Where We Wander Through Two Incredibly Old Buildings. There Seem To Be A Lot of Those Around Here.

An early alarm and quick breakfast at the buffet – we have a FULL day today.

First up was an hour drive to Leeds Castle. Truly ancient, the first its first iteration was built soon after the Norman invasion.

For a bit more detailed history, click on this link: https://leeds-castle.com/her-castle/history-of-the-castle/

From 1086 up until the early 1900s, it was used by seven queens (and sometimes their kings). Henry VIII made it into a fortress. It was renovated and expanded many times through the years. It seriously looks like something out of Downton Abbey.

Eventually it was sold to a wealthy American woman, Lady Baillie. She made 20th century updates (internal heating! Electricity!). She was known for throwing parties with early 20th century Hollywood stars. She left the estate to a charitable foundation that maintains the castle to this day in 1930s style.

The tour of the castle interior was handed off to a castle tour guide (Charlotte).

Neither one of us thought to take photos of the interior. Some rooms were staged with mannikins meant to show how life was like. Yeah, no, it was just creepy. In a couple of rooms were giant dog sculptures? mannikins? it wasn’t clear what these things were until we saw a photo of two Great Danes – apparently Lady Baillie’s favorite dogs.

And there were birds decorating every wall in almost every room. Apparently she loved birds.

Here are a couple of views of the castle grounds:

Also on the grounds was a dog collar museum that Andy went to visit. A tad peculiar.

Next we were back on the bus on our way to Canterbury.

The walk from the bus to the center of town was a bit rushed – fortunately it was flat (nothing resembling a hill anywhere), so I was able to do it, albeit alllll the way in the back of the group.

We had lunch in a conference center on the cathedral grounds. After we picked our seats, I went off to the bathroom; I came back to find a plate at my seat. Andy told me he got us the “vegetarian option” – as in, vegetarian sausages. It took me a few minutes to put 2+2 together as to what it was we were eating: it’s called “Bangers and Mash” (sausages and mashed potatoes). Definitely not photo-worthy. The vegan sausages were a bit chewy. Yay, English food!

After lunch, we walked over to the cathedral, where yet another different tour guide spoke to us for about 10 minutes (max) about the cathedral’s 1400 year history. Similar to Leeds Castle, the first version of the cathedral was built right after the Norman conquest, somewhere around 1100 CE.

One of the more famous incidents in its history was the murder of Thomas Becket, the one time friend and confidant to King Henry II. They had a falling out, Becket escaped to France for a bit, came back, then pissed of the King again. The story is: the King grumbled about Becket being a bit of a nuisance, which two knights took to mean they were now ordered to kill Becket. Which they did, inside the cathedral. Ooops. That’s not what I meant! said King Henry II. Sooorry, too late….

The spot where Becket was murdered is called “The Martyrdom”. He was canonized in 1173 CE.

There are many stained glass windows. However, during the reign of Henry VIII, after he split with the Catholic church, he plundered the monasteries and ordered Catholic imagery to be taken down; not all the stained glass windows were replaced over the years.

The cathedral is undergoing renovations, so all the permanent seats were removed from the interior, and part of the exterior is covered in scaffolding.

We had some free time in the town before we needed to head back to the bus. None of the shops interested us.

Somehow the walk back to the bus wasn’t nearly as exhausting or as long as the way into the town. Maybe because there were three buses worth of Viking travelers all walking back at once, which slowed us down a crawl, or maybe we went back a different way? In any case, the walk seemed much, much easier.

We arrived back at the cruise terminal right at the dot of 5:00 p.m. We had time to rest up and refresh before heading to the little Shabbat celebration in what we refer to as the “Hanukkah room” (after celebrating Hanukkah in the same room on the Viking Orion back in December/January). I think we maxed out at 10 people, maybe? People seemed to be in a bit of a hurry, so unfortunately we didn’t stay long.

We had our reservation at the Italian restaurant, Manfredi’s. In order to get a reservation for earlier than 9:00, we reserved a “shared” table. Which turned out great. We met two other couples (two friends traveling together and a married couple), and had The Best Conversation. We were pretty much given a strong hint it was time to go.

We’ve had many excellent conversations this trip!

Tomorrow: A day at sea to catch up with ourselves, and then on Sunday: the Isle of Man

Where We Do A LOT of Walking And Manage To Not Get Caught In The Tower

When we talked to Guest Services on Wednesday afternoon, we discovered that our Tower of London tour for Thursday was rescheduled from 2:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. This meant we could no longer do our “Word of Shakespeare” excursion scheduled for the morning. The silver lining: we had a little time in the morning instead another crack-o-dawn breakfast.

But we did need to have an early-ish lunch to grab the tender by 12:20 to make sure we were at the pier by the official meeting time (12:50). This was not a problem – the tender ride was around the “corner”, no more than 5 minutes.

The Tower tour was one of those that I was a little concerned about. My memories of the last time I was there was eleventy billion steps (, most of them in a tight spiral staircase. I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle the situation – where I was going to stop and wait for the group to come back and get me.

Our tour guide was Dominic from the Thames cruise the night before, which was great, because he was great.

On the way to the Tower, we drove across the Tower Bridge:

The Tower itself is a complex of assorted buildings, all of them hundreds of years old.

The had been a zoo at some point in the Tower’s history. Scattered around the grounds were animal sculptures.

Because the queue for the Crown Jewels was super short and moving quickly, we did the Crown Jewels first. Of course, no photos are allowed in the exhibit.

Take my word for it, the exhibit was spectacular. We bought a book with photos. Take a look at this link for more info:

https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/the-crown-jewels/#gs.4w7uri

After the Crown Jewels, Dominic brought us to Anne Boleyn’s execution spot and told us the gruesome story of her execution.

And then we had free time to walk around the site and do whatever we wanted – walk up the steps of the Tower, or not. Therefore, the steps were a non-issue. Andy went up the Tower.

At the assigned meeting time, we walked back to the bus. We had a nice view of the Tower Bridge.

Traffic on the way back to the ship was horrific. We arrived about 15 minutes after the official “all aboard” time. We knew the ship wouldn’t leave without us, but it was a bit of a scurry onto the tender and then back onto the ship. The “scenic sailing” away from London was delayed by about 30 minutes or so.

We stayed in our stateroom to watch the sail-away from our veranda.

We saw the London “barriers” – the system to control the river and prevent flooding the city.

Then dinner, and we called it A Day.

Tomorrow: Leeds Castle and Canterbury Cathedral

Where We Board The Ship And Everything Goes Alarming Smoothly

We needed to have our bags ready to go by 7:00 a.m., so we got up early. Probably a little too early, because we were all ready by 6:30 a.m. Since we were no longer dealing with airline weight limits, we could cram whatever we needed to into the suitcases in any which way.

We went down to have breakfast, and then hung out in the lobby until it was our time, which was several hours. We ended up having a marvelous conversation with Angelika and Vinny. Angelika was originally from (West) Berlin and Vinny is a former NYPD cop, with an accent that sounded like “home”. They in (West) Berlin when Vinny (Air Force) was stationed there after WWII. Their stories were absolutely marvelous and made the time fly by.

The boarding process back in December 2022 for the Viking Orion was just horrific – long lines, no place to sit, much confusion, and even after going through the effort of completing the “comfort check-in” online ahead of time, the check-in process still took about 10 minutes. Another bad omen – we should have seen it coming!

This time, it was amazingly smooth. We got on the bus on time. We arrived at the dock on time. There was a tent set up outside the terminal with a table full of people waiting for us. Check in took no more than 2 minutes – they took our passports (we get them back in Dublin), gave us our key cards, and off we went! Greenwich is a tender port – i.e., we needed to take a ferry to the ship. One was waiting for us after check-in – each one holds at least 100 people.

A few minutes ride on the tender, followed by a quick walk through the terminal and security, and presto! we were on the ship. Super easy!

After lunch, we tackled Guest Services. I had a list of questions (e.g. can I get a “reserved” seat on the buses towards the front of the bus to make it easier for me to get on and off?), and changes we wanted to make to our reservations. Last time, we encountered a rather unhelpful (let’s say, antagonistic) Guest Services person; we ended up escalating our questions to the chief of excursions – and still got no help. Good news/bad news: last time it turned out it didn’t matter, because we were stuck at sea for 10 days and all excursions were canceled.

This time, Guest Services came up with helpful solutions to all our questions, and we were able to switch around a few of our excursions to better time slots. Amazing! Guest Services did their job!

We had the Thames Cruise that evening, so we ate dinner at 6:00 p.m. to be back at the tender port on time. The boat for the cruise was an “Uber boat” hired by the ship docked right at the tender port.

Our Viking guide, Dominic, did a great job describing the sites up and down the Thames.

Here are some photos from the cruise – you’ll notice that some of them are fuzzy. The reflection from the glass caused the focus to bounce back to the glass instead of what we were seeing in the distance.

Another long day!

Tomorrow: Leeds Castle and the Tower of London

It’s Tuesday! Yes, definitely, it’s Tuesday. The jet lag fog is starting to lift, though it’s still there and reminds me that it’s still there every time I can’t remember to turn RIGHT out our hotel room door and not LEFT.

After breakfast, it was finally time to figure out what we were doing for the day. We went to the Viking desk and got the attention of Ed, one of the Viking reps/local guides. He was chock full of good ideas. And he gave us a map! and actual paper map. Even in these days of almost total dependence on Google maps, a paper map still brings joy.

Of the selection of options he flung at us, we decided to go to the “V&A” (the Victoria and Albert Museum). It sounded interesting and manageable in one day.

We had a more general conversation about how to hail a black cab (as opposed to Uber) – he spent quite a bit of time trying to find the nearest “taxi rank” (a/k/a taxi stand). Amazingly enough, no one has written an app for that! What an opportunity! The taxi/uber question would be more of an issue after the show in the evening, so we were hoping to have an easy way to hail a cab after 10:00 p.m. Our (bad) uber experience in 2019 really had us leery of trying it again, even though our uber experience coming back from Buckingham Palace was fine.

Off we were to the V&A – no tickets required, free to the public, we just walked in. We talked to someone at the info desk for suggestions as to how to begin and what to see first.

Below is a selection of photos we took during the course of the day, not necessarily in the correct chronological sequence.

The ceramics and glass exhibits tended to look like somebody’s cluttered attic cabinets!

We were able to cover the entire museum in one day, including lunch. It was perfect!

The taxi situation to back to the hotel proved to be a non issue – there was a taxi rank right out front of the museum. We had a fun chat with the cab driver.

The Viking rep had recommended having dinner in the restaurant in the same building that held the theater – the Barbican (pronounced: bar-bi-kin). I made reservations for 6:00 p.m. When we arrived at the Barbican, we wandered for a bit before finding the correct restaurant on the 2nd floor. Excellent dinner! So far we’ve been doing very well food-wise.

We had tickets for “A Strange Loop”, a show that had won Best Musical on Broadway a couple of years ago. The theater turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Steps everywhere! Our seats were in the equivalent of the mezzanine or balcony. Down one short flight to the “circle” level, then down 2 more steps to our row – the front row of the circle, dead center.

There was no playbill, just a poster on the theater door listing the performers names. No QR code to scan to find out more info, so nothing about the orchestra or any other supporting personnel.

Nor was there any indication that there was no intermission. I figured this out about an hour into it. Bad news: no bathroom break! Good news: That’s ok, because there was no way I was going to be able to climb out of center row without stepping on a zillion toes.

This is a very intense show. The first 2/3 of it was excellent – though intense, it was also hilarious. At some point, the same theme kept repeating over and over, and I started wondering when it would end. Thoroughly enjoyed it, over all – very clever and original, which is something kinda rare these days on Broadway.

After the show, the bathroom issue resurfaced. Anyone who reads my blogs from year to year knows there’s always at least one bathroom issue during the course of our vacations. This time – when we asked where the bathroom was, I was directed to the nearest one that was down 3 different sets of stairs. And then, of course, back up. No one seemed to know of an accessible bathroom – not necessarily wheechair compatible, just that I could access the bathroom without flights of stairs involved.

Andy suggested we take the elevator down a flight – and behold! There was a bathroom alllll the way at the other end of the theater.

We did end up taking an uber back – the street in front of the theater was completely empty of cabs. But it worked very well – the driver chatted away about his car problems, and we were back at the hotel in 15 minutes.

Tomorrow: We board the ship.

Since I’m operating on fumes, this will be relatively short.

The traffic from Maryland to JFK was predictably hideous, but once we were at the airport, things proceeded pretty smoothly. Our flight was with Virgin Atlantic that has this bidding process to upgrade seats. This was too weird and annoying, so we were stuck with our squishy regular economy seats. The first Bad Omen was the appearance of a baby sitting immediately behind us. Our first thought: “Oh here we go. This is how our next adventure starts going downhill.”

Amazingly enough, we didn’t hear one peep from the baby all night, nor did she fuss during the landing. All in all, she had a much better night than I did (as usual, no sleep for me). So maybe this was a Good Omen?

At least this time we had no connection to catch, so when everything took forever after we disembarked the plane, we didn’t care.

The hotel managed to get us into a room before 3:00, which was great. We had lunch in the hotel’s pub while our room was set up, and then we took a 45 minute nap to take the edge off the exhaustion before heading off to our Buckingham Palace tour.

I had booked this tour because I had heard that the Viking “Royal Households” tour would be immediately filled up (which indeed it was). Booking a tour directly through the Palace website was easy enough. The website mentioned that if you need the special accessible entrance, you would need to call ahead. But the entrance was only 6 steps up, and the exit 3 steps down; I didn’t need an elevator for that. What was NOT mentioned was the 47 steps up the grand staircase. That does require a bit more help, with lifts here there and everywhere, with names to be recorded, and lanyards to wear, all very British, and super confusing.

The most annoying thing was the prohibition of all photographs inside the palace.

The palace was pretty crowded when we got there at 5:00 p.m., but as we slowly made our way through the tour with our excellent included audio guides, the crowds began to thing. The business with the elevators took extra time; by the time we were at the last two rooms we were almost the only people left, actually running out of time before the palace closed.

There was a special exhibit focused on the recent coronation of King Charles III – a display of the robes and clothes the King and Queen wore that day. It was actually quite stunning – the king’s robes and the queen’s dress were much more beautiful and almost magical in person than what appeared on TV. The king’s robes included ermine – which I finally googled to find out that the ermine is in the weasel family that has a white winter coat with a black tip to the tail. The king’s robes are made of ermine tails, apparently to signify “purity”.

After the inside tour, we exited into the garden in the back of the palace, where we could take photos.

And then there was this little guy, who did not respond to “here, puppy! here puppy!”

When we exited the palace, it was now after 7:30 p.m.- we had spent almost 2 1/2 hours on the tour. Well worth it! And we were now twice as far away from the hotel from when we started.

We Ubered back to the hotel (it worked well this time – in 2019 it did not work well at all).

We were too tired to figure out any place exciting to eat dinner, so we had something light in the hotel’s bar? cafe? Whatever it was, it worked.

Ok, I’m done.

Tomorrow: We figure out what the heck we’re doing for the day and the theater in the evening (“A Strange Loop” – won the Tony for best new musical a couple of years ago).

We’re off again! And since we’re headed to the British Isles, in honor of the new monarch, King Charles III, the title of this third Excellent Adventure in 2023, the title will be: “Excellent Adventure 2023 The Third (or III)”.

No, we haven’t left yet. As always, I’m testing out the blog interface in advance to make sure it still works.

G0d willing, a week from today on August 20 we will once more embark on a transatlantic flight, this time arriving at Heathrow Airport.

The graphic showing the itinerary is not quite correct. Viking hasn’t bothered to modify the graphic to match the updated itinerary: Much to my massive disappointment, we will not be docking in Liverpool; the Isle of Man was substituted instead. No explanation, of course.

We’ll be arriving in London on August 21 for a two-day extension. We board the ship on August 23 in Greenwich, though the ship spends the night in Greenwich giving us another day in London. We booked a post-cruise extension for Iceland – 3 days in Reykjavik with tours to the Blue Lagoon and the Golden Circle, among other things I don’t remember off the top of my head. Whether we’ll be able to actually see an active volcano remains to be seen, but I seriously doubt it.

Our French expedition in March saw disruptive strikes and protests. And, of course, let’s not forget the true debacle that was our NZ/Oz “adventure”, with 10 days of staring at open water. Let’s all hope and think happy, happy thoughts that UK edition is just a bit smoother!

Where We Were Having A Fabulous Day, Until It Wasn’t

Breakfast timing in the morning was running a little close. We didn’t have time to wait for a table in the restaurant. We went instead to the World Cafe (the buffet). It was crowded and busy, as everybody was in a hurry to be ready to go ashore as soon as the ship docked.

I found a table out on the terrace – much less crowded! And discovered we had some breakfast companions. I’m sure these gulls know when a cruise ship shows up, there is food to be had. One guy was really good at his timing; he was able to nab some bits just before the server shooed him away.

After breakfast, we decided to tag team the bus situation. We both waited in the theater per instructions, but Andy was ready to start moving the instant we got the go ahead, go straight to the bus and grab the front seat. It worked like a charm. The Viking person leading the way walked very quickly and ran down the flight of stairs to the exit. There was no way I could keep up with her, and I had to take the elevator. As predicted and expected, I was one of the last people on the bus, but I had the front seat. It didn’t look like guest relations put in the reservation. {Why am I not surprised}

It was a bit over an hour drive to get to Te Puia. The scenery was beautiful – everything was bright green against the blue sky. We drove past many kiwi orchards. I had no idea kiwis grow on vines. The kiwi orchards kinda resembled vineyards. The older orchards have super tall hedges around them to block the wind.

When we arrived at Te Puia, we were greeted by Maia, the local guide. She led us off the bus and into the restaurant where we had an excellent lunch.

After lunch, we were treated to a Māori cultural experience. Basically everybody involved in running Te Puia are all related to each other and had all grown up in the immediate area.

First, a “chief” was selected for our group – this guy, Dave, from Dublin. I think he was picked because he was the only person from his country (Ireland). He was given instructions on what to do during the welcoming ceremony. A Māori warrior would “confront” him and throw a leaf on the ground. Dave was to pick it up. And then we would follow Dave into the theater.

<Add video when we get to broadband>

Once inside the theater, we were seated, and the performance began.

Unfortunately, the wifi doesn’t have enough bandwidth to upload the videos here. I’ll do my best to update this post once we’re back on broadband.

After the performance, a new guide, Kahu, took over. First she walked us into the kiwi exhibit. Kiwis are nocturnal, so the building is dark to encourage them to be awake. There was one kiwi per enclosure. We were not allowed to take photos, unfortunately. I was surprised as to how big they were – somehow I thought they were tiny like the fruit name for them. They kinda look like hairy footballs with long beaks. The goal is to increase the number of kiwis via these kinds of breeding programs. Kiwis produce only one egg a year – the egg is 25% the female’s body size!

After leaving the kiwi house, we walked up the path to the geyser. The surfer smell gave it away. Luckily the geyser decided to put on a show while we were there.

Kahu explained that she and her family live right on the other side of the valley from the geothermal pools. Her family has been running and maintaining the park for many years. She talked about how the government tried for many years to wipe out the Māori culture. Māori culture became valuable when people (like us) started to arrive and wanted learn about it. She thanked us for coming and supporting the effort to keep Māori culture alive.

Here’s the geyser in full blast mode <geyser photo>

After returning from the geysers, we had only a short time before we had to return to the bus. Andy visited the exhibit on Māori crafts, the high end store, and the reasonable priced store, before we returned to the bus.

The bus returned us about 15 minutes past all aboard time, but we knew the ship would wait for us.

Unfortunately, there was an unpleasant surprise waiting for us when we got back.

New Zealand is zealous about keeping its natural environment clean. There’s an entire government department (ministry?) devoted to it – the office of BioSecurity.

During a routine inspection, “marine growth” (henceforth to be referred to as “cooties”) was found on the Viking Orion’s hull. It has to be cleaned the ship will be allowed in NZ waters. The only dock that has the capability to do this work is in Adelaide, Australia. This means that after our stop in Wellington, we will now spend 4 days at sea to get to Adelaide, then the work will be done in 24 hours.

A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT – we’ve lost our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit Tasmania, as well as ChristChurch. Plus, we’re not big fans of “at sea” days. Four of them in a row is going to be…..something….

I guess I’ll be able to keep up with blog posts….

With this charming news on our minds, we went to the Hanukkah celebration. I remembered to take photos of the Hanukkah decorations.

<Hanukkah stuff in room>

This one is my favorite though. It’s tiny little 3-inch thing that sits on the table at the entrance to the room. It blinks.

As is tradition, Day 1 lasts approximately forever.

We were off to a great start. Or not. Even after repeated calls to Viking who told us we needed to check into our flight via KLM, we were still confused. Delta and KLM were “partnering” on this flight, but I had made the seat reservations via KLM. So I tried checking in via KLM, and was redirected back to Delta. One more phone call to Viking and the answer had changed to: check in via Delta.

Ok fine. 

Except Delta has this whole process to upload vaccine and testing info. There was a not so subtle hint that, gee, you should have taken care of this awhile go (and without instructions to do that, how would I know?). Anyway, yada yada yada, two very frustrating hours later it was done. I have since figured out how to change my iPhone’s default photo format from .heic to .jpeg (the photo file format was one of the issues).

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

At Terminal 4, we found the Delta representatives directing traffic to the correct line to check in. They sent us to KLM! Of course. Who asked us for exactly the same vaccine info we had spent 2 agonizing hours entering into the Delta website.

Once finally in Viking’s care, things ran a bit more smoothly. For the most part. We met up with my sisters-in-law, Susie and Janet – whom we haven’t seen in almost 3 years – and Susie’s friend Tom. The gang was back together!

Ah yes, so for those of you new to my blog, there is always some adventure involving bathrooms, usually several of them during the course of the trip. I still regret not creating a travelogue of “Bathrooms in Europe” during our Baltic Sea cruise in 2012. There were so many unfamiliar flushing mechanisms during that cruise that eventually I learned to first identify the flushing mechanism in any bathroom before doing anything else to avoid….inconvenience.

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.

So, as is tradition, in the airport bathroom stall I saw this thing. I have absolutely no idea what it is and what its function is. It didn’t do anything at all.

Writing this now, I realize how really exhausted I was yesterday – it’s all a bit of a blur. We checked in – once again showing our test results. We were lead to our stateroom with a brief description of assorted items, including the daily PCR test (note – what was left out was that we were expected to provide an immediate spit sample, ooops).

We had our first lunch – let the eating begin! We were off to a good start!

After lunch, attempts were made to nap that were not particularly successful.

There was a briefing at 6:00 in the lounge, followed by a “muster drill”. The hardest part – finding the life jackets. In the event of a G0d forbid real emergency, lives would be lost due to everybody trying to fish the life jackets out from under the bed.

Where The Cruise Is Finally Back On Track – Today Is A “Normal” Day

For these last two days of the cruise, things are now officially “back on track” – operating as originally planned. It feels so odd that it’s almost time to go home, considering it feels like we just got here.

Our tour guide for the “easy” group today was Ilodie – she said we could call her “Didi”, because that’s what her little niece called her, and the nickname stuck. I liked her immediately, because she sensed exactly the right snail’s pace walk to take such that most of us kept up with her. It was a long walk from the pier to the beginnings of the old town – at least 20 minutes through a sort-of industrial section of the modern city. I already began to wonder how long it would take for us to walk that distance on the way back.

Our first real stop was the amphitheater – 1/5 the size of the colosseum in Rome, it holds about 20,000 people. It is still in use today.

We sat on the 2000 year old stone seats, while Didi explained about the games: the gladiators were trained athletes that did not fight to the death (normally, anyway), because gladiator schools invested $$$ in their training. The audience gambled on the outcomes of the contests, so it was in everybody’s best interest for the gladiators to stay alive and compete again and again. The “thumbs up/thumbs down” thing is mostly false – Didi said that it might have happened once during the 700 years of gladiator contests. The concept was made popular during the 19th century – in paintings and books, etc. – but it was not true.

The next stop was the theater – it can hold about 10,000. Stones from the theater were used to build/rebuild other building in the city, leaving it in a bit of a mess.

Moving on, our next stop was the Place de la Republic, with the Town Hall and a large church. The church facade showed Jesus with the 4 evangelists (with animal heads) over the front door.

Next stop – Van Gogh! Here’s the courtyard of the “Hotel Dieu” – the hospital where Vincent Van Gogh spent several months.

And here’s a link to the Van Gogh painting of the court yard. https://www.wikiart.org/en/vincent-van-gogh/the-courtyard-of-the-hospital-in-arles-1889

Starting on our way back to the ship, we stopped at the Van Gogh Cafe that modified its facade to resemble the painting:

And a link to the painting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_Terrace_at_Night

This was our last stop – we started the long trek back to the ship. It took us probably close to 45 minutes. I would recommend to Viking to provide a shuttle for the “E” group into the town and pick us up to bring us back to the ship. That would shave off 20 minutes in the beginning and at least a half hour at the end. The concern was getting people back to the ship in time for afternoon excursions.

The one difference between the “E” group and the regular groups was a visit to the Roman baths:

This afternoon was ours to do whatever we wanted to do – including taking a nap and writing this blog! This evening is scheduled the disembarkation instructions talk for Sunday, and a live performance of a local performance group. Hard to believe we’re talking about getting off the ship when we just got here!

Tomorrow: Avignon walking tour in the morning, and a second excursions involving aqueducts in the afternoon. I’m not sure when the blog for Day 10 will be posted – our flight on Sunday morning is at 7:00 a.m. (yikes), so we’ll probably need to have our bags outside our door by 4:00 a.m., and us on a bus not much longer after that. And a long transit day.

Where One Of Us Took A Train Ride On A Historical Train, And The Rest Of Us Wandered Around Avignon, Bought Stuff And Had Gelato

Amazingly enough, we only have 3 more days to go on our Excellent Adventure. Things are settling down after days of confusion and constant changes. Lisette promised us that Friday and Saturday’s schedules will be as originally planned.

Today, Thursday March 24, was supposed to be the Big Day for the strikers all over France. Fortunately, it turned out not to be much of a disruption for us.

Andy went off on Option 1 (see yesterday’s post) – he boarded a bus for a 2 hour drive to ride an historic steam train. Many people opted to stay on the ship and sail back to Avignon – which is what Susie, Janet, and I did.

This gave us the opportunity to be our on the bow to watch the ship go through the lock. Apologies for the glare on the photos – for some reason there’s very high, clear barriers between people on deck and the actual prow of the ship. Something about safety.

After we left the lock, the ship continued on to Avignon and docked.

After lunch, we brought the street map provided by the front desk with us, and off to the city we went. It was a very easy and simple walk – straight off the ship, cross the street, and continued straight into the old city via a pedestrian tunnel.

I don’t know how I missed taking a photo of the main square. But we’ll be back on Saturday, so I’ll get some then. Here’s some photos of side streets.

Wandering is hungry work, so we stopped to replenish our strength with gelato

Refueled, we returned to wandering and shopping. We all found stuff to buy, no surprise there. To me, the old city of Avignon had a Venice-like feel to it, only with random cars showing up at inconvenient times, forcing us off to the sides or sidewalk (if there was one). Around 4:00 we headed back to the ship to make sure we were back in plenty of time before the ship was scheduled to depart for Arles.

In the meantime, Andy was having his own adventure. He actually caught a glimpse of protesters.

Andy enjoyed the views from the train.

His excursion included a surprise stop in Tournon on the way back. Andy found his happy place there.

We were all back by 6:00. At 6:30 Lisette reviewed the schedule for the next two days – the original schedules for Friday and Saturday are in full on! We are now back on track.

After dinner, we played a music game, where we had to identify the song, the artist, the decade, and the nation of origin of the artist. Awesome game! We did really well! Though we didn’t win, we all had a blast. Tomorrow night, local artists will come on board to perform.

Tomorrow: Arles. {Side note: I knew that the actual correct pronunciation of “Van Gogh” is not “Van Go”, but it turns out the actual correction pronunciation is way worse than I thought: Van Khuckh, with both “g”s replaced with the guttural “kh”, kinda like the “het” or “chaf” in Hebrew. Yeah, let’s go back to “Van Go”}