Bordeaux

First, about Bordeaux…

This was the view from the ship.



I went for a bit of a wander (perhaps a Kiwi phrase) with a few fellow officers. We walked up the streets of Bordeaux and enjoyed the shear ambiance of narrow cobbled streets, lined by three or four story high stone buildings with shuttered windows and flower boxes, the occasional bicyclist with fresh produce in a front mounted basket wizzing by.

Simply turning a corner would yield a spectacular site.



This, by the way, is comparably a very wide street. The rails are for the trams which not only look like they should be in Disneyland (see the view from the ship) but make the exact same noise as the Disneyland train.

The people were very nice and quite willing to speak with us in English, contrary to everything I have heard of the French.

The Canadian, Kiwi, German and I ate in a lovely café for dinner where I found myself in a very bizarre conversation I never thought in a million years I would have. As officers, we began discussing and comparing out steward(esse)s.

I have a stewardess. My second so far. She is wonderful and cheerful and bends over backwards to do anything I need. She has been working on ships since 1998 and even met her husband, of three years, on board. They both now work on my ship.

Ironically, we, my fellow officers and I, all admitted to cleaning before our stewards come lest they talk to other stewards and word gets out we are messy. (God forbid.)

Anyway, back to Bordeaux. The nice thing about our ship is, when you need to get stumbling home, it is easy to find.

I put this in its own link, for better viewing. Click here.


You just turn down a street and, there it is. The ship! (The ship is dead center in that picture.)

The next morning I picked up on a few more things.

The city smells like chocolate croissants, which is entirely accurate, cause there were chocolate croissants everywhere. There is nothing so charming as walking down an ridiculously narrow lane (or half lane) smelling baked pastries, in France.

In America, the kids experiment and dye their hair unnatural colors. In France, it is 50 year old women. Bright punk rock pink seemed most popular, followed by neon blue. Usually this flare was done in streaks. I suppose if you are going to cover up the gray you might as well do it with pizzazz.

French people are wafer thin in general. My only theory is you must get sick of smelling chocolate croissants all the time.

And then there was the guy riding his bike with an according on his back.



I don’t know why I took this picture, after all bike riding accordion players are so common where I am from.

I have to be up in three hours…

More later.

Lisbon and Le Verdon

Thank you everyone for the comments on the red dot I call home.

Well, it is a good thing tomorrow is a sea day because I have so much to write!

(Sea day: a day spent entirely at sea with no ports of call.)

I went to Lisbon, June 1. Lisbon has Jacarandas! They are huge, old, and vibrantly violet (or violent, as my initial typo indicated). Santa Barbara has lovely jacarandas. They are comparably tiny to the old ones lining Lisbon’s streets.

Lisbon has an affair with tile work and mosaics. Building façades are covered with elaborate tile work, or washed in brilliant pastels. The sidewalks are mosaics.

This is a picture of just some random side walk. All the sidewalks were like this though.



I was not very impressed with Lisbon. It was dirty. There was graffiti everywhere. It seemed like there were lots of improvement projects forgotten half way through. (stupid)

Unless you are crazy into mosaic sidewalks, enormous jesus statues over bays, or majestic jacarandas, you can probably pass it.

I bought a plant for my cabin though, which made it worth the stop.

(I feel so guilty, like I am sentencing it to tourism death.)

Le Verdon, France: I did not have the opportunity to go into Le Verdon. I did however get off the ship for an hour and walk around the dock.

Why am I telling you this?

I walked to the end of the cargo lot and found, to my pleasure and delight the most secluded stretch of beach I had seen in a long time. My foot prints broke the smooth canvas of sand, millions of shells, rain pockets and crabs. I was the only set of foot prints.

It made me realize how vast my love is for a long walk on an empty beach. I collected shells; they are in the plant saucer, I got from the florist on board, around the base of my new plant.

I am most grateful for the solitary walk through a space so pure as a meadow to the right and the sea to the left. (cool)

Next…

BORDEAUX!

I LOVE BORDEAUX!!!!

Here is a picture… so you have something to return for….



I will write about Bordeaux tomorrow....

In-Port Manning

Well, I did not get off in Cadiz. I went to leave the ship and they wouldn’t let me off. I had In-Port-Manning.

In-Port-Manning: An internationally mandated regulation requiring ships to have enough men on board to abandon ship in port.

There are probably more than twelve words in the regulation, but that is what it boils down to.

So I had In-Port Manning and thus was required to stay on board, so I could abandon ship, should an occasion arise. (Boat disasters are not nearly as interesting if no one is on board.)

Cadiz was wonderful from on deck. It has a huge Cathedral.

Anyway, this is my ship in Cannes. The red dot is my port hole.

On Daily Life...

Strange: The sun rose, in beautiful glory at 5:52 am on Saturday. On Sunday, the sun rose through dreary clouds at 6:39 am.

We did not change time zones, just traveled from one extreme of the time zone to the other, and changed latitudes.

It is very strange to wake up at the same time on consecutive days, one day to day light and the next to darkness, when you are not expecting it.

About ship board life:

I love ship board life. It is like college, but a little more mature. I have breakfast, lunch and dinner with friends and without ever going to the grocery store.

Everything is in walking distance or you are completely out of luck.

Bowls of prophylactics are available every where.

There is always a party somewhere.

Alcohol is everywhere.

You become notorious for some terrible off hand comment.

You get the idea.

Then there are the funky jobs on board: Sanitation Officer (this is not at all what you think it is), Clearance Officer and Laundry Master.

There is this girl aboard, who loves to drink and socialize. She found her perfect job. She is society hostess, where she is paid to drink and socialize. And she does it well.

I am exhausted, but very happy. I spend much of my day laughing. My coworkers are hysterical.

Speaking of coworkers, Andrea is here. (Andrea is the funniest kiwi alive. She makes my sides hurt. Her biggest fear in life is breaking out in chronic cats. This is the manifestation of spinsterhood.)

We are going ashore. Five feet from my window is Cadiz, Spain.

Cannes Can Shoe

I went shopping in Cannes yesterday.

Let me describe Cannes.

Shoe shop, shoe shop, lotion and potion shop, shoe shop, clothing shop, shoe shop, shoe shop, mobile phone shop, shoe shop.

I have never before in my life seen so many shoe stores.

So I went to Cannes and I went shopping. I did not see the sites. I did not see the Tibetan artifacts or the tower or any of the sites. I saw the shopping strip, the cafes and a kind of up scale flea market.

You have to understand, I live on a ship. If I need shoes, and I have three hours in Cannes…. I spend my time in Cannes shoe shopping, and picking up things that I hope are shampoo and not bleach.

Fortunately, I needed shoes… when I was in Cannes. I cannot imagine a better place to need shoes.

So Cannes is old French architecture on soft hills that lead to the Mediterranean. There is much emphasis on the out door café’s and promenades. There was a flea market/art walk on the central boulevard. All in all, it was a little more cramped than my home town of Santa Barbara with French Riviera architecture. It amazes me how much Santa Barbara is like many Mediterranean cities. It is not the rolling hills by the water and harbor, with quaint promenades, so much as the air of casual glow in the afternoon sun.






(Sorry, I did not get any really great pictures.)

Cannes is approved as a lovely place to spend a few afternoons window shopping (they siesta), working on your skin cancer or enjoying a local café.

Also available in Cannes was, by far my favorite, vending machines. I wonder if they have them in Amsterdam. On nearly every block in Cannes, was a condom vending machine. (I don’t believe they are having an unusual amount of sex. I think they’re just poor planners.) I never saw a soda vending machine, a cigarette vending machine, a candy vending machine. Just condoms… condoms, condoms.

Makes me think...

Maybe shoes are an aphrodisiac.




I am doing great.

Working hard.

Eating well.

Playing well with others.

Today was a day at sea, where I recouped from a late night.

Tomorrow is Gibraltar.

Oh, a weird thing worth mentioning… it is a very strange existence where you watch the sun rise through the only window in your room in the morning and set through that same window that evening.