June 18, 2015- Cadiz, Spain

Another Terrible Room Service Breakfast, Meeting with Nuria about Deficiencies on Ship, Explore Cadiz, Spain on foot, an Afternoon at the Beach in Cadiz, Dinner in Our Room

Last night we had to set our clocks two hours ahead for today. Because of this, and because we had no excursion booked for today, we decided to try and get as much sleep in as possible, although it was still well less than 8 hours.

We ordered in breakfast today and once again room service was up to some of their bizarre practices. This included placing plastic wrap over top of the hot water pots for tea. This has happened before, much to our chagrin, and as plastic wrap is a very poor material for insulation it leaves the water at a much less desirable temperature for steeping tea. It’s bad enough that the quality of the tea is not up to our usual standard, but making it worse by furnishing us with lukewarm tea water is simply unacceptable. Why do these teapots not have lids? Even we have a lid on our teapot and we don't claim to be promoting "haute cuisine" like Costa.

When April opened her box of Rice Krispies there was a hole in the top of the package. Bill gave the Rice Krispies a try and determined that they were indeed stale and unsuitable for human consumption, although rodents may have enjoyed gnawing at them to hone down their front incisors.
After reporting these deficiencies to Nuria, our “English speaking hostess,” on the ship along with the dark-hair-longer-than-Bill’s-but-shorter-than-April’s that we found nestled in a bath towel in our room, and 2/3 of our fluorescent strip of lights being burnt out in our cabin (2nd time a light has been faulty), we ventured out into Cadiz. Nuria gave us a very helpful overview of Cadiz, including the main sites, nearby beach, and local food specialties.

The old town of Cadiz (near to Seville) is in sharp contrast to our ports of call in Morocco. It is quaint, quiet, and peaceful. We wandered the narrow cobble stone streets and eventually made our way to a café where we ordered tuna steaks and shrimp tortillas, both of which are Cadiz specialties. April did a magnificent job of ordering in Spanish and comprehending the waiter while Bill had a deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face.

After lunch (and stopping for gelato on the main drag) we found our way to Playa de la Caleta, the main beach of Cadiz that is nestled between the Castello di San Sebastian and the Castello di Santa Catalina (forts). Apparently a James Bond film where Halle Berry steps out of the ocean was filmed here. It was a glorious day for the beach and exactly what we had hoped and planned for the day: a morning walk and a beach day under the southern Spanish sun without a cloud in the sky.

On our walk back to the ship, we stopped to get some agua con gas, which was much more carbonated than the Italian water back aboard, as well as procuring two mind-blowing white chocolate Magnum ice cream bars. Once again, we wondered why when European brands bring a product to Canada, they dilute the recipe. The quality of the chocolate and the ice cream is so much better in Europe!

As we walked back to the ship, we observed the architecture of the main church, which was a fascinating amalgam of Christian and Moorish architecture with domes and spires. From its front entrance it looked like a traditional Catholic church, but from the side and back it looked more like it belonged in perhaps Istanbul.

We boarded the ship and decided that we should try and catch up on our blog posts, photo organization, and most importantly, get a longer night’s sleep, so we ordered room service, which consisted of our usual chicken Caesar salad, tuna sandwich, roast beef sandwich, orange juice, tea, milk, and fruit salad as a result of the severely limited and boring room service menu.

The ship departed at 6pm for Lisbon.

In the evening April was starting to feel unwell.

8.2 km walked today.

Cadiz was a lovely change of pace. It was quiet and safe and we felt very relaxed while we searched for lunch and the beach to swim at.

We enjoyed this graffiti rendering of a cat.

Shrimp tortillas and a roasted pepper and the coldest, most refreshing Spanish Coca Cola for lunch.

 

Pigeons abound in Europe and choose wherever they want to sit.

The famous James Bond beach in Cadiz on the left.

The fort in Cadiz.

The main church in Cadiz looks Orthodox and like it belongs in Istanbul from the back and side.

From the front this church looked very Catholic.

June 14, 2015 –At Sea on our way to Tangier

"At Sea Day," Gym Time, Buffet Experience, Time in the Sun, Room Problems, Excursion Problems. First Formal Night

Time went back one hour early this morning.

Today we had breakfast delivered to us in our room so that we could get dressed and head up to the gym to get some exercise in, including a warm up of stair climbing from our cabin on deck two the gym on deck 11. It felt good to do some weight work and stretching.

We had lunch at the buffet and we observed the group dynamics of the passengers and commented on the generalized lack of organization. Lack of organization is a nice way of describing chaos.

We then went to lie in the sun for an hour. It was interesting to see how people “reserved” their deck chairs, even though passengers are told not to do this. This resulted in us having to having to head up to the second highest deck where it was very windy and cold. After lying in the sun we decided to warm up (as a result of the wind) by heading to the sauna for half an hour. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful other than having the disappointment of there being no "fine tea" or any tea at all in the buffet area in the late afternoon as advertised in the newsletter. We returned to our cabin to shower off. Our drain clogged and flooded our entire little bathroom. We used our provided beach towels and other towels to try to control the mass of water.

In the evening, we donned suit and gown and headed for dinner for the “formal” night. Right before dinner Bill called down to the excursion office to find out where and when we were to meet for our Tangier excursion in the morning. The answer we heard back shocked us. We would not be leaving until 2:00 in the afternoon when we booked an excursion for first thing in the morning.

The reason why we booked the morning excursion was because we wanted to orient ourselves with the city to know the safe areas as we knew Morocco could be more dangerous than our European ports of call. However, without even the courtesy of notice, our excursion was changed. As the excursion office was closing for the night and we had to get to dinner, we had to hang up and not belabour the point any more.

The food was better than the night before but still not up to our expectations. Many people, but not all chose to dress up, although there was a prodigious number of leathery olive skinned “Over-the-Hill Barbies” in tight/ill-fitting cocktail dresses. We had our first European pistachio ice cream, which was the highlight of dinner. We chose not to eat as many courses at dinner tonight because we wanted to get to bed earlier because we are passing through the Strait of Gibraltar at 6:00 a.m.

When we arrived back at our room, we had the daily newspaper delivered to us with the departure times for the next day’s excursions. We saw that there was an excursion in the morning into Tangier, albeit, a little different from the one we booked. We went up to guest services to tell them that we might have found a solution to our issue: put us on the other tour. Guest services told us that they had no insight in to the availability of tours but told us the time that the excursion office would open in the morning.

Although we’re very excited to scratch another continent to visit off our checklist we are a little apprehensive about venturing into the city alone without a tour in the morning. We were also given no room service breakfast ordering card tonight. Our beach towels were taken away from our flooded bathroom and not replaced.

April contemplates the Mediterranean

Look at us all fancy at Formal Night #1

Bill looks ready to devour this grilled fish

This grilled fish was beautifully presented

The ice cream was the highlight of the meal. Proper pistachio ice cream again . . .  finally!

June 12: à Bientôt Paris, Bonjour Marseille!

Check out of Le Signature Saint-Germain-Des-Pres, TGV to Marseille, Check into Alex Hotel, Explore Marseille my foot and petit train, a true European rainstorm

This morning we were up early to pack. We had a couple of Pink Lady apples and a pain au chocolate obtained the evening before, then we checked out of the lovely Le Signature Saint-Germain-Des-Pres. 


The hotel staff had called us a cab and he took us to Gare de Lyon train station. At the station we had yogurt, a croissant, and tea. The croissant, fresh and soft was the best so far on this trip. We looked for the platform for our train but only the hall was posted so far, so we paid to use the washroom, an annoying thing about France, and then found some cold drinks for the trip. I tried to find apples but was only successful at finding cut up apples in bags, good enough. 

Once the power that be posted our platform number, there was a mass movement of people towards the train. We found our car, S3, and the worker checked our printer printed train tickets. We found out seats after putting our luggage in the racks. The seats were striped and so big and comfortable. We were in comfort class because there was little difference in price with economy, but on the return we're in economy so we'll have to compare. 

We left right on time, 9:37 AM. The train ride was one of the nicest trips I’ve ever had. We arrived five minutes late in Marseille, having had some sandwiches on the train. We took a picture of the spectacular view and wandered down the steps of the train station. It was very warm and humid. We found the Alex hotel right across the street and checked in. 

After carrying our bags up a few flights of stairs we organized ourselves, obtained a map from the front desk, and wandered down towards the old harbour. We found a beautiful old church, Eglise Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, bought some lemon meringue, and wandered more, finally figuring out where we were. 

We tried to have a cool sparkling water in McDonalds to take advantage of their free Wi-Fi and the bathrooms but we were harassed continually for food and money by people, so we left. We strolled through the old harbour and found more cool drinks and Le Petit Train, a diesel powered train on wheels that drives in little connected cars through the streets of Marseille and up to the church that overlooks all of Marseille. The tour was breathtaking and we enjoyed the view from the top at Notre Dame de la Garde very much.

We were returned to the old harbour where we went in search of an “early” dinner as it was only 6:00 p.m.. We wanted to try a recommended Moroccan place, but it did not open for another hour and we were really hungry, so we went to a cafe down the street that was open and had a “menu” special of moules et frites (mussels and French fries) with dessert. We both had this. It was very good as was the fresh baguette that appeared on our table. The desserts were interesting. One we had never heard of and it was like a cake with creamy custard in layers. The other was tiramisu.

As we had been searching for dinner there had been some ominous raindrops and the sky had been darkening all day. At dinner, the skies opened and it started to pour. Of course we had no umbrella and were dressed in summery clothing. After dinner, we left the restaurant and tried to skip from covered place to covered place until it became obvious that we would never reach our hotel if we continued like that, so we just entered the deluge and became completely drenched.

 The lightning and thunder started and the downpour reached monsoon like conditions. We were blinded by rain and drenched through every article of clothing. We made it back to the hotel where the front desk lady recommended that we take a shower. Bill said that we already had to which we all had a good laugh. 

We did have a hot shower and then tried to dry our shoes and clothes a bit, but really it was if we had just gone swimming for hours in our outfits. And, I found out that pink silk top from Value Village is not colour fast and now I have an ombre sweater, underwear, and Capri pants. Oh well . . . 

Tomorrow we board our cruise to Morocco and beyond and we will not have Wi-Fi on the ship and are unsure of if we will encounter it on our shore days. So you may not hear from for a week and a half. But check back to see if we manage to post anything. When we do have Wi-Fi we will be putting up new posts with lots of pictures.

Bill in front of the war memorial in Marseille and the Eglise St-Vincent-de-Paul (Les Reformes)

An arch that is right on the water, in which you can see Chateau d'Iff right through it

Palm trees....it's definitely the Mediterranean.

A view from Basilica Notre Dame de la Garde atop Marseille. Chateau d'Iff is in the background on the little island for all those Montecristo fans.

April aboard the petit-train

Inside Notre Dame de la Garde

Bill taking the above picture

Look up... look way up.

Notre Dame de la Garde

Fun with stone carvings

Great hand work

Notre Dame de la Garde

Dinner...Moules et frites parceque quand on est en France, on doit manger comme les francaise.

Il pleut...chat et chiens...and this was before it got heavy!

The result...soaked right through. The evening's activity...washing and using the blow dryer to dry off as much as we can!