A Californian Christmas

 

Having developed  arthritis in my hips, I'm doing my  best to  avoid the  Canadian winter. So I'm  off to spend  Christmas with my sister in California.   Since we're  then  booked  on a trip to the Amazon in January,  there's  no  point  in coming back  to  Canada  in between.  So I won't be back in  Ottawa until  February.  Hopefully there'll  be signs of spring by the  time  I return!

London

Last entry for this vacation.   I've been  in London  for  2.5 days, but I'm going to  summarize  my time here in one entry. 

On Saturday  morning  we walked through  Hyde park and spent some time shopping  and having  coffee  in Harrods  before meeting  our nieces and  their partners for brunch at a restaurant  in Knightsbridge.   After brunch  we all spent  the afternoon  exploring  the V and A museum. 

On Sunday we toured the British museum  before  heading  to the Theatre  Royal  Drury  Lane  for afternoon  tea in their Salon. We spent  some time  exploring  Covent  garden  before heading back to the  theatre to view a performance of the show Frozen,  which was excellent. 

Today we went around the  British  library  and saw the Magna Carta. Then we went to the movies and finished  off our stay with a nice meal at  a  special  restaurant.  Tomorrow  we head back to  Heathrow  for our  flights  home. 

A lot of walking in Madrid

Today was a free day for us to  explore the  city by ourselves.   We left the  hotel at 8am and walked over to the cathedral.

Then we walked all the way back past the hotel  and  off in the other  direction  and all the way to the  Prado  Museum.   We stopped  along the way for coffee and reached the Prado  by 10am, so we'd  already been  walking  for about 2 hours  before  we got in there.  The Prado  is called  a Museum but in fact it's an art gallery. We spent the next few hours looking at works by Picasso,  El Greco, Velasquez and  some extremely  weird paintings by Goya.  Unforunately,  photography  was not allowed inside the Prado  and I  forgot  to take a photo of the  outside.  We then walked around the Madrid  Botanical gardens and on to an absolutely  enormous park called the Retiro. Somewhere  in the park there was  supposed to  be  a  crystal palace,  but we kept getting  lost and it took us about  an hour  to find it.

It then took us even longer to find our way out of the  park again.  By this time  we were exhausted, so we stopped at a  Tapas place for an early supper. Then we walked on to the plaza Santa Ana where we were booked into a flamenco performance.  However, when we got there  they told us the  performance was  canceled and  asked us to  wait  for the  next one (in 1.5 hours). We were far too  exhausted  to do this so we asked for  a  refund  instead  and  returned to the hotel.   Tonight we are packing as we are on an  early flight to Heathrow in the morning,  to start the final part of our trip (in the UK).

Touring Madrid

This morning  we had a guided coach tour of Madrid.  As well as the downtown  sights, we  were  also  driven a little  further  out to visit  the  bull ring and the Real Madrid  stadium (which is currently  undergoing  some renovation).  The bull ring in Madrid is the 3rd largest in the world.  The largest is in Mexico  City and the  2nd largest is in Venezuela.

After visiting the  bull ring we popped  into a  Cafe  across the street   to  use the  bathroom.   The taxidermy  bull heads on the  wall  were from  actual  bulls killed in the arena.  Yuk!

We moved on to a vantage point with a panoramic  view of the cathedral and the  Royal  Palacio.

Then it was back to the hotel for a  quick  lunch  before heading out again for  our afternoon  tour of the  Royal  Palacio.

Becky and I  were able to grab an hour in the  rooftop  hot tub  at the hotel before  heading down to the restaurant  for a special group dinner  organized by Scenic.  Honestly,  there wasn't a lot of point in this for Becky and me,  as everyone  else  in the group is from  the Douro  cruise.  So it's not like we know  them, and it's  not like  we're going to  get to know them as tomorrow  is our last day in Madrid.  Still, it was a free dinner,  so who am I to  complain. 

Arriving in Madrid

We were up at 5am for our transfer to Madrid on an early flight from Bordeaux.  We were met at the airport  by our driver and taken to our hotel (Palacio de Los Duques) where we met our guide, Isabel.

The hotel is very beautiful  and used to be a ducal palace - in case you couldn't  guess by the name. 

After checking in we went for a walk around and saw some beautiful  buildings and ate some  tapas at a restaurant  near the hotel.   We would have done something in the  evening  but we were  exhausted and  Becky  fell asleep  at 6pm.

Bordeaux

 It's the  last day of our cruise, but we still have over a week  of our  vacation  left , during  which  we'll  be visiting  Spain and the  UK.  Today we had a tour of Bordeaux  by coach and were then dropped  off in the  city  centre for a few hours of free time.   We walked to one of the old gates, known as the Gros Cloche, which houses (you  guessed it) an enormous bell. The  bell is only rung once a month now as it was  discovered that vibrations from the bell  were damaging the foundations of nearby older buildings.   

We then walked down Rue St Catherine,  which is one of the longest  shopping  streets  in Europe.  Becky  finally  managed to  buy some  shampoo  (hers had broken  in her bag on the flight over). We also bought chocolate and  some of  the  local specialty  cakes called Caneles.  After this we stopped at the street side Cafe of a fancy hotel  for a nice cup of coffee and a sit down. The bus picked us up and it was back to the  ship  for a late lunch.  

After lunch we walked to a nearby shopping mall and  did yet more  shopping.  Becky bought  some  lamphrey.  Back onboard  there was an oyster tasting  which we declined to  take part in,we just had cocktails  instead.  We stayed in the lounge  for  the  disembarkation talk and the presentation of our prizes for  winning the trivia quiz  earlier  in  the  cruise.  We got some chocolates  from Margaux.

As we had to be up very  early  for our flight to  Madrid,  we decidedly to  skip  dinner.  So we said goodbye to the many  friends we have made onboard  and spent the rest  of the  evening  in our  cabin, ordering  room service and  packing.   It's been a  wonderful  first week  of our vacation 

Cadillac

Antoine Laumet was not from  Cadillac.   It is not known why he had to leave France, but it seems  there were some suspicious circumstances, as he traveled  on a ship he had not booked  passage  on and when he arrived in north America he changed his name to  the  more impressive  sounding Antoine  de la Mothe Cadillac.  He did quite well in America,  founding the  city of Detroit and later becoming governor of Louisiana.  General  Motors decided to name a car after him, not knowing  that Cadillac  wasn't  his real name. 

Cadillac is a very  pretty town with a very  impressive  château, built for the first Duke of Epernon in the  16th century.  After the  French  revolution it became a  women's prison.

After our day in Cadillac, it was back to  Bordeaux  again  for our farewell  gala dinner.  We still have  another  night onboard,  but people  will be  packing  tomorrow  evening  and  won't be  in the mood for a 5 course dinner. 

Bourg

Apologies for the late posts. The internet onboard ship continued to  be unusable for the  final 3 days of our cruise and I'm now using the  airport wifi to  catch up before  we fly to Madrid for our 3 day stop there.

Our Thursday  stop was in the small town of Bourg. We had a short walking tour of the town followed by a visit to the carriages museum. We also visited the underground  cellars that were used for fuel storage  by both the  allies and the  Germans during  WWII.

In the late afternoon we sat up on deck to  enjoy  the view as the ship sailed back to Bordeaux.  We arrived in Bordeaux  at sunset and all enjoyed some amazing purple  cocktails (I'm  not  sure what  was in them) up on the sundeck. Some funky music was played and the ship revolved in the middle of the river for a while. It was great  fun.

Blaye

 This morning we went on a walking tour of the Citadel de Blaye.  This is one of around 160 fortifications around France that were designed by a chap called Vauban for Louis XIV.   This citadel at Blaye is one of best preserved of all these fortifications.  It overlooks the Gironde estuary - which is the largest estuary in Europe.   After all the work they did building this huge fort,   the "bolt of the estuary" (as it is known) was only half-heartedly attacked once (by the English - who gave up about a week in when they heard that Napoleon had already been apprehended and was on his way to Elba). 

After the tour of the citadel, Becky and I headed for the local market where she bought me some presents for my birthday.   

Back on the ship we had a special barbecue lunch, before coming 2nd in today's trivia quiz.   There was an early dinner at 5.30pm  as this evening's entertainment was a special visit to Chateau d'Agassac for some wine and a classical concert by a string quartet. 

 

Back to the ship at 10pm where they had laid out late night snacks for us - but I honestly couldn't face more food today.

Bergerac

 Today's excursion was a walking tour of Bergerac.  Unforunately, our bus driver Jose (who was Portugese) had never been there before and got lost on the outskirts of town so we spent an extra half hour navigating our big coach down some very narrow streets.
The town is really pretty with some lovely old buildings.  It seems Cyranno de Bergerac wasn't really from here - but that doesn't stop them from cashing in by having lots of statues of him everywhere.

Returning to ship, we set sail for Blaye after lunch and spent a lovely afternoon up on the sundeck enjoying the scenery and a nice cooling breeze.  

In the evening we were invited for a special meal at the upmarket restaurant L'Amour. Everyone gets to dine here once during the cruise.   It was a 5 course meal with wine pairings for each course.   

St Emilion

 This morning we sailed down the Dordogne river and docked in Libourne which is the second largest city in this region (the largest being Bordeaux). 

 

Today's excursion was to the village of St Emilion (population 250 - annual visitors 1 million).  St Emilion is named after the 9th century monk Emilion.   It's also home to the largest underground church in Europe.  Unfortunately photography is not allowed in there.  St Emilion's final claim to fame is that it is the birthplace of that well known French  dessert: the macaron. Macarons were invented by a local order of nuns in the 17th century.

We saw the old walls and some other churches before stopping for ice-cream and checking out the gift shops.  

We're now on our way back to the ship - and I'm making this post from the coach.  Things have come to a pretty pass when the wifi on the bus is orders of magnitude better than that in our "luxury floating hotel".   

After reaching the ship Becky and I plan to hang out in the hot tub on the sun deck for a while - it's been another hot, sweaty day

All Aboard Scenic Diamond

I have to apologize for the late start to the blog.   The internet onboard is complete crap.  This is the first time I've been able to get a signal at all - and I had to come into the sundeck to get it.  So I'm just going to post the text for this now and add some photos later.

 Flew out of Gatwick early this morning and arrived in Bordeaux around lunchtime

It's VERY hot in Bordeaux.  The guy on the plane said it was 23 degrees but that's obviously wrong - it feels more like 33.   After boarding the ship and having a light lunch, Becky and I took a short walk into town and visited a local church.  By this time we were nearly melting so we sat in a very pretty park before the walk back to the ship.   

At dinner the crew brought Becky a special birthday cake, but I don't have a photo because (wouldn't you know it) we'd BOTH left our phones back in the room on charge.

30th May. On the Road again

 Heading out in a couple of days for another river cruise  Bordeaux and Spain this time.
Wish me luck!

15th February - Petra

Today we docked back in Aqaba - which is where we sailed from a week ago.   At 8.15am we were loaded onto 2 coaches for the 2.5-3 hour trip to Petra.  The temperature in Aqaba was about 17 Celsius, but Petra is up in mountains and it was only 3 degrees there, so the people who'd worn shorts and t-shirts were finding it a bit nippy.

On arrival we had to get down several sets of steps before we reached the area where you can hire horses or golf carts to traverse the long narrow canyon down to the Treasury building.   The builders planned it that way thinking that it was that much more impressive if your friends (or enemies) had to walk all the way down this long canyon and then the first building they saw was the Treasury. 

 

The horses will only take people about the first 800m and it's 2-3Km down this canyon to reach the city. You can walk down, but you are taking your life in your hands if you do, as the golf cart drivers think they are in one of the Fast and Furious movies.  Part of the journey is also over cobbled stones, so by the time I reached the Treasury I felt like I'd been on the Indiana Jones roller coaster ride at Disney.  

Petra was the capital of the ancient Nabatean civilization.   It was rediscovered in 1812 by a Swiss chap called Johann Ludwig Burckhardt - who was supposedly trying to find his way to the pyramids.  Not someone you want to ask for directions then....

The most famous building in Petra is the Treasury building - which you will all recognize from various movies - basically any movie that needed a "lost" city.   Although in the lost city movies it never has all the tourists and camels in front of it.

Today's fascinating fact is that the building is not a Treasury at all - it's a tomb.  The designers made the mistake of carving an urn at the top of the building in the middle.   It seems the urn is a symbol of treasure and a lot of people thought that there was somehow a treasure trove hidden in the rock behind it so shortly after Petra was rediscovered in the 19th century, people used to come and shoot at the urn with rifles - thinking that at some point it would shatter and shower them with gold. 

 From the Treasury area, the only way on is by foot.   However, you don't have to walk more than another half a mile to get a good panoramic view of the city as a whole.  you can walk right down to the theatre and explore if you like, but Denise and I didn't fancy the rocky path.  There were also locals offering to guide you to vantage points  high up in the rocks above the city and I saw quite a few (younger) people up there.  

Unfortunately the wait for the golf carts back up to the parking lot was dreadful.  They wouldn't send down carts until there were people who wanted to come down in them, and most people were walking down and then finding that they didn't have the energy to climb back up again.  So the queue was very long and we spent over 45 minutes standing in the cold on a rocky, uneven surface before the hair-raising ride back to the top.   

After a very late "lunch" at the Movenpick Hotel in Petra it was a long coach ride back to the ship.  Denise and I had a short dinner and spent the rest of the evening packing, as our suitcases had to be outside our room by 11pm.

So that is it - the end of my cruise.   Tomorrow morning we disembark and head back to the Intercontinental Hotel in Aqaba for a couple of nights before our flight back to London.   Originally we'd intended to organize a day trip to Wadi Rum or the Dead Sea, but after 2 days of walking the rocky trails in Timna Park and Petra we're totally exhausted and will probably spend our hotel time mostly in the hot tub instead.

 

Valentine's Day in Eilat

Today we docked at Eilat, Israel.   The first excursion was to the underwater observatory (AKA Coralworld).   This is the oldest specifically built tourist attraction in Israel and it opened 45 years ago.  

The white building above is the observatory, and as you enter at ground level you can go up to the top for a view of the surrounding countryside, or down to the underwater rooms (there are 2) which are 6 to 8 metres below sea level.   They somehow managed to construct this without damaging the coral that it is sitting in the middle of, so it was teeming with colourful fish. I know it looks like Denise is standing in an aquarium in this photo - it's hard to believe that it's the actual sea outside those windows.

As well as the observatory, the park had several actual aquariums and some large pools for turtles, etc.  There was also an enormous tank holding shards and stingrays.  So we spent a very pleasant few hours enjoying the sea life.

Unlike Egypt and Jordan, Israel isn't full of hawkers trying to sell you cheap Chinese "authentic Egyptian" items.   So I chose to do most of my shopping at the gift shops in the park. 

Our second excursion of the day was to a place called Timna Park.  This is an area of mountains rich in various ores with some spectacular rock formations.  It is also the site of the oldest copper mines in the world. 

By the time we finished in Timna it was dusk, so it was back to the ship for the Captain's Farewell Dinner.   Technically, there is another night left of the cruise after this one - but we will all have been on an 11 hour trip to Petra and will probably be too exhausted to enjoy ourselves tomorrow night.  We sat with Slavko, the future cruise sales manager, who is from Montenegro.   After a lovely meal I went up to deck 6 where I joined a few other passengers to form a team and take part in the music trivia quiz.  We managed to win - and our prize was 2 boxes of dates, which no one wanted.   We even tried to give them to the 2nd placed team, but they didn't want them either. 2nd prize must have been 3 boxes of dates.

A Recovery Day

 Today we were docked at Safaga, which is yet another Egyptian beach resort, similar to Sharm-El-Sheik and Hurghada.   The included excursion was a "beach break" at nearby Soma beach.  But I'm not really a beach person, and neither is Denise, so we decided to stay on board.

I managed to do a load of washing in the guest laundry and then we headed up to the Jacuzzi on deck 7.  With several people still off the ship on the 2 day excursion to Luxor and with most of the others on the Soma Beach excursion we practically had the ship to ourselves.    There is a bar up on deck 7 next to the hot tub - so we had our own personal bar tender to make our drinks. 

Denise's birthday

 Today we docked at Hurghada which is another beach resort similar to Sharm-El-Sheik.   The day started well with a cocktail class up at the Sky Bar on Deck 7, where we were taught to make (and got to sample) a lemon drop martini, a cosmopolitan, a french martini and an espresso martiini.   Sen (our mixologist) used to work on one of the really big Royal Caribbean ships with 8000 guests and he used to have to make 2 or 3 thousand cocktails at a time.   So he really appreciates working on Emerald Azzurra where there are only 65 guests.

 After lunch 14 people left the ship for the overnight excursion to Luxor.  Most of the excursions are included in the price of the cruise, but that one was extra and Denise and I had decided not to take it.  This was probably a a good decision as we were knackered after our 11 hour trip to the pyramids yesterday.   Emerald had organized a shuttle which ran every hour to take people from the port to the centre of downtown Hurghada where you could visit the beach or do some shopping.   So we hopped on the bus and went for a look around.   
Honestly, Hurghada doesn't have much to recommend it.   The shopping area is pretty tacky and the highlight of the eating places was a Costa Coffee. The shop keepers are all quite persistent about trying to get you into their stores to buy their cheap tat.

Downtown Hurghada

Denise and I managed to find a store selling stamps and then spent a while at a bar on one of the hotel beaches where we could put the stamps on our postcards, before posting them in the Hotel's post box and catching the shuttle back to the ship.   At least we got to sample a local Egyptian beer.

Back on the ship the evening's entertainment got into full swing.   As it was Denise's birthday we were invited to dine with the ship's director, Christian.   Two other couples we've become friends with joined us at the table and a lovely meal was finished off with a chocolate birthday cake that was made for her. 

The evening's entertainment was an amazing local dance troupe with a belly dancer and a whirling dervish who had a costume studded with LEDs.   It was quite an evening!