Another beautiful day for walking, this time in the town of Speyer (pronounced “Shpeyer”. What was our little “Leisure” group is growing – the word is spreading that you don’t necessarily have to hoof it through the tours. A little bus/van took us directly to the heart of the town, saving us all about a mile walk.

Most of the focus for the day was on the cathedral. We were all able to find seats on benches in the park next to the building. The guide went through the now familiar-sounding history – started hundreds of years ago, modified through the ages, destroyed pieces here and there, followed by rebuilding after WWII.

The cathedral is beautifully simple and elegant both inside and out. It holds the tombs of emperors and German kings (not mentioned on the tour!)

Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses in Wittenberg, but the nobles followed up by publishing their “protestation” of some of the Catholic Church’s policies in support of Luther in April 1529 – this is the origin of the term “Protestant”.

Meanwhile, while our guide was providing all this info, one of our group members announced rather loudly that the Leisure group was not for her (“I wasn’t planning on sitting all day…”), and she took off. Have a nice day!

After our visit inside the Cathedral, we walked further into the town.

Out of nowhere, the “I don’t want to sit” woman reappears, and asks us where her husband is. Most of us struggled to even remember what he looked like. None of us had a clue as to where her husband was, and we were all pretty sure it wasn’t our responsibility to keep track of him. Noticing that we were no help at all, she once again wandered off.

We stopped at the Protestant Church – simple on the outside and elegant on the inside:

The guide mentioned that there had been a Jewish quarter – the Bishop of Speyer had invited Jews to live in the town, mostly to provide money-lending services, a practice prohibited to Christians. Tom visited the ruins of the synagogue and Mikva:

This was the end of the tour, and we had some free time to wander until the appointed time to meet at the bus. As we were boarding, the “I don’t want to sit” woman reappears – with the missing husband! Apparently she may not have wanted to sit, but she also didn’t want to walk back to the ship.

Tomorrow – Strasbourg! And our luck with the weather runs out.

This is the problem when I don’t take notes or write up *something* even if the wifi connectivity is problematic. The details of the morning of Day 4 are a bit fuzzy. The guys went on the “rigorous” excursion climbing the steep hill to the top to see the castle. The rest of us went on a walking tour of Koblenz.

No cathedral here. We walked through parks and saw large statues. Though I must say, the tour guide was clever at finding us a bathroom. I’ve already forgotten which Wilhelm this is – I do remember that this is a reconstruction of the original statue, and it was painted to make it look old.

Eventually we came to a square, where we were given about 30 minutes free time. I sat and had a soda while Susie and Janet wandered about (I think not finding much?).

While we were walking in the glorious sunshine, the guys were climbing the giant hill to Ehrenbreitstein – Europe’s largest fortress

There were wonderful displays of armor and weapons:

We met back together at lunch, and the ship started moving for our scenic cruising afternoon. Truly scenic cruising – the Rhine has the most amazing towns, villages, and castles. There was a running commentary for a while, but I almost immediately lost track.

But this one is my favorite:

The ship docked in Ruddenheim for a few hours. There was a beer/wine tasting excursion that we did not go on. Tomorrow – Strasbourg!

The day didn’t have an auspicious start when some interlopers were sitting at “our” table in the dining room. Note: there is no such thing as “our” table, but we like the servers in that part of the room and we just want to sit in the same place every meal. Other people move around. How weird. We somehow managed to deal with the awkwardness of new-to-us servers who couldn’t read our minds and ate breakfast.

The ship made a “technical stop” (meaning – it’s docked but just long enough to drop people off) in Konz (sp?). Everybody on a Cologne excursion got off and boarded buses to take us to Cologne. The ship will meet us in a few hours, docked in the heart of Cologne.

We are in the “Leisure” walking group, which is great. Most of the tour pertained to the cathedral (a/k/a the Dom). Dom constructed started in 1248, but wasn’t finished until the 19th century – there was a period of 300 years where nothing at all happened. We were not allowed to go in during the tour, because it was Sunday and there was a Mass.

Christine our tour guide told us about the shrine in the Dom – traditionally, it holds the skulls of the Three Magi. She also described how the building was bombed during WWII, but due to how the building was built, the basic structure survived the war and was rebuilt.

She pointed out City Hall and mentioned that there was a chocolate museum “not far” – but too far for us to walk. How disappointing!

We walked to a fountain that represented the story of how all work used to be one by elves at night. They were hidden fro view by magic hats that made them invisible. One night, a house wife stayed put to find out what happened, pulled off a hat and revealed the elves! Which pissed them off, and poof! They were gone forever.

Walking back to the dock down a steep cobblestone street, our tour guide told us the name of the location of the dock, so we could repeat it to a rickshaw or cab. She assured us EVERYBODY would know what this meant.

That was pretty much the end of the tour, as we made our way very slowly down a rather steep cobblestone hill to the dock. Susie, Janet, Andy andTom had another tour in the afternoon. My plan was to go back to the cathedral after lunch.

The timing between tours was very tight. They barely get to finish lunch before they had to run back out.

For myself, my challenge was getting back up that cobblestone hill. Front desk guy says he can call a rickshaw (a “pedicab” in NY parlance) for 12 euro. I only have 20 euro, so I don’t have enough to come back by rickshaw. But my plan involved finding an ATM, so it should be ok.

The front desk calls a rickshaw, who comes in about 10 minutes. He’s a chatty fellow, quite happy to take me on a city tour for 22 euro. Yeah, nope. He does point out a few things along the way to the Dom and points to places that should have ATMs.

There was a bit of a line to enter, but it moved quickly. A valid vaccine card and photo ID were needed to enter the church.

The stained glass windows are amazing.

And here is the shrine to the Magi

After I was done with the cathedral, the challenge was getting back to the ship. First, I visitedWent to both ATM locations the rickshaw guy had mentioned, but there were no ATMs. I stumbled across an ATM in a random 3rd place, to discover that I really didn’t know what my PIN was. Next thing to try – hail a cab at the taxi stand. The cabbie took credit cards, so I was good! Tried to hail a cab using the term our tour guide told me earlier, but the cabbie had no idea what I was talking about. I had no cash, and it was a tortuous walk back to the ship.

Or not. I repeated the words our tour guide had told us as to the location of the dock and – the cabbie had no idea what I was talking about.

I needed to find out exactly what words to use to get me back to the ship. I remembered that Andy had the daily newsletter from the ship with phone numbers to call, so I called him. While he looked for that, I called a Viking emergency number, who called the ship and spelled out the words letter by letter. Then Andy texted me the ship’s phone numbers as well.

Tried a second cabbie – I showed him what I had written down. He had no idea – he said that address was on the other side of the river. I knew that was wrong. I told him the dock was right below the cathedral on this side of the river. Nope. No idea.

So I called the ship. I could hear the reception guy rolling his eyes. I handed the phone to the cabbie and the two of them launched into an intense discussion in German. Suddenly, the bulb went off – Yah, yah, alle clar! (“All is clear”). With that, he drove all of 3 minutes max and dropped me off at the top of the pedestrian area just in front of the ship. Success!

I commiserated with the reception guy – neither of us could understand why this had been so hard.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew visited the the Bruhl Palace. Here are some amazing photos:

Andy went running and took a photo of the chocolate museum we didn’t get to visit.

Tomorrow: Koblenz

Windmills and Windy Days – Day 2

One of the frustrating things about our previous Viking river cruise (beyond the fact that the Elbe River’s water level was too low for the ship to actually cruise, so the trip turned into a bus tour) were the promises made about accommodating people with mobility issues. There were supposed to be “easy” versions of the excursions and a mechanism to reserve the front seat on the buses. Neither of those happened.

This time I made sure to chat with the Program Director, Maarten. He explained that there were indeed “easy walk” versions of most excursions (how I was supposed to know that is unclear), and he promised to sign me up for those.

Also, Day 2’s excursion – visiting a windmill in Kinderdijk (pronounced – “kin – der – dike”) had a version that traveled to the windmill via a vintage barge instead of walking. I had wanted to sign up for that one back in February, but it was sold out. But now apparently there were additional available spots – yay! Sign us up!

The ship stopped briefly in Rotterdam to let off a couple of people who were going on the cheese making excursion – they would meet the ship at at Kinderdijk later. Of course, we had been told that the night before and we all promptly forgot.

We arrived at Kinderdijk right at 10:00 a.m. Our excursion group started the walk to the barge right at 10:15. Our tour guide talked about what exactly a dike is (a pile of clay?), “boezems” (pronounced “buh-zjems”), and “polders” – all parts of the South Netherland water management system that also included the windmills. It was not 100% clear how it all worked, but it seemed to be a sort of canal-like system – boezems and polders are water holding areas at different levels (maybe?) and the windmills pump the water from level to level.

Seriously not clear, but interesting all the same. I was able to do the walk without a problem, yay! We could see the windmills in the distance from the walking path.The barge made its way down the <I have no idea> river.

At least one windmill needs to be operating every day, but others can start up whenever the winds pick up.

The barge made its way down the <I don’t know river> and docked at the windmill we were going to visit.

The top part of the windmill can be rotated by the miller to make sure it faces the wind. The bottom part is where the miler and his family would live. Rather cramped quarters, but they lived there rent free, so they made do.

The guide split the group in half – the group was too big for everybody to fit inside the mill at the same time.

The windmill itself is now run 100% by machines, so the miller doesn’t have to do anything manually.

This is a photo of the vintage barge. Viking chipped in with funding to restore it and it is used solely for Viking river cruise excursions. It’s 100% electric.

Of course we sneaked a photo of the miller’s wooden shoes.

This is a photo of the water level marker pole. When the water level reaches a threshold, the mills kick into action.

The mills are a part of the Netherlands water management system, which has been keeping the country above water for many years.

It is rather alarming how fast the blades move:

We made sure to make it back to the ship by 12:30 – the ship left port right on time to get to Cologne on time tomorrow.

Everybody scattered for the afternoon, killing time to the next meal.

Tomorrow: Cologne!

The Never Ending Day – Day 1

Off to a great start – we were confused as to whether we should check in to our flight via Delta or its partner, KLM. Viking told me go through KLM via a chat bot. The KLM check in process failed – it referred me back to Delta. A second contact to Viking – this time via an actual human on the phone – agreed with KLM: Check in via Delta.

Ok fine.

Except Delta has this whole process to upload vaccine and testing info – with a not-so-subtle “reminder” that we should have started this process awhile ago. That would have been good to know, had Delta given us any kind of a clue.

Yada, yada, yada, two very frustrating hours later we had our boarding passes.

At least the drive to NY was easy. Finding the private parking lot by the airport was not. We showed up at the address on the reservation. It was not an “EconoPark”. It did not look like the photo on the website. A guy gave us another address where the actual long term lot was located.

I picked this lot because it has a 4.5/5 rating. I’m really hoping my car is there when we get back.

At the terminal we find the Delta representatives – who sent us to the KLM desk. Who asked us for exactly the same vaccine info we spent 2 agonizing hours entering into the Delta website. Yup.

The flight was delayed well over an hour because of the weather – the pilot taxied the plane around in circles. Once we took off, the flight itself was smooth, and the pilot was able to get us to Amsterdam only 45 minutes late. Enough to mess up everybody who had a connecting flight.

For anyone new to my blog, there will always be some adventure involving bathrooms during the course of our trip. Some are more ridiculous than others. I still regret not creating a travelogue based on the variety of flushing mechanisms I came upon in Europe during our Baltic Sea cruise. Eventually I learned to figure out the flushing mechanism first thing, to avoid….inconvenience.

Anyway, in the airport bathroom stall was this…thing….

It never did anything. I have no idea what it was or what it was supposed to do. Certainly creepy and unsettling.

Once we joined the Viking group, things proceeded a little more smoothly. Our bags were taken care of. We needed to show our test results at check in. We were taken to our stateroom by a very helpful steward, who managed to fail to mention we were supposed to immediately provide our first spit sample for the first PCR test. I stumbled across this bit of info a while later. Oops.

We met with my sisters-in-law, Susie and Janet, and Susie’s friend Tom. The five of us had traveled together on our last big adventure in 2019. We hadn’t seen Susie and Janet since Thanksgiving 2019. The gang was back together!

Of course, the first thing we did was have lunch – let the eating begin! The food was fabulous.

After lunch, assorted attempts at napping were made, some more successful than others. This was when I stumbled across the info in our room about providing the 1st day spit sample. Providing a spit sample is actually harder than we anticipated. And far more gross. But it will be a part of our daily routine for the next 8 days.

Before dinner we had our first briefing by the Program Director, Maarten (this guy has way too many “a”s in his name), followed by a confusing muster drill. G0d forbid there’s an actual emergency – so many people will be lost due to the inability to fish the life jackets out from under the bed!

Amazingly soon it was time to eat again – dinner time!

After dinner, we were beginning to fade – the never ending day, really needed to come to an end. We were able to watch the entertainment in the lounge via the live feed on the TV before we both just passed out.

Day 2 – Kinderdijk and windmills!

We had a broken night’s sleep due to the “Code Bravo” during the night. Definitely dragging. And the ship was creaking and shaking starting at 5:00 a.m. as it approached the dock. Ugh. SO NOISY. So ready to get off this ship and be in a quiet hotel room.

But first, we have to go through the disembarkation process, where we go through some crazy process as the ship’s crew smiles at us as they rather unceremoniously throw us off the ship.

We are transferring to London via the Very Last Excursion – Salisbury and Stonehenge. But the instructions in the meeting area make no sense, with no proviso for being able to sit towards the front of the bus.

So as the ship guy is lining up all the people for all 6 buses worth of us on this excursion, I just slip into group 1 instead of group 6 and march along with them, thereby following them through the gauntlet of stacked suitcases, cruise terminal twist and turns, and out into the coach parking lot to be the first on the bus.

How odd that I can understand both the tour guide and the coach driver! They both speak English! Everybody around me is speaking English! WOW.

Anyway, off we go, away from the cruise ship port of South Hampton, England. Our tour guide, Claire, reminds us that the Titanic sailed from this very port, but it’s safe now to tell us this because we’re off the ship.

We have a bit of a drive to Salisbury, through a national forest.

Salisbury itself is a medieval town. At first, Claire told us that we wouldn’t be able to go into the cathedral itself because of some performance rehearsal. So we satisfied ourselves by looking at the outside:

Everything but the spire was built in 38 years – an amazingly short time for a cathedral.

We were able to go into a side room and see the Magna Carta – sorry no photos allowed.

And then we noticed that people were indeed going into the cathedral itself, so we went too. So very different from all the cathedrals we’d seen for the last two weeks, and just spectacular:

We wandered around a bit more, and found the world’s oldest functioning clock:

It doesn’t have a face or hands – the time is chimed out by the church bells.

Eventually we headed back to the bus for the next stop – Stonehenge.

My first visit to Stonehenge was in 1977. Somewhere there is a photo of a 24 year old me standing next to and touching one of the huge stones. By time I went back in 1983, we saw it from some kind of distance, separated by a rope.

This time was a whole new deal: a visitor center, shuttle buses to the stones, audio guides, and a circular path all the way around the stones as the audio guide squawked and droned on.

Eventually I gave up on the audio guide and just enjoyed the stones:

Time now for our last bus trip – to London. Traffic wasn’t too terrible; we arrived around 4:00ish?

The bus stopped not quite at Victoria Station. All our bags were pulled out from under the bus and deposited on the sidewalk. Claire gave us vague instructions to walk down to the end of the block and keep going till we found Victoria Station and taxi cabs to take us to our hotels.

And then the bus was gone, and there we were, with our suitcases and bags, in the middle of London, without a clue as to where we were or what we were doing.

The bunch of us made our way down the block, like a bunch of ducklings following each other, crossing the street 3 ways via the cross walks to get to Victoria Station, where indeed the taxi stand awaited us.

Our hotel is literally 1/2 block away from Trafalgar Square. We walked passed it as we walked to the random restaurant we picked for dinner. The restaurant was very noisy and very loud. London itself is very noisy and very loud. I think I it’s louder than New York, which I did not think possible.

Well, here we are on land again. No rumbling ship engines. London’s noises are on the other side of the window. Kinda enjoying the quiet.

Tomorrow: our one day exploring London.

Ok, so we all knew it was going to be kind of a stupid day – up at oh-dark-thirty, on a bus at 7:15, 3 hours to Paris, 4 hours running around, 3 hours back. But 4 hours of Paris were worth every minute on the bus!

This was the first time the group was split up – one of us took the Normandy tour (he’ll be staying after we leave and going to Paris on his own for a few days), two of us went to Paris for the Seine cruise, and Andy and I went to Paris to have lunch. Seriously, that was the goal.

Our tour guide was Gwen. She was great. She told us the name of the port “LaHavre” is pronounced LA-AH-VR. Or something like that. It was hard to tell. Particularly difficult to pronounce was “Rouen”, a nearby town. There’s just no describing how that name is pronounced. Why does French do that?

She told us the history of the region and then shut up when she saw we were all falling asleep.

Apparently Thursday was some kind of national holiday in France – Gwen mentioned it, but I don’t remember. Anyway, this meant that the traffic into Paris was fantastic, as well as the traffic in the city itself. Once we arrived, we swung around all the big, famous stuff. It was good to see everything again after almost 5 years:

Arc de Triumph

Place de la Concorde

The Opera House

And of course the Louvre

We also did a drive by of Notre Dame. Even though we could see the damage as we drove along side, it was hard to capture a photo.

Because traffic had been so light, we now had 2 1/2 hours on our own. We knew exactly what we were going to do.

1. Go to lunch at La Coupule, a restaurant we had gone to 5 years ago. Fantastic. I had duck roasted in wine sauce, and Andy had a lamb curry. Most importantly, we had profiterole – THE BEST DESSERT EVER. Our waiter knew almost no English, but somehow we managed to communicate.

2.Visit Notre Dame and get as close as possible – here are some photos of the damage. All the stained glass has been removed for repair:

We ubered 3 times in the 2 1/5 hours. But we made it back to the bus right at 2:00 p.m. on the dot. Gwen was not too happy with us, but hey, were ON TIME.

Then we swung around the Hotel Invalids (a hospital and a military museum) and our last stop was the Eiffel Tower. A new attraction had been added since we were there last – a zip line from the 2nd level! Yikes.

And then 3 hours back – most of us nodding off randomly.

Our last dinner on board ship we all seemed a bit tired. The room was noisier than usual. The ship’s engine kept churning and churning. The noise was driving me crazy. And I knew that even in our room we’d still hear the pounding beat from the disco three decks above us from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., just like we have for every night of this cruise. What I wouldn’t give for a little peace and quiet. This adventure has been marvelous, but I’m ready to get off this ship!

We packed up our suitcases and put them out in the hall for pick up. A relatively early bedtime for me (that’s why no blog until now).

Then at 1:00 a.m., the captain gets on the public announcement system – “Attention! Attention! Code Bravodockalaven!”

Well, that’s what it sounded like. I really wasn’t awake. My brain got stuck on parsing out “bravodockalaven” – what the heck was that? It didn’t sound good. Both of us lay in bed thinking to ourselves – my jeans are <here>, my shoes are <there>, I can throw on clothes if they have us running the the muster stations….

And then I realized that “bravodockalaven” was “Bravo Deck Eleven”. Something had happened on deck 11. Andy says he heard “fire stations”, meaning there was a fire re ported on deck 11.

By the time all these thoughts had been sorted out in my brain, the captain came back on the p. a. system and announced, “Code Bravo, stand down”. Whew. No running to the muster stations, thank G0d. Back to sleep….

And then the alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. for us to get up and proceed to be vomited off the ship {disembarkation}.

Tomorrow – back to reality (sort of).

A very unusual day for us – we got to sleep in a bit and yet we had an excursion.

One of the challenges of a late breakfast on the ship is that breakfast is technically over at 11:00 a.m. So in theory, it’s still breakfast at 10:30. But the kitchen crew has already started to prep for lunch. We’re shuffled to the side of the restaurant where literally we’ve never sat before and now the food options are much more limited.

Will there be bananas?

No omelets?!?

And I don’t see any biscuits.

You can see how tough the cruising life is.

But we still had plenty of time. Our tour didn’t meet until noon. The instructions were confusing – we were to meet outside the cruise ship terminal. Where outside the terminal? No clue.

It didn’t get any better once we were wandering outside on the cruise ship terminal. Nobody knew what was going on – the buses aren’t here yet (but there’s no place to wait), oh but there’s the bus, no that’s not the right one, oh look there’s the right one and everybody is already boarding. Somehow they got the word.

Our tour guide is Marie (Maria?). As the bus leaves the terminal, she explains that we are actually in the collective township of Getxo (pronounced Get-cho). “Getxo” is a Basque word, because we are in the Basque Country, yet another part of Spain that doesn’t want to be a part of Spain (up there with Catalonia, where Barcelona is located), but they are kind of stuck at the moment. Periodically the Basque separatists generate violence, but good news, they don’t seem to be doing that at the moment.

Our first stop is at the Guggenheim Museum – we’re not going in, we’re just going to look at it:

Bilbao used to be a shipbuilding center. The shape of the building reflects that in the building’s fantastical ship-like shapes.

Greeting visitors is a huge puppy made of flowers. The flowers are swapped out as the seasons change:

We had about 20 minutes to wander around to look at the building or maybe go into the museum shop. As usual for these kinds of very short stops, I spent most of it locating the museum bathroom and battling the crowds around the elevator (because of course the bathrooms are on the museum’s lowest level). I ended up walking up a huge flight of stairs, because the elevator was so slow, people got on it to ride down in order to ride up to the upper floors; therefore, when the elevator arrived on the lower level, it was always full. Two attempts at this was enough, and I just trudged up the stairs.

We’ve all brought all our rain gear today in hopes that doing so will provide insurance against actual rain. It worked until I came out of the museum after the bathroom hunt. It poured intensely until, of course, I climbed onto the bus, and then it stopped.

Now we were on our way to Bilbao’s old quarter. The bus stopped in front of one of two churches we were going to see today (from the outside).

I have long since reached the point in this adventure that all the churches run together in a blur; unless there’s something particularly special about a particular church, the details evaporate. Such is with this church – is this the one dedicated to St. James (Santiago)? Not sure:

Then we walked to a huge square, where the restaurant was located for the “tapas” part of the tour. Unfortunately, the tapas were not very good, but it was a good opportunity to sit for a while.

After the tapas, we walked through the old quarter, and found the second church (maybe this one is the one dedicated to Santiago?).

Santiago keeps coming up as he is the focus of the Camino de Santiago – or the Way of St James, a pilgrimage route to a shrine in northwestern Spain. Bilbao is on the Camino – there are Camino markers in the street:

We had enough time to buy a treat – we got a huge chocolate horseshoe-shaped sandwich cookie. Yum!

The Basque Country has its own language, unrelated to any other European language. All the street signs are in both Spanish and Basque:

And then we were back on the bus and back to the cruise ship. Though not a particularly exciting port, the tour was relaxed and at a nice slow pace.

Normally I stop here, but the evening had a few notable moments:

• There was an amazingly stunning performance of Broadway tunes by the ship’s best singers.
• There may or may not have been some Sheldons involved in disrupting the ship’s piano player’s rendition of “Sweet Caroline” by shouting “WHOA WHOA WHOA!” And “SO GOOD SO GOOD SO GOOD!”. Multiple times. The piano player, being a good sport, played along with us. Maybe. We admit nothing.
• There may or may not have been some Sheldons (the ones of the same mother), playing “Elevator Bingo” at some ungodly hour of the morning:

Tomorrow is a sea day, and we actually have a couple of tasks – meet with UK immigration officials, so they’ll let us into England on Friday, and pack up.

Thursday – Paris!

Friday – England! Tally ho!

So. Let’s see. What did we do on our day off.

Hmmmm….

Well, some of us did internet related stuff.

I know I read some of my book (that I’m not really liking much)….

Some of us actually exercised. Note: only SOME. Others made plans to walk around. Planning is good…..

Ummmm…..

Then we ate.

………

Sat around over here….

…..

Ate again.

…………

Moved to a different spot to sit around over there….

…….

Dinner time!

The evening entertainment was super boring, and I almost fell asleep. It’s exhausting doing nothing.

Tomorrow – Bilbao (forecast is rain/cloudy – this time, we’re bringing all the rain gear, just in case)

The port of Lisbon is located right near the old part of Lisbon. The gangway was already backed up with people waiting to get off to walk into the city. Our arrival time was a relatively late one – 10:00 a.m., and we had “gained” an hour over night. An extra hour or two of sleep felt great.

Not knowing a thing about Portugal or Lisbon when we booked the excursion, we picked one that had a palace in it.

Right from the start I felt that our tour guide, Sylvia, was making assumptions of our knowledge of Lisbon, its surroundings, and Portugal in general. Something about the way she talked about how we were getting on the highway to get to the Queluz Palace made it sound like we already knew what it was and that it was on the far outskirts of the city. Nope, not, me. No clue.

Anyway, the Queluz Palace was built in the 18th century to be the residence of the Portuguese monarchy. The Palace is only partially restored ($$ issues), but to me it had a strong resemblance to Versailles outside Paris, France.

Here are a couple of photos of the interior

After the tour of the interior, Sylvia (tour guide) took us outside to see a canal:

Now, we were all using the “whisper” devices – little radio sets with ear buds, so we could hear the tour guide from quite a distance. I stuck fairly closely to Sylvia, to minimize the chance of the usual guide-takes-off-and-I’m-left-behind scenario. But the group was rather widely dispersed – people were roaming everywhere. Sylvia made no effort to determine if the whole group was with her or not.

Sylvia kept walking and talking, walking and talking, as we (those close enough to her to see where she was going) followed the dirt path that headed back towards the palace at a back entrance.

She pointed in a vague direction and told us to go through the only open door and keep going – we would find the souvenir shop and the bathrooms. We had a 10 minute break and we’d meet at the bus.

Little did Sylvia know that she had lost a bunch of people back at the canal. She had never checked to see if the entire group had heard her instructions.

When some of us were on the bus, Sylvia came on board and said, “I think most of us are here, yes?”, and I said, “No – at the very least, I’m missing four people!”. Then she finally looked at who was on the bus and all the empty seats. “Oh, it’s not worth it to count people yet,” she said, and she hopped off the bus heading back towards the palace.

A few minutes later, the Lost Eight found their way to the bus totally on their own, completely frustrated that they had been left behind.

The next stop was up the coast a little bit, the town of Sintra. There was no tour – we were given instructions on how to find the bus in 45 minutes. There was a palace there if you wanted to buy your own ticket and walk through.

We did our best to stimulate the local economy by having some gelato and buying items from the ceramics store.

Next and last stop was Cascais, even further up the coast. Once again – very pretty, with palm tree lined streets and a beach on the bay. And that was about it. 45 minutes later we were back on the bus to head back to Lisbon.

This is the wharf at Cascais:

Sylvia mentioned that during WWII, many Jews escaping Europe stopped in Cascais until their visas to other countries were ready.

The bus took a different route on the way back to show the beautiful shoreline, California-Pacific-Coast-like.

We asked Sylvia if she could drop us off in downtown Lisbon, so we could find some late lunch. Which she did, with a recommendation for a restaurant as well.

Though an enjoyable day, at least I thought there was something kinda lacking in this particular tour.

Tomorrow – Day At Sea!