Sunday, August 25, 2019
I am three days behind in this log. The reason I am behind us because we have been busy. My last entry had to do with Barcelona. Since then we have done Marseille, France, Florence, Italy and today was Rome. As I write this we are eight days into our 28 trip. We have done so much in eight days it’s hard to envision another 20 days. Nonetheless, that’s what we’re doing. Right now though we get a break for a few days. Tomorrow we are on the island of Sardinia and I can’t get off the ship. Mary said she might go into town. We’ll have to see what it’s like when we get there tomorrow. After that we have a day at sea. Admittedly, I could use these two days down. I was thinking about it this morning as I lay there staring at the ceiling – some things never change – we are doing the cities and countries that such a pace that we’re only seeing maybe 2% of the given city or country. Based on what I learned from Seville and Barcelona I would say that Spain is a very nice country I know these two cities were really nice. Of course like all big cities I’m sure they have their downsides, but we didn’t see them. Based on my experience with Marseille, I would say that France is pretty nice. I’m smart enough to know that one experience in one city does make up for the country. I guess I will cover this little bit more as I get into each day. I will say that right now because I’m three days behind I have already forgotten certain details that either Mary and I caught in pictures.
Let’s go back to the day after Barcelona – the day we went into Marseille. By now you’ve read the story about the broken shower chair. Of course her string of luck continued. We were getting ready to go off the ship onto Marseille when we hooked up the SmartDrive. It would not work. All the lights were there and it be but it would not drive the chair. We didn’t have a lot of time to deal with it so left it behind. Nonetheless, I was not happy – two days in a row was something going wrong right off the bat. I tried not to let it sour the whole day. Because it took a few minutes to play with the SmartDrive we are running behind. Not that it mattered because we meeting are driver at 9 o’clock downstairs. We went upstairs and Mary had a little breakfast. I don’t remember what I had but I don’t think it was much. We did our thing to get off the ship. As we worked our way through the terminal to the parking lot we saw a lady holding a sign with my name on it. This was our driver. We later learned that her name was Cecile. We also learned out later that she is a 49-year-old woman who grew up in Marseille. She was very animated. She was a nice lady as we would learn. After we did our introductions we walked out to the parking lot where she had the lift equipped van. She loaded me up into the van and tied me down. We were off on a six hour adventure with her. The boat actually docked in Marseille. Unlike Seville where we had to travel two hours to get there. She weaved the way up and around through the town until we got to Notre Dame de la Guarda – a fairly small church out on a very high hill that overlooks the city of Marseille. Like all churches it had very interesting architecture, stained-glass windows and various bits of history. What was notable about this church was that people go there after having near death experiences. They go there to thank God for surviving their particular accident. This was symbolized in several different ways, but most notably there were long strings hanging from the ceiling. On each of the strings were model boats or model airplanes, for the most part. Each one of the boats and/or airplanes signified a specific near death experience. People donated money to the church to keep it running. There were also other ways of this acknowledgment of near death experience was symbolized. There were plaques on the wall with dates, for example. Considering the churches we’ve been in, this one was tiny. As I mentioned, the church was on a hill overlooking the city we got incredible pictures of this similar to what we saw in Barcelona. We could see forever.
From there we loaded up and continued driving. We weaved our way up to wine country, specifically Cassis wine country. It has a specific appellation for the area. It took us about an hour to get there – all along the way, Cecile was telling us about this and that. She had a lot of history. We saw a lot of French countryside. We went by countless wineries. There were several small towns were passed. They all seemed very similar – small with roads that were just wide enough for the car. Mary took a zillion pictures on the way. We wound our way up until she finally pulled into the driveway of the winery called Ferme Blanc – which means white farm. We unloaded and went into the tasting room. It was really just a small room inside a huge old barn. We were introduced to sales guy. Of course I don’t remember his name, if he told us, but he was a young guy – spoke decent English. Over the next 20 minutes or so, Mary and I sampled two different whites, one red, one rose and one sparkling wine. Because it was not from the Champagne region they could not call their sparkling wine champagne, but it was the same thing. They were all very good. French wines have that flat earthy taste that I like. Even Mary liked them all. Then we had to decide if you wanted to buy any. I did some debating because I wasn’t sure what the ship policy was. Eventually, we bought three bottles – a white, the rose, and the red. Mary also bought some olive oil. There were two different kinds of which I don’t know what the difference was. We bought both anyway. We were saying our goodbyes when we found out that barn had a bathroom that I could use. That is one of the strange things that we run into every so often – there are brand-new buildings built in modern cities that do not have bathrooms that are assessible, yet we pull into a winery that’s been around for 300 years, go into a 200-year-old barn and find a bathroom that is spacious as the one we have at home. Strange but true.
From there we loaded up and continued up and down the road until we ended up in a small town on the seaside which I don’t remember the name of right now. Mary thinks it starts with an “O”. I’ll have to look on the map later. Anyway, this was a very popular spot. We eventually found a parking spot near the water. We walked up to the water’s edge. From this you could see various aspects of the small town. It had a bridge of some sort that one along the waterway. There was a good size beach with a couple hundred people laying on the sand or wading in the surf. We took a lot of pictures and listened to the history that Cecile provided. It was an interesting place from a landscape perspective because way up high there was an ancient fort, I guess you call it, that was used to protect the town. To the left of that probably a half mile as the crow flies was what they call Charlemagne’s crown. It is a rock formation that literally looks like the crown. Mary’s pictures capture this pretty well. After lounging around near the beach for a short while we walked up to the little plaza area. Earlier in the day there had been a farmers market and all the people that were selling their wares were now loading them up back into their trucks. This made for a very chaotic area, but on the other side was this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Apparently, Cecile had been there before. We found a table sitting just outside the door. We looked at the menu and tried to decide what we wanted. The first thing I looked for was wine. I’m in France so you got to drink the wine. Instead of by the glass they had a menu that said something along the lines of Blanc – 12 cc, ¼ L, ½ L, or L. It makes sense in hindsight, but the quarter meant a quarter of a bottle. This equated to about two good-sized glasses. So I ordered 1/4L Blanc. In hindsight we should have had crepes like Cecile did. In France eat French food. No, we ate salad and pizza. Actually, Mary had a salad and we shared the pizza. It was a four cheese pizza so at least it had French cheese. Maybe that counts. Anyway, the food was really good. We sat there for a bit while I finished my wine. By now it was early afternoon. We had about an hour or so back to the ship. Cecile suggested that we go through the national forest to see those sites and work our way back down to the ship. We agreed.
The straps she used in her van to tie my chair down would eventually loosen up and I would fall backwards. This is not a big deal because I wasn’t going to fly out the back but it was uncomfortable. It seemed the longer we went the more frequently it happened. This, and the fact that we were kind of bumping up against the time the ship would leave, made me think that we should skip the forest and head back into town. In the end, we did drive through the forest. We just didn’t stop. As we drove back through town we went through several areas that had stores. Mary was on the hunt again for sweetener – Stevia. We stopped at a couple places – surprisingly called casinos, but were actually small grocery stores. We didn’t have any luck. Mary was also looking for some of her face cream. Thinking that it might be cheaper in France because it’s a French product. No luck here either. The stops and the fact that there was a lot of traffic, maybe it was a good move to skip that last stop. We made our way back to the parking lot outside of the ship. There we had to say our goodbyes. Cecile was a great tour guide. We spent almost 6 hours with her. We saw a lot of Marseille and the surrounding area. Obviously, the personal guide is the way to go. And as expected, it is more expensive. We learn something new every time travel.
It was almost 5 o’clock in the afternoon. We made it back to the room. As soon as we opened the door I saw the SmartDrive laying on the floor and I remembered this morning’s feelings. I asked Mary to open my last bottle of Heineken. I chugged that down. We then set up the computers trying to find a telephone number for the company that makes the drive. Mary found a number from the Nashville area and she called it. I was somewhat surprised that a guy picked up the phone and within about 15 minutes we knew the answer – unfortunately it was not good news. Apparently the circuit board in the drive has failed. There’s nothing to do with us sitting in France. He did commit to trying to see if he could find a dealer in Southampton and arrange a swap of some sort when we are in Southhampton. I don’t think it is likely, but there is some hope. It would be great if it worked out. The sad thing is that I’ve only had the drive for about six months and have used it ten hours total. I can’t imagine I have more than 10 miles on it. I was not happy with the answer but had no choice.
With that behind us we chilled out for a while. Eventually, we went downstairs for dinner. I don’t remember if I mentioned this, but the previous night I ordered a bottle of white wine. I finished it off tonight. A French white. It was pretty good. I know that I had gazpacho as an appetizer that was really good. I don’t remember what I had is my second appetizer. I was hungry so I wanted a second something. For my entrée I had spicy shrimp. I don’t number what Mary had but I am sure it was in the beef family. Part of my unhappy morning was the fact that I woke up and found that 100 of my Internet minutes were missing. On the ship we are given 250 minutes as part of our platinum membership. I was down to about 150, but I woke up and looked I was down to 40. I wasn’t happy about this. So while we were looking for the latest pictures, we stopped at the Internet café. We asked the guy who runs it to take a look at my logs. He gave me back my hundred minutes. I thanked him and we were on our way. Internet minutes are like gold around here. I remember now that it was a formal night. I didn’t feel like getting into tux pants, etc. I left my jeans on, but wore a white shirt with a tie. Mary looked good in her black sequin outfit. That’s one thing about formal nights on the ship – there are some guys that think their T-shirt is formal. At the other end of the spectrum is the guy with the real tux – fitted for him. Thinking about it, I would say that there were even number at both ends. I kind of was in the middle. Jeans with a tie. I know that’s not formal but I just wasn’t in the mood. And actually Mary suggested that so I took advantage of it. It had been a long day and had another couple big days coming up so we went to bed. That’s the story for day seven.