Tuesday, October 20, 2015
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 3rd
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.
