked behind us. Four were stacked up 2 deep which always sucks and the last was the furthest from the palace. Yeah for us for once! We have the same guide today as yesterday. She is Austrian and longwinded without ever really providing any useful details about what you need to know to get around independently during free time which we are actually having now. Symphony gives out maps but they aren’t terribly useful either as they are not detailed enough. So, we had a 2 hour guided tour to the Pope’s Palace in Avignon today. Then we had about 1 hour and 45 minutes of free time, in theory. It poured rain and thundered intermittently. We decided to just try to find the overlook to the Pont d’Avignon. The guide just kept vaguely pointing off in the opposite direction of the boat and saying it was a good photo vantage. We eventually found a door in a tower along the wall on that side of the Pont and climbed over 150 stairs to get up there and then back down. We were soaked by the time we got back aboard and evidently so did everyone else because around 12:30pm we started sailing. All aboard was 12:45pm and sailing was 1pm. I assume everyone came back early and when they thought they had all the boarding cards that they just left without a word. If we don’t sail without someone, this will be the first Amadeus boat we’ve been on that didn’t leave someone ashore because they did not have their boarding card.

Lunch is the taste of Provence buffet. These taste of buffets have been good on the last 2 boats. At 3:15pm we have the disembarkation talk. Clay already went to the CD and asked since we fly from Marseilles at 11:20am and there a bunch of Celebrity people flying out of there we thought they might put us on a bus with them. No, we have a prepaid taxi to Marseilles departing at 7:45am. Hopefully they will have an early breakfast because the last 2 boats our transfers came anywhere from more than 30 minutes early to 10 minutes early. As our last CD Gunther said, 10 minutes early is not on time, neither is 10 minutes late, on time is at the time scheduled.

We need to get packed sometime today. We should arrive at Arles at 4pm and from 4pm to 5:30pm we have a walking tour. We are really hoping the rain has cleared out by then! Farewell cocktails at 7pm. Farewell dinner at 7:30pm. Off tomorrow morning on our way home.

Sometime in the afternoon before we arrived in Arles, we passed a rocky river bank on our port side and right on the rock was built some kind of fort or castle directly above the Rhone. The sun was shining on it and it was amazing. It wasn’t announce and though I went upstairs to the lounge to check the navigation screen, I still don’t know what the place was. We had the disembarkation talk at 3:15pm. We and one other couple are disembarking early with private transfers. The other couple has to leave at 6:45am and we are being picked up at 7:45am. Graham was ignored entirely and assumed he’d have to get a cab in the morning to his Arles hotel. (When we got back from the Arles walking tour, he found a note in his cabin that a cab would take him at 10am.) The rest of the meeting was about the Celebrity guests. A couple of differences on this boat vs. the others though it may just have to do with the small number of passengers. They never used the color coded tour tickets. They aren’t using the colored ribbons on the luggage for disembarkation either.

We arrived in Arles on schedule. We headed out for 4 to 5:30pm walking tour. We strolled from Quai Lamartine to Place Voltaire to the old Roman amphitheater to the old Roman theater to the Place de la Republic to the Espace van Gogh (where he was hospitalized for cutting off his ear) to the boat. It had gotten cold and it was getting dark so not many people stayed in town. At least some skipped the tour to go shopping here from the outset. Clay and I detoured to the fun fair right at the quai to visit the crepe stand where we had seen a line up on the way out. It was miel (honey) and a big hot mess!

The cocktail party was as normal except that they introduced the entire kitchen staff which the other boats have done before serving the Baked Alaska. This way made dinner shorter. This boat has definitely gotten the memo about the long meals. In any event, the number of chefs made those waits even more inexplicable on this boat. There were at least 2 chefs per table! That coupled with 1 waiter for every 6 guests and no one should have ever experienced any waits.

Dinner was pretty much the usual menu. Surf and turf and Baked Alaska with lobster soup, a fish course and a sorbet palate cleanser course.

We need to get up early in the morning. I will publish this now.

Photo Slideshow

Day 26 - Roquemaure

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Photo Slideshow

Pirate Night last night was much more subdued than past ones. The waiters all wore exactly matching striped shirts and instead of well drawn on Polynesian tattoos like last cruise they had rudely drawn beards, mustaches and scars. The messed up table settings were the same. The menu was a bit better than those of past pirate nights. We drank our Sekt. It was a different bottle and brand than the last ones and was better than those, but I still didn’t like it. It made me dizzy so I didn’t finish a glass. Dinner went quickly again and for that we are all thankful.

We learned at the port talk that we would sail from Roquemaure late today. This morning we leave at 8am for an excursion to see the Roman aquaduct Pont du Gard. An hour of free time at some small Duke’s village and back to the boat for lunch. After lunch we go to Chateauneuf du Pape for a chocolate and wine tasting. These are supposed to be some big heavy red wines so I expect I’ll not have much of that and hope for good chocolates. All aboard is 4:45pm and we sail for Avignon at 5pm. We should arrive in Avignon at 7pm and have dinner onboard. At 9pm they will bring onboard a local music and dance group “Gipsy Fever” to perform for a Provencal atmosphere. That’s it. Had breakfast and waiting for departure. It is supposed to rain today.

Oh, there are no bicycles onboard Symphony. I had been looking, but it’s been confirmed. The other thing I can’t find is public toilets. We hope we can depart early when we leave if that is true that there aren’t any! This boat has hydraulic rails on the top deck so they are quick to partially open and close it unlike the other 2.

We are back from Pont du Gard. Amazing! Out in the middle of nowhere a big bridge to carry water across a river from a spring to Nimes. It has to go so far that it only had about a 7cm grade per km. It worked from the 1^st century AD to the 4^th century AD and by the 6^th century the Roman Empire had collapsed. We did not visit the Duke’s village which I saw signs for and it was called Uzes. Lunch is from 12:15pm to 1:45pm at which time we depart on the same bus with the same guide for Chateauneuf du Pape. The guide couldn’t believe we were docked out here in the middle of nowhere with nowhere to walk to and they couldn’t even get the bus very near us. The long walk to the bus was no surprise for us at this point.

We are back from Chateauneuf du Pape. There were 9 popes that lived in Avignon and the first that lived there built this new castle at his papal vineyards. There is only half a ruined tower and one wall left now. The guide said the Germans blew it up as they retreated. We went to Brotte’s Musee du Vin for a wine and chocolate tasting. Let me say that the guy who conducted it was most unhappy about it. If he didn’t want to do it, he should have just refused instead of preaching and harping about it for the better part of an hour. He acted like he blamed the 22 of us instead of himself for agreeing to do it or whoever booked it with him. But he provided 3 wines to taste and an assortment of gourmet dark chocolates. Each chocolate had printed on it the nation from which the cacao was sourced. We had 3 different countries and I couldn’t tell any difference. The chocolate only went a bit well with the sweet wine that he served last, a Muscat. I know people like it and drink it with meals but it was an aperitif or dessert wine style so it went pretty well with the chocolate. He also served a white and red Chateauneuf du Pape. They were bottling behind a glass wall where we sat. That was interesting. Afterwards we spent about an hour driving through vineyards up the hill to the ruined new castle where we left the bus and walked down through the town. There were a few shops and restaurants open but it started raining hard and we all went back to the bus waiting below early. We were back onboard Symphony and sailing by 5pm. We have a port talk for tomorrow at 6:45pm. We should be docked in Avignon by 7pm. The guide assured us we’d be parked right in the middle of town. I think if there is docking space out of town, that is where we’ll be.

A word about the weather, like elsewhere they are experiencing unseasonable extremes. They had a long, hot and dry summer followed by the earliest recorded European winter storm that was massive and affected us as we traveled from Amsterdam to Paris. Over the last few days, there has been another break and a last final burst of Indian summer. That is breaking now with a return of the north wind, or as they call it here, the mistral. Tomorrow the temperature is predicted to drop over the course of the day and to thunderstorm all day. I suspect we’ll learn in the port talk later that the day is to be spent walking Avignon. Well, it’s weather and you have to take what you get.

Tomorrow is our last cruise day of this trip and this year! It has been a doozy and all because the 180-day world cruise was cancelled. We saw a lot that we wouldn’t have otherwise and I guess I am just as happy to have done the trips we’ve done this year vs. the world cruise. We checked a lot of things off our bucket lists that wouldn’t be done if we’d done the world cruise as planned. Of course, we do have more trips planned over the next few months but I’ll be ending this blog and going back to Road Trips with Bob.

I am going to go ahead and post this now while I have Internet. If I have anything to report about the remainder of the evening, I’ll do it tomorrow.

Photo Slideshow

Day 25 - Viviers

Monday, October 26, 2015

Photo Slideshow

We won at geography trivia last night. There were 20 questions and we got 17 right. I think the 2 other teams had 15 and less. There were a lot of different photos than we had seen before. The prize was a bottle of Sekt. Graham asked them to save it for later. I don’t know when he wants it. The other 2 teams each participant got a glass of Sekt just for playing which meant we got nothing! Since none of us even likes the Sekt, it hardly matters.

Start time today was 8:15am with breakfast still at 7am so we had to be a bit quicker. We docked right before departure time in Viviers. This was an amazing tiny historic town with a bishop’s castle and a cathedral. But, first we took a long drive through the countryside to reach a truffle farm. This was the longest part of the morning excursion. We met a 3^rd generation truffle farmer and his dog, Aimee. They were both loveable. Bob was snuffled by an Italian-born Labradoodle truffle dog! The process was interesting and the truffle smelled disgusting. At the end of the tour, lecture and demonstration, he served red, white and rose wine from local vintners as well as a variety of truffle snacks. Terrine, tapenade, oil, etc. with bread and butter. Clay ate them all and I just smelled them because that was enough. We drove back to Viviers and walked through the old cathedral district and had a tour of the cathedral. It reminded me of Curinga. We walked back down the hill and through the town to the boat. We were about 10 minutes late, but there was another boat docked against us since breakfast. They had a full load and they had to cross our boat to leave. They used our bus plus 3 others to leave for a tour. Only then could we pull away from the dock after they left. We had lunch aboard. We ordered burgers and fries since there was no rush today. I think we are sailing aboard all afternoon. The original itinerary had us on a morning and afternoon excursion but Susan just mentioned a “green” stop this afternoon. It had the sound of a technical stop where passengers can’t go ashore but I have no idea. I’ll let you know. We seemed to have entered a canal during lunch and I am not sure if we’re still in it. As we sail past a nuclear power plant, it appears to be a manmade canal with concrete sides. We were told the tallest lock on the Rhone was coming up but we aren’t there yet. There are about 20 locks on here. Graham reckons by the end of this cruise we’ll have been through close to 200 locks in Europe. I don’t think that sounds right. Maybe half that, certainly while we were onboard and awake.

After lunch we went through the tallest lock on the Rhone at 23 meters. Then we went back to the cabin to brush our teeth. I got my water, needlepoint and jacket to go sit up front in the Panorama Lounge because it is the only place you can see out the front especially since the sun deck was alternately opened and closed all day. Clay had the window open and his feet up in the only chair in the cabin with both the camera and the binoculars and said he was staying since he had a nice quiet set up. I guess it must have been a really quiet setup and I wish he’d told me he was going to sleep all afternoon because he did not even see Mornas, a spectacular cliffside fortress gleaming white in the afternoon sun. I could have used the binoculars and the camera if he had told me he was going to sleep. Anyway. That was the largest medieval fortress in France, but we saw some other cliff top ruined towers along the way. We docked in Roquemaure about 30 minutes behind schedule. It looks like the village is a bit of a distance from the dock. There are more ruined castles visible in the distance on both sides of the river. We have nothing scheduled here for the rest of the day except the 6:45pm port talk (about time!) and Pirate’s Dinner at 7pm. The menu is a bit altered from the last 3 but not by a lot. The Celebrity concierge who sat with us last cruise called that menu the cheese meal and it is heavy on cheese. I think you could have cheese in 4 courses. But, I have to wonder if it is pun-full. You know, cheesy pirate dinner. If so, it is clever, but I suspect it is just a coincidence.

Since we have Internet now, I will go ahead and try to post this.

Photo Slideshow

Day 24 - Lyon

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Photo Slideshow

There was no port talk yesterday. There was no announcement that the clocks had to be moved back one hour overnight. Bogdan, the Celebrity rep escorting his group onboard, came from table to table telling us each to adjust our locks. In good news, I have to eat my comments last night about the rigid service schedule in the restaurant. The maître d’ brought our 2 soups and one salad out within minutes of our ordering them. We were finished eating them before all the other tables had finished ordering. He didn’t tell our table’s waiter he had done it and a good 15 minutes later after our dishes had been bused, the waiter arrived with 2 bowls of soup and no salad! We were all surprised that after complaining about this since October 1, we had finally been heard and listened to and the maître d’ had also chosen to act on it. We can only hope it was not a one-off experience. Now that we know they can do it, we’ll expect it. It was stupid that we spent all that time for weeks on 3 different boats waiting for soup and salad courses like that. We know they are already prepared and we should not have to wait 15-20 minutes through each course for mains an hour later if the whole table doesn’t want to dine that way.

Today we got up at 6am with some worry that the clocks were right. They were. Sekt was served on the breakfast buffet as it is Sunday. We set out at 8:30am with less than the 28 passengers onboard for the city tour of Lyon. We rode around for a bit of an overview then we stopped at Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse. We left the bus for a walking tour of the covered market and some tastings. We had red wine and 3 kinds of saucissons and 3 kinds of cheese. It was a most upscale market the likes of which we hadn’t seen before. The second stop was at the top of the hill Fourviere at a panoramic viewpoint and the basilica of Notre Dame de Fourviere. The last stop of the day was at the riverfront of the Saone in old town where we had a guided tour and some free time. Then we returned to our dock at Quai Claude Bernard and lunch on the boat. (We must have past the confluence of the 2 rivers in the dark when we arrived in Lyon and sailed up the Rhone to dock there!) We all skipped ordering anything since we only had an hour and just ate from the buffet. Plus it felt like we’d been eating all morning. At 1:30pm, we set off for an afternoon touring the Beaujolais wine region. We drove north of Villefranche-sur-Saone where we exited the highway and drove through ever increasingly small roads to reach Chateau de la Chaize (1676). It was stunning. The landscape of the hillside behind covered in fall colored vineyards and the formal gardens and the house was just amazing. We were welcomed at the cave by the vintner and he only spoke French. Our guide translated and we learned about how they make Beaujolais. I still don’t like it. We tried a rose which is new for them and 2 reds. One from a young vine and a more expensive and longer aged in the barrel from a very old vine. I think we all preferred the old vine! They told us we’d have another stop in Beaujolais Villages but we drove straight back as we were running late and then traffic was heavy in Lyon so we just got back in time for all aboard and sailing anyway. We were in Odenas in the Brouilly cru area of the 10 crus of Beaujolais. The area where we didn’t stop is the region of Nouveau Beaujolais. I don’t like that anyway so I didn’t feel I missed anything.

We got back onboard and immediately started sailing back south. I have forgotten to mention that this boat, Symphony is the first to make a big production when we come aboard or return aboard. The accordion player comes out and plays and greets us all in French and there are usually 2 people in the lobby with wet cloths and some kind of beverages on offer. It is a nice touch.

There is a big full moon tonight. We sailed past the confluence of the Rhone and Saone rivers and they have a big new modern building there as a museum of the confluence. That sounds interesting. It is fully dark now as we are going through our first Rhone River lock on our way down to Arles.

Dinner is at 7pm. The “Journey Around the World” quiz is tonight at 9:15pm. I don’t know if I can get Clay and Graham to join me, but I have plans to dominate again.

Photo Slideshow

Day 23 - A day in Bresse

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Photo Slideshow

One week from today we will be at home and have our first newspaper in a month! Little things.

It was an early start today. Breakfast was still as hit and miss with more misses. A couple sat with us and she ordered a poached egg that took at least 15 minutes to arrive. Our regular dining companion never eats breakfast with us because we come and leave early and he comes and leaves late. He always orders an omelet. Today he ordered on and twenty minutes later it still had not arrived and since he had to board the bus in 10 minutes, he got up and cancelled his order and left. Here is the real mystery. When we boarded, at the safety briefing they said there were 33 of us. The next day they said 32. Today they said 28. There are the 3 of us on the Complete Europe, there are 2 independent Norwegians (we’ve been told but we haven’t met them) and the rest are all going to a Celebrity cruise. Whoever came up with the Luftner/Amadeus & Celebrity co-marketing was an evil genius because otherwise these river boats would have been much emptier. I can’t imagine why Luftner is building a new boat a year when these are not full.  I know we are in a sort of shoulder season so maybe they are booked full at other times of the year.

We were on the bus on our way across the river to the Bresse region by 8:30am. Only 4 passengers stayed on the boat. Our first stop was a farm museum in Romenay. The architecture of these old farm houses that we passed and visited reminded us very much of Tito’s village. We spent at least an hour on a guided tour there and then had a performance by locals in costumes who played songs and danced. The whole experience was supposed to be set in 1937, I think because at that time most farmhouses had both old and new things in them so they could display old and really old. Lyon evidently used to be a silk center so they wore a surprising amount of silk for farmers. We saw and heard a new instrument for us, a hurdy gurdy.

After that we drove to Ferme Auberge du Colombier in Vernoux for a huge Bressonaise lunch. It was a great setting on a clear day with snow-capped Mont Blanc visible in the distance as well as acres of Bresse chickens. The chickens have a red top on their heads, white feathers and blue leathery legs. They are protected by appellation and have specific requirements like a minimum of 10 square meters of outdoor range. We ate them of course! They had a unique meat texture and strong flavor as well as freakish long legs! We had sausage, pickled onions and cornichons with pork terrine to start. We had warm French bread with Bresse butter. We had white and red wine. We all thought the red was awful and didn’t love the white though I thought it tasted very similar to our Pouilly-Fuisse last night. There was a salad with chicken livers and hard boiled eggs. There were gratineed potatoes and then chicken in sour cream. Lastly, there was a pie like a very thin version of Clay’s Granny’s pie made with cream and sugar. They served tea and coffee. It was a good and filling meal and it was a nice change from the struggles and agonies of dining on Amadeus boats. We walked out through the back to see the chicken yards in the distance and their old wood fired oven.

We next drove to Monastere Royal de Brou in Bourg en Bresse. It was a beautiful deconsecrated monastery and church. It was built by a widow on the death of her husband, who I believe I understood was later sainted Philibert. She was a Hapsburg and ruled in I believe the Netherlands and raised the future king of Spain Charles V, her nephew. She died after the church was completed without ever seeing it. She, her husband and his mother are all entombed behind the altar. It stopped being a monastery and church during the French Revolution and became a city building in the 1920s. It was late high Gothic style and finished in fewer than 30 years if I understood correctly. It was certainly the largest church we had ever seen that had been built as a private enterprise and tomb. That alone made it singular.

We drove on south for about an hour and a half to Lyon, a huge city, to find a bunch of riverboats and our docked where the Saone meets and becomes the Rhone. After we got back they had a demonstration and sale of Lyon-painted silk scarves in the Lounge. We dropped in for about 15 minutes. There were fewer than a dozen people in attendance. I still don’t know if anyone attended the book restoration lecture. Dinner is at 7:30pm and I see no port talk for tomorrow on the program. I will try not to write about dinner since at this point I guess the less said the better. I expect the rigid rules about the service of courses for the entire restaurant and the hour we waited for main courses last night after salad and soup will keep us from ever returning to another Amadeus Cruise. If I still have Internet, I’ll publish this now.

Photo Slideshow