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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