Eze, France - page 4 part 3

Our bus left out for Eze, France. The name of the town is pronounced Ez as in Ezra but without the ra.  It is located on a mountain top. Actually the town is in the mountain top. This place started a long time ago and one of those groups - who desperately wanted to own Eze because it was strategically located on / in a mountain top, overlooking the bay and everything around it - carved, what is basically, caves in the solid rock mountain top. Now those "caves" are full of shop keepers.
When we got to Eze, a line formed by the toilets to pay the fee and take care of business. The lady's room line was a long one. As I mentioned in my last post, we bus tour people were wearing ear buds to follow what the tour guide was talking about. The tour guide waited for a short time near the toilets, then gathered "the good to go" folks and headed up the mountain path.

When I came out of the toilet, I could hear little snippets of information from the guide through the ear buds. "And they both plunged to their death .....cccrrrrr (static), ..... this exciting point ..... ccccrrrr (static), and the knife was this close to the Queen's neck ... cccrrrrr .  I was determined to find my group! I headed up the hill, guessing at which way they might have gone in this mountain maze. I even asked a few folks who were sitting around - not climbing the hill. "They went that way," they pointed. As I got closer to my group, the sound got clearer but as they moved on in the tour, I would lose them. And as for Philip, I don't know where he was, I assumed with the group, until I saw him come out of a cave / shop, which was the size of a walk in closet.
Finally, I gave up on the tour and took out the ear buds. I walked around with Philip, just people watching. At one point a man dressed in official 'bike' gear, was walking his bike down the mountain walk way. He was wearing spikes on his shoes so it was hard for him to keep his footing on the slippery, stone path. He looked out of place since there were no other bikers.  This guy looked lost - off course.
     Philip and I made our way down the mountain. It was almost time to head back to our tour bus and go back to the ship. Then Philip decided to walk down into the town near Eze.  We had 15 minutes to be back to the bus, so I told him that we should head back. He totally ignored me and walked on down the street. I sat down on a park bench to wait for him. Here's the thing about taking a cruise. They insist on folks being punctual. If the ship is to set sail at 7PM, you don't want to get back to the dock at 7:10PM. I was feeling anxious. In about ten minutes, Philip came strolling back then started teasing me about being a nervous Nelly.
   When we got back to the ship, it was dinner time. Of course, I chose my next night's dinner and when the dessert menu came and I looked at "chocolate this or chocolate that," Glenn was there to bring me a special dessert made just for me, since ... yeah, Lactose. They brought me a steamed pear half which had fruit juice poured over it. So exciting!  Later, Philip and I went up to the "all the time dining" on deck 11 for some real dessert.

Nice, France - page 4 part 2

 

 

Our bus left the port town of VilleFranche around 12PM. We headed up into the mountains and could see our ship sitting in the harbor.

 

As we drove along through the curvy, mountainous roads, the tour guide talked about how this area is home to many celebrities, such as Tina Turner, Elton John and Shawn Lennon. They've all got villas on the French Rivera. He pointed to the areas where they lived but the bus was moving is such a sporadic way, with people holding cameras at every angle, that I couldn't see anything. Which is okay because it's not like I'm getting an invite to drop by anytime.

 

He also mentioned that we would see a memorial on the side of the road as we made our way up the mountain. This memorial was in tribute to Princess Grace. From this memorial on the side of the road, one could see out across the bay to where the famous princess of Monaco actually died.

 In the town of Nice, our bus drove around in the city for us to take it all in. The tour guide started talking about the most famous site in the city which is the Hotel Negresco. Well the place is a magnet for the rich and famous. Dali, Matisse, Picasso, Chagall  Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Ava Gardner, Winston Churchill, Anthony Quinn, Michael Jackson all stayed at the Negresco.  Richard Burton left an emerald necklace and earrings that he'd bought for Elizabeth Taylor, on a stool in the bar. And a famous rock band - not named - stole a famous painting from the hotel and were stopped at the airport with it. The painting was returned to the hotel. Scandals galore!

 

After we drove around for a while, the bus parked and we got out and took a walking tour of Nice. We were all wearing ear buds so we could hear what the tour guide was talking about. We saw lovely cathedrals, and colorful apartment buildings. Yet the most wonderful part of the walking tour was through the narrow streets. As we passed by the various merchants, one could smell such lovely aromas. Herbs, tobacco, flowers, perfumes, fresh bread - hot from the oven and then at one point we turned a corner and the smell of fresh brewed coffee lifted me off my feet. I loved this tour.
We then had a short time to look about the town and meet the tour bus back at the town center. And then we were off to see a place called Eze.

 

 

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 Philip photographed this lady doing caning work.

 

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Yeah, this is a cannonball in the corner of a building. It was fired from a Turkish fleet in 1543. It seemed like an interesting item to point out.

 

VilleFranche-ser-Mer page 4

     It was early morning when our ship set anchor in the bay, off the Coast of France in a place called VilleFranche-ser-Mer. From there we took a tender boat from the ship to the shore. We'd signed up to take a tour bus from the harbor to go see the town of Nice and another town named Eza.  We were now officially on the French Rivera.

   The village of VilleFranche-ser-Mer is beautiful with it's colorful, sunny houses and their terracotta roofs. All stacked up along the mountainside surrounding the bay.
     Since our bus tour didn't start until noon, we had a couple of hours to explore this charming location. Philip and I walked along the shore. We took a lot of pictures and basically took in the morning sun. I spotted a small beach and instantly wanted to go there for some beach sand. For those who don't know me, I collect beach sand and have samples from a wide region of the world.
At the beach, Philip took off his shoes and waded into the blue waters of the Mediterranean. As I gathered a zip lock bag of sand, I happened to notice a woman take off her top and put on a bikini top - or maybe she layed down on the sand to sun her back. I really stopped looking after I noticed her topless form. I thought to myself "This must be how things are done in France."

 

     I didn't think much of it as I was suddenly mesmerized by the beach sand, which was not sand at all but small, tiny pebbles, the size of minced garlic. All colors of rock in bits. Our bus driver / tour guide later said that the beach sand was from the rivers and streams coming into the bay. Little bits of France at our feet.

   
     I took out my camera to take a picture of the sand, when I noticed a young, blond haired girl of about 10 or 12 who had taken off her swim clothes as she changed into her regular clothes. There she was, a blond nymph standing naked in the morning sun. I put my camera away.
     It made me uneasy. Her mother (I reckoned it was her mother) laid on the sand beside her, wearing a swim suit and a blond girl of about 8 sat topless beside them.
     Later, as Phil and I made our way back to the place where we were to get on the tour bus, I mentioned seeing these things and Philip said he never saw any of this. We were on a topless beach and didn't even know it.

 

   We did have some time to explore some of the shops. One lady, who had a shop in the town and made unique clothing items, said her sales were half of what they had been because of the tradegy in Nice, last year, where a terrorist had driven a truck into a crowd, killing 84 people.

 

Later, we headed to the tour bus and headed on to Nice, France.

 

 

Setting Sail - page 3

     I woke up early - around 6AM. The amount of city light kept throwing my sleep pattern off. I got some coffee and sat on the roof top patio, taking in the sights and sounds of the city. Listening to the sound of passing cars and motorcycles, birds singing their sweet songs, dogs barking for some unknown reason and people passing on the street. A cool breeze was in the air.

Later, I went downstairs to start gathering our gear. I heard the sound of children's voices and peeked outside the front door curtains to see children, with backpacks on their backs, marching down the street - undoubtedly for school.

     Later that morning we left the AirBNB and dropped the keys in the mailbox after locking the door behind us. We got a taxi and headed to the dock. By noon we were aboard the Royal Caribbean 'Brilliance,' waiting to set sail. It was a day of settling in - getting food - taking naps.

 

The problem with this door to our AirBNB is that the only way to lock it or unlock it was with the key. So if a person got trapped inside the place during a fire and didn't have a key to unlock the door, they'd have that lovely door pattern burnt into their hide. It made me a little uneasy but I'm here to tell about it.
 

Part of the requirements to sail on a ship is to go through the safety drill. Basically everyone is herded onto the deck where the emergency life boats are located and then to listen to the crew demonstrate how to put on a life jacket. It's required attendance and they do a roll call of names. So Philip and I did our part to get educated. I kept thinking how it would go if a real emergency happened. How many of these crew people would still be here to help out?  I was trying to take a selfie of the two of us in our training camp and a young man offered to take our picture. After the first picture he said "Act like it's really happening." Maybe he was thinking similar thoughts about the crew.

     Around dinner time (6:15) we went to the dining room and were seated with a half a dozen other sailing folks. As I was making my dinner choice from the menu, I made the mistake of telling the waiter that I was lactose intolerant. Enter into my life - Glenn - the head waiter - (more about him - later). Glenn asked about my food allergies and jotted them down on a scrap of paper. Then our regular waiter - Connor (I cannot remember his name to save my soul - though the real name he was going by was probably a phony name too - so Connor it is), brought my milk free dinner choice and just as I was eating and talking with the folks at our table, I look right beside me at the face of Glenn. He had popped in and was three inches from my face - handing me the menu for the next night's dinner. He wanted me to take time out from my present eating to choose my future eating. The pressure, the pressure - and it's sea bass for Sarah! I felt so embarrassed to be put on the spot like this until another diner said "I'm more allergic than she is." So they moved on to him, though that was a weird claim to make on the other diner's part, but thank the Lord!

     After dinner we went back to our room and I ended up having diarrhea!  So much for a lactose free dinner. Outside the bathroom, Phil was waiting for us to go to the show and was asking "Are you ready, are you ready?" Finally, I felt better, took an anti diarrhea pill and left with Phil to see the show. We trudged over there and discovered that they weren't having a second show on that first night. There was no show to see. Philip was not happy. He said that he must have miss set his clock but later he said that it was my fault that we had missed the show. According to Philip, I should have reminded him of the time and kept him from missing the show. The day ended with me doing a count down of the days to go - 11 days.

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Funny thing, Philip kept mentioning how the cruise was full of old people.

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Pictures of our room.

 

This is obviously our bathroom / my office.

This room saved my sanity on more than one occasion.

 

Mid week they came and changed out the bed frame on this bed.

Not that Philip and I had anything to do with that decision.

Hop On - Hop Off Barcelona page 2 - final

After a much needed nap, Phil and I set out for a restaurant named Paolla. It was recommended to us by Angel, the owner of the AirBNB, when we'd first arrived in Barcelona. He circled it on a local map for us and wrote the word 'Paolla' over the spot where it was located. I will tell you that it seemed like the longest walk of my life. We started out at dusk and finally found the place. This is when we found out that Paolla was not the name of the restaurant and that Paolla is actually the name of a yellow rice dish that the place is known for. Awkward.  And they weren't open for another hour. Most restaurants in Barcelona don't open for dinner until 8 or 9 PM.

 

We decided to see if we could find a different restaurant that might be open early. All we wanted to do was eat and go back to our place. We wandered the streets.

 

 

 We passed a place that totally weirded me out! It was called the Espai De Gats and it was a restaurant that had easy access to cats while one dined. They should have just called it 'A Bridge to Far,' and been done with it. It still makes me cringe.

 

 

We saw these two ladies taking two big bags of rolls down the street. I'm not sure of the story there.

 The streets were getting darker and still no dinner. I had almost given up on ever finding any place to eat, when we wandered back to the original spot that we thought was Paolla but was not. We decided to eat there since we'd basically wandered about for over an hour.

 

 

Our waiter did not speak a word of English, yet through gestures and some common phrases he informed us of his favorite beers and his favorite sandwich - which was the chicken sandwich, so we ordered them. He would make this funny gesture of putting his fingertips to his mouth and kissing them as he released the kisses into the air - magnificent! He was right. They were magnificent or I was just really hungry. 

As Phil and I ate, I noticed a television show on the TV behind Phil's head. It was a detective show with the lead detective being a woman who had spent too much time in a tanning bed. Her face was that one sole color of sun burnt red. She was, however, very good at her job. There she was lecturing her staff of five as they stood dumbfounded at her revelations. Needless to say Philip was watching the same show on the television behind my head. We started adding our own words to the show and got tickled at our makeshift dialogue. Then out of the blue, Philip points his finger into the air and says "Ipso facto irgo hoc!" Beer shot out my nose as we both cracked up laughing.  That little touch of Latin over this overplayed detective show was too much. I later asked him what that means and he said it meant something to the effect 'if this be true therefore this."

 

 After dinner, it took our map and asking a half a dozen people directions

for us to find our way back to our airBNB. 

 

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 I went to bed as soon as we got back and fell into a deep sleep. Philip stayed up reading the newspaper he'd brought from home. Later in the night, when Philip was coming to bed, he had his hands full so as he stepped across the raised threshold into our room, he stepped onto the curtains that served as our door. The rod popped off the hooks and popped Philip in the head then slammed into the floor with a bam, waking me out of a dead sleep and scaring me half to death. It was hilarious.