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

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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!

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Day 27 - Avignon and Arles

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

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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.

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Day 26 - Roquemaure

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

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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.

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Day 25 - Viviers

Monday, October 26, 2015

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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.

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Day 24 - Lyon

Sunday, October 25, 2015

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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.

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Day 23 - A day in Bresse

Saturday, October 24, 2015

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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.

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Day 22 - Clay's Birthday!

Friday, October 23, 2015

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Happy Birthday, Clay! Well, we were docked overnight and sailed at 6am about the time the alarm woke us. There is no nightlight in this cabin unlike the last 2 boats and with the small windows, it is dark in the cabin! We went through our first lock during breakfast. Breakfast was hit and miss. We are docked in Tournon now.

So yesterday when we were docked at the North Port of Chalon-sur-Saone, we were at the northernmost navigable point of this river system. Now we are sailing down river and south. We will sail on the Saone, Rhone and Loire to reach Arles. We will transit 13 locks. I guess I never noted anything about the Seine River last week. It is the longest in France. We did not navigate the entire navigable river. There were a lot of locks, but I don’t think there were a dozen. Sorry! I am not a very good reporter.

There are no open decks on Symphony except for the top sun deck. You can go out the lobby doors to a small, small piece of exterior covered deck outside the doors but it is very enclosed and used by smokers. Unlike the other 2 boats, you can’t go out the back or the front, only out either side of the lobby and to the top. Even for a smaller boat with fewer passengers, it is inconvenient.

Sailing this morning was bucolic. There were swans and Charolais cows along either side and misty fields in the distance as the sun rose (the clouds were too low for any real sunrise, it just slowly got light). This river is smaller than the others with less traffic and you could hear the birds in the trees on either side. Delightful. At 9am we walked across the neighboring boat and started a 2 hour or so walk around Tournus. It is another little old town. They are endless! The prize here was the nearly intact 1000+ year old abbey. It is still a working parish church. There were archaeological digs going on around it. One of those digs in the past found a mosaic floor behind the altar. It was beautiful. For some reason that has not been explained there are a lot of depictions of the zodiac in these churches and other religious buildings and this was one. She asked if we wanted to visit the crypt. OUI! Some of us went down. It was amazing. This is the first church that we’ve been invited down there and you know they must all have these. After the tour of the abbey we had about 40 minutes of free time. Clay reckoned it would take him that long to get back down the hill. This side of the river is hilly and they grow wine vines. The other side is flatter and agricultural it seems. The guide says it is a gastronomic paradise called Bresse, is famous for chickens and that we’ll learn about it tomorrow. Our guide is a British woman who has lived in this area for about 30 years. She has been one of our best and easily our most understandable guides. It would be nice if we have her again tomorrow. The small group just walking off helped too. We didn’t stay with the group and after visiting a local products shop across from the abbey’s refectory building where I bought an ornamented beret, we took a more direct route back downhill to the river and to the boat parking lot. The boat left Tournus when we did and we had to meet a bus at 11am to ride about 30 minutes to Macon to meet it. We both couldn’t stay awake in the bus since she didn’t talk much because there wasn’t much to see. Also, the heat was on! We arrived to find Symphony parked against another boat again and had to run the stairs gauntlet to re-board. This boat in particular is not advised for mobility challenged. The others at least had an elevator inside but this one doesn’t and there are a maze of short stair flights making half floor divisions in all directions off the reception area. We got back shortly before noon and everyone was ready for lunch. But, no. Since we joined Amadeus on October 1 there has not been a single enrichment lecture until now. It is going on without us now. It is in French, lasts one hour and the subject is restoration of old books by a French bookbinder/restorationist. If I couldn’t stay awake on the bus, there is no way I will try that. I am sorry to say it and sorry to skip this perhaps only enrichment lecture but honestly even a wine lecture-demo here in the birthplace of French chardonnay at noon would have been too much to ask even if more topical. The afternoon is at our leisure but there is not much to see here without renting a car. There is an Ursulines Museum open, in French only. The other historical attractions in walking distance in Macon are by appointment only. I guess we’ll still go out walking after lunch. But, we don’t have high hopes.  

We had a too long lunch and are really missing the light lunch buffets in the lounge. I guess with only 32 guests they just can’t serve lunch in 2 places. Anyway, we picked up a brochure on Macon and the Maconnais area when we came back onboard. On the front cover was a photo of Solutre, a big rock outcropping. We Googled and it is only 11 km away so rental car it is. We asked our dining companion if he’d like to join us and he offered to share the cost. Even better. We asked at reception for help renting a car and the CD and ACD (or local French expert onboard, though she is wearing a uniform with stripes so we haven’t figured it out yet) were at lunch. After lunch the CD called and had found the same place we had found a couple of blocks away. If you knew where to look, you could actually see our boat from the place. It was next to a gas station on Edouard Herriot. It cost us about $50 to show up and rent a small car on demand for about 3 hours and about 5 Euros to replace the gallon or so of gas we used. They didn’t have any maps and didn’t offer GPS and the guy gave us wrong instructions as far as we could tell, but reading signs and using Clay’s phone’s GPS we found a scenic route there and a different one back without incident. It was a really lovely afternoon! As a bonus we drove through the village of Solutre-Pouilly and bought a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse at a shop that only sold that variety of wine. We had it chilled and we shared it at dinner (and will again tomorrow). We told Amras Cruises we were not celebrating anything, but as had been conjectured earlier in the month, they must be checking passports for birthdates when they have them because the lights went down after dinner tonight. It was another marginal and unsatisfying dining experience. We were waiting for dessert too late and Clay had just gotten a plate of cheese when they paraded out the birthday cake with the sparkler in it and the lights down. It was a bit better than the past 2 boats because instead of recorded music and a long parade through the dining room, they came right to him and had the accordion player playing and the waiters and he were singing. It is cheesy, but it was classier than the last 2 boats have done. The maître d’ told Clay he was also waiving the $12.50 corkage fee for his birthday. That was a nice gift! I wish we'd thought about this happening and brought a camera to dinner. 

We have an early day and a long day off the boat tomorrow in what promises to be our first hot day in weeks! So, I will not write about tomorrow’s port briefing. You’ll learn tomorrow what happens tomorrow. We are docked here in Macon overnight. Tomorrow we and the boat will arrive in Lyon.

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Day 21 - Chalon-sur-Saone

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Breakfast was at 6:30am today. Luggage out by 7:30am. We had to be out of our cabins and turn in our keys and settle up by 8:30am. We owed nothing this time. At least this time we didn’t leave with them owing us forever. Our cabin stewardess asked us where the hairdryer was as we returned after breakfast after Clay tipped her extra. We were wondering the same thing since we never found it either. She apologized. A private driver in a van was scheduled to pick us up at 10am. We shared the van with 1 of our dining companions who we have been sailing with and dining either with or near since Budapest on October 1. We 3 were evidently the only people in the English-speaking world to bite for Amras’ Complete Europe. The original couple that we have been dining with since Budapest left for home today. I am sure we will miss them. I do already.  So, the driver arrived minutes early and we loaded up and set off in a light rain and heavy traffic. It took about 30 minutes to get out of Paris traffic. Once we got on the E15 we actually had pretty light traffic. The clouds were very low all day and it rained harder and got colder the further south we drove. It seemed to me though that we also increased elevation or altitude so maybe that explains it. It was about a 4 hour drive. Our driver today spoke English but the van was very loud and noisy for some reason (Ford Transit) and he didn’t really talk to us that much. It was even difficult for me to speak with Clay and Graham. I was sitting alone on the back row since you had to crawl back there. They sat on the middle row together with an empty seat between them. That row has lots of leg room and they both have sore knees. We made a comfort stop and a light lunch at a freeway truck stop kind of place at Sceaux at about 12:30pm. We arrived in Chalon-sur-Saone at about 2:45pm. We found 3 other riverboats. Nicko and Tauck right near the old town and Viking out at an industrial wharf. The industrial wharf was the address the driver had. He got out and asked them as they were loading their gangway where our boat was and they didn’t know but said it might be coming here since they had to leave. The driver didn’t eat when we did and was hungry now so we drove back to town and checked the other docks again as he looked for a place to park near a café. There was no parking for blocks around. He had called the Diamond and asked them for a phone number for Symphony. Something all of us should have been provided but weren’t. Finally after he ate at McDonald’s (we got a speculoos McFlurry!) and didn’t get the phone number texted to him, he called again and got a man at reception. He offered to call Symphony and find out where they were to tell the driver what to do with us. He told him Symphony had arrived at the industrial wharf while we were gone. We drove right back since the McDonald’s and a bowling alley and an industrial building are all that is within walking distance of the boat. Another black van was just driving off as people were boarding and suitcases were being loaded. It looked like they had a sheet with fewer than 2 dozen names of people they were boarding today. This boat is similar to Diamond so both are older than Silver II. It is also a lot smaller than Diamond and the deck plans are completely different. So, in addition to being moved to the port side from the starboard side after 3 weeks, we are no longer on the same floor as reception and the restaurant. Amadeus Club is forward before the Panorama Lounge and not aft. The restaurant is up and aft instead of forward under Panorama Lounge. We will be completely befuddled for our last week! Well, we got all unpacked and settled in to 220. The program says the boat will move at 5:45pm or 6pm and dock again in the center of town. Maybe we had to wait for Tauck or Nicko to sail. It says we’ll stay overnight here. At 6:15pm we have a safety briefing in Panorama Bar and dinner is at 7pm. Clay says I should go look at the menu. He finds it hilarious. Evidently he thinks I will find nothing to eat. He is asleep and I am tired so I think I’ll stop here and go scout things out and see if I can find a self-service coffee machine on Symphony.

Well, everything on this boat is turned around but it is much smaller than the others. I not only found the same coffee machine but I got an ice bucket! I just hope I can keep this one and housekeeping doesn’t take it away every day. The ship & safety briefing and port talk were interesting. I was sitting in the bar keeping our dining companion company before hand when the CD was brought in and given a tutorial on where to stand, how to use the microphone etc. She introduced herself as Lorelei, with 3 years with Luftner, but clearly she’d spent as much time on this boat as had we. There is an older woman with the same number of stripes who greeted us when we boarded and she is the area expert. Lorelei never actually gave her title but treated her as her assistant. For some reason, they were both wearing uniforms with stripes. The last several CD’s have worn civvies. No idea. It appears that we are sailing with 32 or 33 guests. All of them except for the 3 of us on Complete Europe seem to be escorted by a Celebrity Cruises host. I guess this co-marketing between Celebrity and Amras is working out pretty well for Luftner/Amadeus! While the talk was going on, the boat unmoored from the industrial site and backed all the way back to the center of town where we tied up alongside a Croisieres boat. I don’t know why we had to dock here twice then. There must be some explanation but I can’t figure it out. Tomorrow there is coffee and croissants for early birds in the lounge as usual at 6:30am. From 7 to 9am is a breakfast buffet in the restaurant. I guess we’ll find out if they really mean nothing cooked to order. You could still order dishes on Diamond, but it was so badly done that we had mostly given up. We’ll see tomorrow if they mean no ordering and only a buffet. We depart Chalon-sur-Saone at 6am. We arrive in Tournus at 8:30am. The walking tour there starts at 9am and ends at 11:45am. We go back onboard in Macon. At noon there will be a one hour lecture on the restoration of old books or manuscripts in French. I am chagrined to say that this will be the first enrichment lecture since Oct. 1 when we joined Amadeus and that the subject and timing could not be of less interest to us. I can’t imagine it will be well attended! Lunch will be served in the restaurant only at 1pm. We have the afternoon at leisure. I can only imagine that the book restoration lecturer had another engagement that conflicted with having the lecture at 2pm or so during our otherwise free afternoon instead of from noon to 1pm, a 2 hour lunch with rigidly enforced course service followed by free time or a lecture. Anyway. That is the schedule for tomorrow.

Dinner was not very pleasant. We were some of the last to leave the bar even though the restaurant was not announced as open until after we were seated. Only about 1/3 of the tables in the room were set all clustered on one side. We were greeted and told to find anywhere we wanted among those seats. The circular tables at the front were taken. We passed the 6-top rectangles and took the last circle set for 6 in the back of the room. Since service is so rigidly regimented onboard I knew we’d be served last but it got away with our dining companion and he reamed out a couple of waiters and then the maître d’ who explained their method to him. He explained back why that was crap particularly at this per diem and with so few people to serve and if anything, we got served even more slowly. Clay and I are trying to figure out how to avoid lunch entirely since they don’t offer the light buffet in the lounge here.  Anyway, they have done this on all 3 boats with making the entire restaurant all eat one course at a time no matter how few courses you order so every meal takes hours and the food is not that good and the wine this boat and the last served in FRANCE is appalling! The service and food on Silver II did not seem up to the per diem expectations but the wine was always local and excellent. Diamond and Symphony don’t display bottles with labels when pouring but have the included pours in carafes. Diamond did at least have the name and source of the house wines in the menu but Symphony did not even bother. It is bad. Food was hit and miss. The end is in sight. After dinner, Clay wanted to take a walk because he wanted an ATM. I used up all our free cash buying the reusable ace bandage and cane for him. He never let me wrap his knee again after we removed the adhesive one the front desk gave me and now he isn’t using the cane either. Anyway. We got a map and exchanged our keys for boarding cards and went across the first boat to get ashore. It was eerily deserted and shut down in town. We came upon a statue and museum of Nicéphore Niépce. We’d never heard of him before but he is supposed to be the inventor of photography and he was born here.  Who knew? It looked like an interesting but dying little town. Since we learned that stepped level houses were outlawed in France in 1521, it appears that the town is very old since we saw a couple of houses that had to have been built earlier.

Well, it is past my bedtime so that it for me. Good night. And Happy Birthday tomorrow to Clay!

Day 20 - Leaving Paris

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

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Today was a very, very busy final day to this week-long cruise segment. We had a great pink sky sunrise this morning over Paris and our boat’s partial view of the Eiffel Tower. We were up for breakfast at 6:30am or so and off the boat for the first included excursion of the day by 8:30am. We had a city tour of Paris from 8:30am to 11:30am. It was pretty much a waste. If this was your introduction to the city it would be very sad. Unfortunately for at least some on the bus it was. It rest of us were just annoyed. We didn’t expect much more than a drive by at most of the sights listed in the program and that happened given traffic. The sad part was the mysterious misallocation of free time. At 15 of 10am, the bus stopped in front of Les Invalides and they told us this was where we would have our 30 minutes of free time. They unloaded us. The gate to the grounds was closed with a sign that said it would open at 10am, that was 10 minutes from when we found it. The Rodin sculpture garden was across the street and also closed but from the bus we had seen The Thinker and some other bronzes but the guides did not mention it. I should say here that there were 3 language groups and 2 guides on a single bus. It was not comfortable for anyone. Once I saw that there was a line for a soldier-run bag check to enter the grounds of Les Invalides and a place to buy tickets inside, I thought it was a bad idea and we should go try to look through the fence at the Rodin’s. Clay didn’t walk to try to walk there and back. I went and asked our English-language guide if admission was included in our tour here since they told us to go visit Napoleon’s Tomb here or use the restrooms or have a coffee if we wanted to pay. She again replied that entry is free, go see the tomb or use the restrooms or if you want you can go to the café and buy a coffee. We got in line. At 10am or so we went through the bag check. Everyone who approached the rotunda door of Napoleon’s tomb was turned away. We went to look for tickets as Clay pointed out perhaps tickets are free but required. Tickets were 9.50 Euros. I met the Celebrity guide and she showed me the stairs to the café restrooms. I knew Clay wouldn’t make it so I went to look for ground floor or HC restrooms. I found our dining companions who had just been told they could use the facilities there with a 9.50 Euro admission ticket. I took them downstairs to where the café restrooms were and we all paid 50 cents to use them. Clay was walking back to get on the bus and we were all ready to leave except the couple who had vanished inside the grounds and did not return to sight until 10:30am, a full 40 minutes after we had been dropped. They argued that the first 10 minutes didn’t count against their free time since we stood in a bag check line. For what? It was a scandalous waste of precious time. We drove by only the front of Notre Dame at full speed from a good distance and I’m sure no one even got a good photo. Our final stop was at a good distance from the Eiffel Tower. We were given 5 minutes to get off the bus and take photos. You were close enough for that but not close enough to look up and get a feel for the size and weight and scale of it. A good half dozen of the group decided that was what they wanted and they head off towards it at the end of the 5 minutes instead of coming to the bus. I pitied the Celebrity guide who had to go run them down and herd them back against their will. It wasn’t her fault. It was the local guides and they wouldn’t hear any suggestions when we all balked about the 30 minutes at a closed Les Invalides so that was already the end of that.

They dropped us back at the boat for a 2 hour lunch! We ate upstairs at the buffet quickly but not quickly enough to do anything else since Clay was not walking. We had hoped to find a free hour to take the sightseeing balloon moored about 5 minutes stroll in front of and to the starboard of the boat. It would be better sightseeing than we had all morning! Instead we spent the next 50 minutes packing. Well, it had to be done.

At 2pm, they called us to the bus again for the guided Louvre tour. All English language this time, same 2 guides. They divided us into stairs and fast walkers and elevators and slow walkers. A group of only 10 wound up with our guide from this morning. That was just as well because she knew I wanted a Paris Starbucks mug and had promised to guide me to one! She did an excellent job and we went in with low expectations anyway. But she really knew the Louvre and gave us a special tour. Unfortunately, we were with Philistines and they didn’t want to be there. Six dropped out. Three walked in front of the Mona Lisa with no barrier, no line and no wait and never looked at it. Then had a snit when they figured it out, probably because I told the 4^th of their party who was in front of me in line looking around when she made eye contact with me that she should be looking at the Mona Lisa and she told the others when we left the room. That left 4 of us on tour with the guide. One only wanted the gift shop and she knew I wanted a Starbucks mug and the underground of the Louvre was where we would find it so, she cut our tour short and satisfied everyone but herself and Clay who wanted to see the Vermeers and Rembrandts. I would have like that too but I never assumed it was a possibility. I got my mug and our dining companions’ guide told them there was no Starbucks within walking distance of the Louvre!

We came back for a 6pm disembarkation talk and a 7pm dinner. It was easily one of our worst meals on this segment and we have had some truly bad dinners!  At 9pm we loaded the bus one final time in the rain to go out for a bateaux mouche night-time sightseeing cruise. Only about 20 people showed up for it. I have no idea how many people had it included and just skipped it. It would have been easy to skip with the lateness, leaving first thing tomorrow early and the rain. But we were glad we went. We were on a boat that held 1000 people and there were maybe 60 onboard. We could all duck in and out without bothering each other and so we all had a good view even with the rain.

The Louvre was the most changed since I was last here in 1976. The underground work and glass pyramids are shocking and I think maybe appalling. The guide was young and probably only knows it with an underground bus garage and shopping mall and metro station so she thought it was all great, but I couldn’t have ever imagined it even though I knew it had been done. The other change is the Eiffel Tower. It was green when I last saw it. Today it was tan. The guide said the paint it a different color every 7 years and she had seen it pink, blue and purple I think! Also, I believe she said they started lighting it at night for the millennium and that Parisians liked it so they kept it. They start lighting it at 7pm and for the first 5 minutes it sparkles! They keep it lit until 1am and on every hour it sparkles for 5 minutes. Spectacular! Whoever invented adhesive ace bandages should be whipped and whoever put sparkle lights on the Eiffel Tower should get a Nobel Prize for happiness. Which begs the question why there isn’t such a prize.

Tomorrow we leave Amadeus Diamond in Paris for a private car transfer with our last solo dining companion for Amadeus Symphony in Chalon sur Saone and our last cruising segment.

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Day 19 - Giverny

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

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Clay came back from yesterday’s D-Day Landing daylong excursion limping. He said he misjudged the height of a step and stepped wrong in the middle of the day. Our dining companions gave him a 500mg acetaminophen and he limped through all but the last stop of the day. He stayed on the bus with another of our dining companions after that. But he said he had a pretty good view from the bus after that. Given where he says it hurts and how it described the injury I would say he has torn his PCL in his right knee. We iced and elevated it when he got in and through dinner. After dinner I wrapped it with an elastic bandage I got from the front desk’s first aid kit. We didn’t know that ACE bandages are now single-use adhesive. That is just stupid. It was almost impossible to get wrapped on and you couldn’t make any mistakes since once it was placed it was permanent. There was a price tag of 10.30 Euros on the box. There was just enough bandage in there to wrap a knee so it truly was single usage. Our dining companions have loaned Clay a walking stick for the rest of the cruise. They told me that adhesive ace bandages are the norm now though it is possible to find the reusable kind they are very expensive. I don’t know how much more expensive they could be than 10.30 Euros single use. We are both kicking ourselves that we didn’t leave the one we usually carry in my suitcase. Oh well. Clay is walking much better this morning as he went to breakfast but he says he is skipping this morning’s excursion. Today we are to put in on schedule at Les Andelys. From there we’ll ride the bus to Giverny to tour Monet’s Garden. We will rejoin the boat at Vernon for lunch. It seems that some people (not us) where offered an afternoon tour to Versailles. It was in today’s Daily Program and is the first we have seen or heard of the option. That is all I know. If you hadn’t been, you’d hate to miss it but we weren’t invited which is just as well since we’d have had to prepay and it would not have been cancellable (at least that was how it worked on Silver II where we were offered extra excursion offers). The program doesn’t say, but I assume that we sail overnight to arrive in Paris in the morning. I hope so anyway.

We drove about 10 miles this morning to get to another hill where we could overlook Chateau Gaillard. It was a different view than we had when we walked up the hill from Les Andelys. The Amadeus Diamond was already gone by the time we got up there.

We had about another 30 minutes to drive to Giverny. We were headed to Monet’s garden. It was spectacular but extremely crowded. I can’t imagine visiting here in the height of summer. It was wall to wall people and I am sure I could only identify groups from fewer than 5 river boats. We walked through the water garden, the garden and finally Monet’s house. We exited through the gift shop and had about 30 minutes of free time before meeting for the walk back to the bus. For some reason, the driver changed buses while we were gone and people had left purses and tablets and other valuables onboard and they freaked out. The driver had very carefully moved everything over to the same seat positions. It was only about a 15 minute drive to Vernon to meet back up with the boat about noon. It was docked outside on a stack of 3 riverboats at the foot of a bridge to the main street of Vernon. I could see the green neon cross of a pharmacy up the hill in the distance as the bus turned off the bridge. I came aboard and as the CD, Gunther was greeting us I asked him if I had time to walk up to the pharmacy. He said yes, you have about an hour and a quarter. All aboard is 1:15pm. I came to the cabin to drop off my load and let Clay know. The pharmacy I had seen in the distance was at least twice as far away as I thought. The good news is that I found a pharmacy on a side street about 2 blocks away. I bought a reusable, adhesive free elastic bandage there. I had to visit 2 more pharmacies before finding a cane. I did not find a single person who spoke English and I have no idea what the French word for cane is! I bought a lightweight black adjustable one at the 3^rd place and didn’t have to go all the way to the one I had seen in the distance. The bandage was around 11 Euros and the cane was 12.20 Euros. Clay seems a bit happier now plus he has all afternoon to rest as we sail on towards Paris and the end of this cruise. Our dining companions had asked early in the cruise about Versailles (or perhaps about optional excursions in general since we received no information about them on Diamond) and had booked this afternoon’s at 89 Euros pp. They left after lunch at Vernon and will be off the boat until we dock again in Poissy to pick them up. Clay missed the big silver vat of moules at lunch but fortunately I got back in time to eat with him and the others and he got to go back and get a plateful after dessert because he said they were really good. Today’s lunch was called a Taste of Normandy buffet.

Tonight is the Captain’s Farewell cocktail party and Farewell Dinner. Tomorrow is Paris and the next day we should be picked up at the boat and driven to Chalon sur Saone to meet the Amadeus Symphony for our final week long cruise in southern France. I hope we both fare better next week than we have this week. We’ve both missed things we had long wanted to see. If Clay wakes up maybe we can look at photos each other took and get a virtual tour of what we missed.

I expect dinner will end very late tonight since it doesn’t begin until 8pm so if Internet is up, I will post entry now. If there is anything interesting occurring later I will write about it and try to post it tomorrow.

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Day 18 still docked in Caudebec en Caux

Monday, October 19, 2015

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I still had a fever when I woke up at 5:30am. I went through the shower and dressing and even went to breakfast where I decided I could not get through the 4 hours on the bus today, much less a restaurant lunch and the rest of the sightseeing. I missed the D-Day beaches and American cemetery. I would have liked to see them. Normandy has been perhaps the first place since Egypt that we’ve seen local people thank American people in person for what our country had done for theirs. I can understand why but still. I know Clay was looking forward to this day more than me anyway. He has a thing for visiting battlefields that I don’t have.

I don’t know why, but we’ve only had about 15 minutes of Internet access since we arrived at Caudebec en Caux. I don’t know why that would improve when we sail again but hopefully it will. I have no idea which way this river flows. I know that the Seine should flow towards the English Channel and I know from the sun and moon that my cabin window faces south. So I also know where east and west are. The Seine has flowed past my window in both directions since we arrived. Today as I ate lunch and did crossword puzzles by my window I watched it change directions! I know that is the tidal bore but still it is confusing, or maybe that is just the fever talking. I have high expectations to visit Giverny and Monet’s Garden tomorrow!

My fever broke 3 hours ago, but now is back over 99F again. I don’t feel feverish right now though. It is after 6pm. We were scheduled to have a port talk at 6:15pm but I guess until everyone gets back onboard that won’t happen. Clay isn’t back yet so I assume the others aren’t either. Tonight is Pirate’s Dinner. We’ll see how they do it on Diamond vs. Silver II. This evening after dinner is the raffle drawing. They have been selling raffle tickets in the onboard shop, known as the bord shop. I have no idea what they are raffling. Silver II did not do a raffle. We have Internet so I am going to try to publish this now.

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Day 17 docked for 2 nights in Caudebec en Caux

Sunday, October 18, 2015

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I didn’t get much sleep last night and I don’t have much of a voice this morning. I also have a slight fever. Today we had 2 long excursions with bus rides. Since I can pinpoint the time and source of my infection from a specific bus ride, I don’t want to continue to spread it. I am staying onboard and trying to limit contact with others for at least today. I was really looking forward to seeing Etretat but Clay went alone. They came back to the boat in Caudebec en Caux for lunch. Clay said it was some German dish with fatty pork and sauerkraut that he liked. He brought me back a pain au chocolate from Etretat. It was really special. France has an AOP for butter like they have a terroir certification for wine! I didn’t know that before but all our Normandy guides have bragged on the Normandy cows and their fatty milk. It was like eating a pound of sweet butter. I ate the whole thing for my lunch with an apple. Clay did not realize until I showed him that I had translated the bakery bag while he was at lunch. He said he passed 2 other bakeries but that there were French people lined up out the door at Les Tendres so he figured it was the place to buy a French pastry. He got it right.

We are supposed to be docked here overnight again and all day tomorrow as far as I can tell. We are to drive to the Normandy D-Day invasion beaches and have lunch at one of them tomorrow. I checked online and Google Maps says it is over a 200km drive one way. It will be a very long bus day and I would have to miss it but it also sounds challenging on a good day. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how I’m doing before making a decision. This sucks! Now I really hate that guy who sat down right above and behind me and yakked all over me when he could have sat in any seat in the back half of that mostly empty bus!

Clay has gone out again for the afternoon excursion to Honfleur. They’ll be back in time for dinner at 7pm and there is a folklore show from 9 to 10pm. There are a lot of long rides from our dock here at Caudebec en Caux. I guess we don’t go any further downstream than this because of the huge tidal bore here. We are at a floating dock today that looks like it can vary by about 12 feet. Yesterday in Rouen we were just tied alongside an embankment. We had a view of the side of a brick wall when we left in the morning and when we came back in the evening before sailing, our floor was above the top of the embankment. I reckon that must have been at least a 6 foot rise. Etretat was about an hour drive each way covering 54 km each way according to Google Maps. It corresponds with Clay’s report of the morning was mostly spent riding the bus. He said they had to wear the AudioVox headsets the whole time in the bus because the front half was full of about 20 English speakers and the back half had about 8 German speakers. He said he was at the dividing line between the 2 groups and had to hear both! This afternoon’s ride to Honfleur is about 45 minutes and 53 km each way. Another long bus ride. I believe from the announcements that the bus setup will be the same. I am still sorry to miss it.

Clay is back from Honfleur and called it another small seaside resort town. He bought a brochure about Ste-Catherine’s church which he called the point of the visit. He told me that he had found all the other river boats. He said they are all docked in Honfleur. Our final documents always showed us docked here and I have wondered why. I had supposed it was due to the difficulties of the huge tidal bore but I guess the other lines can handle it so, I suppose it is cost or availability.

I felt worse when I woke up as Clay arrived. My fever has continued to rise. I am not going to dinner because I sit right next to the Celebrity guide and I don’t want to expose her. It is not clear I will make the long day-long excursion to the D-Day beaches tomorrow either. It sounds like we are going with the full multi-lingual buses again as today and not the small English speaking group that could spread out on a less full bus. Again, I know how it feels for an inconsiderate sick person to infect you by only thinking of their desires and not the good of the group and I don’t want to be that person. We’ll see. Clay will put out the do not disturb sign and bring me back some cheese and crackers after dinner. I expect he’ll skip the folklore performance anyway.

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Day 16 - On schedule!

Saturday, October 17, 2015

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Touring started at 9am today so we slept in until about 6:45am. We are going to need a vacation when we get home. We had breakfast which was just a bit off again today. They had capers, cream cheese and lox but no bagels for example.

For the first time since we started with Amras/Amadeus, we were able to just walk off the boat and begin a tour. We had a walking tour of the old town of Rouen. We saw a lot of really old half-timbered houses and we toured the cathedral. We walked through the morning market where Clay was tempted by fresh oysters and into the modern church built where Joan of Arc was burned. We had about an hour to find our way back to the boat from there before lunch. We ate in the lounge for the light buffet again. I know we had pasta carbonara and croque monsieur for sure. I am getting a sore throat. I am sure I caught whatever the sumo on the bus behind me one week ago was spewing all over me. I hope I don’t make Clay sick in time to go home. After lunch, we set off on a bus for the Abbeys tour. We went to the abandoned ruins of Jumieges. Then we went to the working Benedictine monastery of Saint Wandrille. It was a nice tour but I am afraid that other than the walking portions that I could not stay awake on the bus!

The scheduled port talk ended up being an announcement over the speakers and I can’t say what was said. We expect to visit Etretat and Honfleur tomorrow on excursions. Dinner was all cheese for me. I don’t remember if I said before that one of the differences between Amadeus Diamond and Amadeus Silver II was that they always had chicken breast available. I have asked here on Diamond and the answer was no. After dinner everyone at our table went up to the Panorama Lounge to play Where are We? There were only 25 questions and some were different than last week’s on Silver II. Gunther’s clues were not as good and in more than one case just incorrect and he never admitted he was in error. In any event, we had 17 and won. It was another bottle of Sekt. It was pretty awful. I think it is what they serve for toasts and Captain’s cocktails. Last week they didn’t offer to open it or serve it on board on request. When they asked tonight, I told them to open it now. Now it is over. Even with 6 of us there was still some in the bottle. We had docked in Caudebec en Caux while we were playing, so Clay and I excused ourselves to go up top and look around. It had been raining. Luckily, we stayed mostly dry all day today!

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Day 15 - Rouen

Friday, October 16, 2015

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We were up well before Clay’s alarm went off. I went to the Amadeus Club for a coffee (Weiner Melange) from the machine because I tried their brew at tea yesterday! Breakfast buffet was again similar but different in some not positive ways. No one will starve but other than desserts (which honestly weren’t that good on Silver II) I think we all preferred Silver II. Oh, well.

We were on the buses by 8:45am or so for the about 1.5 hour drive. It was about a 1 hour drive back. No idea why. It poured rain this morning but gradually slacked off to a dry and chilly afternoon. The Impressionists museum was a technology nightmare. It might have worked fine for very small groups of French, but not so much for 20+ English speakers. The rooms start the AV displays as you enter. The resident French announcements are so loud that you couldn’t hear the English ones in your handheld device. Also, mine was never in sync. It kept playing the same rooms and instructions to go downstairs every time. I did not enjoy my time there or learn anything. When we reached the room with a statue of Van Gogh the guide told us we were finished and we busted through the French-speaking group we had been trailing and turned in our audio guides and left. I think we had just run out of time. We rode the bus about 1km and then walked that far again to see a church and field that Van Gogh painted in the last 72 days of his life here. He painted 70 paintings in those 72 days. He came to Auvers sur l’Oise to see a psychiatrist. It is not absolutely clear if he killed himself or not but he is buried across the street from the cornfield with crows where he painted his last and so is his brother. They are in plain graves.

We drove back to the boat for a late lunch. We ate upstairs at the Panorama Lounge buffet. The guide advised us to stop at the bakery on our way to the boat for a chocolate éclair. It was a good suggestion. We took ours to lunch buffet and found the boat was also serving chocolate eclairs. Very different. I preferred the French one and Clay preferred the boat’s. Lunch buffet was good. Tomato soup with beans on the side to add as you wanted. Pasta made to order. On Silver II, you could control the portion size, here they only cook and give out their determined size. We all prefer Silver II over Diamond in that regard. During lunch they announced that instead of 7:45pm all aboard it would be 5:45pm. So, we all hustled out to get to go ashore and see more of charming Les Andelys. Clay and I made it up to the ruins of Chateau Gaillard which was built by Richard the Lionhearted in the 1100s. It was a hike! The views were spectacular.

We are sailing now and the views are still spectacular. The safety briefing was at 6:15pm and our Captain was the life vest model. He seemed to be really into this responsibility and strutted like in a fashion show. He and Gunther the CD had a whole comedy routine down. He also did a port briefing. We are sailing earlier than the program originally said. Of course that meant that a couple missed the boat. They were Americans, I believe with Celebrity Amras. They were close enough that the boat pulled back over and picked them up. Lucky. Tonight we’ll be docked in Rouen. He said we could go ashore but when we went to bed after 10pm, we were still sailing. At 9am we’ll have a city walking tour for 2 hours and 15 minutes. Lunch onboard at noon. At 1:15pm to 6:30pm is a bus riding/walking tour of the Abbey Road. We are now back on schedule. Dinner at 7pm with a world travel quiz/contest at 9:15pm. He said there would be 25 questions. Last week we had 30 questions. We have plans to dominate! The weather tomorrow is predicted to be 45 to 56F and rainy again. It cleared off this afternoon so hopefully only half of tomorrow will be rainy as well. A girl can hope.

I went and changed for dinner after because there were a lot of suits and sequins in the lounge already for the Captain’s Welcome Cocktails. There were more men in suits than not. Dinner was at 7:30pm. It was the Captain’s Welcome Dinner. As far as I can tell those welcome and farewell dinners are fixed with additional courses. We had the Celebrity Concierge escort sit at our table tonight. We didn’t get served our main course until after 9pm. It was a loooong meal!

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Day 14 - To Paris and beyond

Thursday, October 15, 2015

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We went to the Dutch Shanty Choir performance last night after dinner. The 4 of us walked in about 10 past 9pm and we were the only people in there for the first 3 songs. I think we all felt bad for them. The thing is that Clay & I were expecting shanty singing which is a Capella and they had 2 guitars, a drummer, and  2 accordions in additional to the singers dressed as boat captains. It was a bit strange and not shanty singing as we’ve heard it around the world. It was entertaining and eventually more people arrived. We learned that the next cruise southbound out of Amsterdam is a 60-person charter. The crew deserves a break.

Today we finally leave Amadeus Silver II. If you must river cruise in Europe, I can recommend this boat. It is nearly perfect. I had no complains and couldn’t really find anything to improve. I still can’t recommend a river cruise in Europe though, sorry. We were up early and had a big breakfast. Clay and I each took something out of the restaurant to eat on the train later. We shared it. We did end up being called to leave the boat for our transfer and hour early at 9:30am. There was a driver and a tour guide to baby sit us until we got on the train. So, Alexandra was the only ugly spot in the whole debarkation/transfers process. I will never know what her story was. She certainly didn’t help an already bad situation. The Thalys high speed train arrived and we got our luggage stowed and got seated and waved goodbye to our guide. Graham had the seat next to me on the train and he swapped with Clay so we got to sit together. We got to Paris Nord about 2:35pm. We walked out past the front of the train and quickly found a driver with Amras and all our names written on a paper. I don’t believe he spoke English. I don’t believe he spoke much to any of us except to have us point to our names on the sign and make sure he had us all and all our luggage. Off we went. We loaded up a van that couldn’t have held anymore and we drove around 2 hours straight through to Les Andelys.

We walked through another boat to board and quickly got our keys and our luggage moved into our cabins. We all went straight to tea for something to eat. Then Clay and I took a quick walk around the charming half-timbered little town in the hour before the safety briefing. It turned out the safety briefing was postponed a day because not everyone had arrived. Instead we had a life onboard talk/port talk in Finnish, German and English. This may get a bit cumbersome. We had a problem communicating in the dining room that we are not with the Celebrity Cruises/Amras group that has their own guide/director. The maître d’ did change the sign at the table we wound up occupying but I don’t think he got it. Things are a bit different here. They are also different. The cabins are much smaller and less well insulated and built. I would say they are uglier along with the rest of the boat but some people prefer the décor. We don’t have refrigerators and even worse the Amadeus Diamond does not have an ice machine in the Amadeus Club in the aft or any ice buckets to keep ice from the bar. So, we already started with the bad news that the boat is not in Paris and there will be no scenic night time sail away. The only reason that anyone saw the Eiffel Tower is that I was looking around for it and pointed it out as we sped off in a packed van in horrendous traffic in the rain. Our guide in Amsterdam this morning told us that yesterday was the coldest temperature ever recorded on that date! They skipped fall in Europe this year and went straight to winter. Bad for us!

So, since we couldn’t have the safety briefing until tomorrow we had the port talk. Tomorrow we will drive almost all the way back to Paris to visit Auvers sur l’Oise. This is one of the Impressionists bases and we will visit a museum about that. It is also where Van Gogh died and we will see where he is buried. Looking and not looking forward to that. We were all hoping they’d sail on towards the sea and catch the ports toward Paris on the way back but no. We will stay overnight in Les Andelys. We had to move during dinner because the police boarded the 3 riverboats and informed them that they cannot sit and run generators all night. We all moved upstream outside the city limits I guess and moved back the next morning because we weren’t allowed to get on and off there. We did not sleep as well. There is also no alarm clock on the bedside table. There is no bedside table. Well, things are different and louder. The windows don’t move up and down electrically, but have one side panel that slides open. That’s OK, given the cold and rain we haven’t been opening the window much anyway.

There is a tiny inadequate closet and drawers compared to all the drawers and shelves and walk-in closet on Silver II. Really bad news since they expect us to dress for dinner on this boat and that was never expected on the last! I hope they get over it because Clay and our dining companion did not even bring coats and ties.

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Day 13, Final day on Amadeus Silver II

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

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Last night they had what they called the most successful Pirates Night of the season according to the crew. I can understand why. There was at least one and possibly more holding gripe sessions/cocktail parties in various places onboard for a long while before dinner. Many were clearly drunk. It is good to see them at least trying to enjoy themselves.

Early this morning, we entered the Netherlands. I don’t know what time. A bit before 6am I looked out and I think we were in a large sea-going ship sized lock. I went to the bathroom and when I looked again, we were exiting it. No one said anything about any locks here, but there is a lot we are missing being informed of, so that doesn’t mean anything.  We went to breakfast about 7am right after they opened it. We watched as the landscape changed from the polder to a city. The city was Utrecht. Then just after 8am in a cold, drizzling rain, we docked. In Utrecht. There were some confusing announcements and finally it was clear that they announced we were docked in Utrecht. They announced that the tours and independent sightseers would be bused to Amsterdam at 9am for about a 30 minute ride. It was an hour ride, but it was scenic along the Amstel River part of the way and included a photo stop at an old windmill. Our first stop in Amsterdam was in front of Central Station to load a canal boat for a tour. It was fully glass enclosed and had good visibility and was comfortable. After we had another short bus ride and we were let out to have a guided walk through the Begijn former convent area then to have 20 minutes free time to walk a section of Singel along the floating flower markets. Clay got a cone of fries with mayo. Hot and delicious. We reloaded the buses and drove to meet the boat moored not far from the Central Station. It had started raining by the end of our free time and it was colder every time they let us out of the buses. Our guide told us they had predicted a light snow. We turned on the BBC World News and there is a big earliest of the season European winter storm all the way from south of Paris to past Amsterdam. I just checked outside 15 minutes or so ago and it was still very cold and windy but the rain had stopped and it wasn’t snowing, not even lightly. We have the afternoon free here and we’re in Amsterdam but no one was willing to go out and do anything. Not even to eat Dutch Pancakes. We ate lunch in the dining room. The daily program said they were also serving a light buffet in the Panorama Lounge, but they didn’t. We ate hamburgers and sandwiches in the restaurant. So, I got mostly packed up and Clay slept with the TV on.  

We disembark tomorrow morning. There are 5 of us onboard that we know about that are transferring to the Amadeus Diamond tomorrow in Paris. We all have our train tickets. The train leaves at 11:17am and arrives at Paris Nord at 2:35pm.We were contacted after lunch with the news that there is no boat in Paris. They said there is a broken lock on the river and that it will take at least 48 hours to be repaired. The other issue is that we all got another printout of our train tickets last night, but still no mention of the details of our included transfers here or in Paris. Today, since they told us there was no boat they also said someone would meet us at the train station and we’d learn more there. One of the others who will be with us is older with trouble walking distances. He told me he’d inquired of reception the details of the morning transfer and he’d let me know what he heard as he knew all 5 of us were waiting to hear. After we returned and got the call about no boat, Clay realized we still had no word of morning luggage transfers to the Central Station. Now it is supposedly about 200 meters away. It may be as the crow flies. I mean you can see it from here. But it is about 2 city blocks long itself and to get there from here with luggage, you have to find a sidewalk and watch for bicycles, scooters, cars, trams, buses, trains, tracks. It would not be an easy walk and as Graham points out, our ability or willingness don’t matter because we all purchased a package that includes all transfers. That is certainly underlined on tomorrow’s itinerary in our final documents. Clay went to the desk to inquire before lunch. Alexandra was there and told him no they would not provide a transfer for us that it was 200 feet away (not, but immaterial) and that we could walk. He balked. She basically called him fat and lazy and that he should haul himself and his luggage over there on his own. He balked again, more forcefully this time by pointing out that we had paid for transfers and expected them regardless of how fat and lazy we might be. She said she would check and see what she could find out. Then our male dining companion had basically the same conversation. He and Clay and I all walked by the desk later when Alexandra was not there and the receptionist there called us all over separately as we passed and told us that they would order a van for us to transfer us and our luggage to the train station they just needed to know what time we wanted to go. Graham said he wanted to go at 10:30am and that he would settle it with the front desk. He learned all of this from us during lunch since he missed the whole thing by not going to his cabin before lunch. There is a disembarkation talk at 6:30pm tonight so I guess we’ll see if it gets addressed then. At 6:45pm is the Captain’s Farewell Cocktail where maybe we’ll find out who the captain is now that we’re leaving. At 7pm is the Farewell Dinner. We aren’t dressing for this one either even though we’ve had the afternoon free because we packed up most everything except what we are wearing now or tomorrow. I suppose that while I have Internet, I’ll go ahead and post this now.

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