Valencia

First time visit, would like to come back.

More organic city that Barcelona which is all straight lines, ignoring the Gaudi buildings. Valencia is made up of many styles and influences, most of them nice. Lots of history here and an initially bored looking guide who looked like he had make up who turned out quite good in the end, knew a lot of stuff, none of which I can remember.

And boy was it hot. Not the guide. 30c by lunch time, lovely. Had a walking tour of the old city, quick stop at the new city and then back on board, all over very quickly unfortunately.

Now we are on the way home, 3 days at sea, each one I guess will get progressively colder as we go. Today has been 20c in the in the shade but much warmer on our heat trap of a balcony. Chilled there most of the day having brought a few drinks back to the room.

Quickly flicked the news on before going for lunch and learned Fergie is going! Couldn’t he have waited till I got back? And Moyes as a replacement? Hmmm.

Tonight we dine in Sindhu, Atuls kitchen, let us see if he has earned those Michelin Stars…

And I leave you with some towel creations by our cabin steward:

Car anyone?

Anyone want a car? These were just lying around in Valencia.

Monaco and Barcelona

Monaco

No Monte Carlo this time, we opted for a tour of Cannes and Nice. Within five minutes of the coach setting off Michelle regretted it. They already had half the F1 stands up and the track marked out. She was gutted. Ho hum, mustn’t whinge.

The drive to Cannes was quite nice, good panoramic views of Nice and we drove through the rear of Cannes to the harbour. Cannes was nice, not sure why it is so special for the film people. We ate lunch in front of the harbour utilising the free Wi-Fi…..at McDonalds…

Jolly nice it was as well! Don’t you judge me!!!

A short ride down the coast we entered Nice which was nice. Ho ho ho….

We explored the market, the old town, some big hill thing with a waterfall and then returned to the coach. Well kind of, the coach couldn’t pick us up from the drop off point, something the tour guide didn’t know about, yeah, right. So we had a 5 min walk down the coast to the pickup point. No biggy for us but for the….elderly people….

May as well get this over with. They are annoying, very. So slow at everything. Still getting lost on the ship, still no idea how the tea/coffee stations work. A lot of them oblivious to anyone around them. Still, none of them have pissed themselves near us. Yet.

Barcelona

Rome without the (made up) religious stuff. Mostly smells of exhaust fumes and cigarettes.

Did the open top bus tour which took too long so jumped off half way through to walk back. The reason it took so long is that there is a set of traffic lights every 100 feet. And they all like to be on red.  Barcelona is really a place that needs a solid weekend to explore everywhere.

No lucky lucky men really, apart from ones selling in your mouth whistle things on La Ramblas. All of them selling the same thing, if I didn’t want it the first time I don’t want it the 20^th!! I spot a pattern here…

And why is La Ramblas so famous? Because Barcelona say so? It’s just a long street with some shops and restaurant’s on. There are other better shopping areas in Barca.

I have now switched from Crabbies to Leffe, it’s stronger so works faster!

Olly Smith is now on board, yes the wacky wine guy, he was talking to various tables in the Glass House wine bar, we feared he might talk to us, I didn’t want to tell him the food we had there was just ok and I’m not really a wine guy and oh, you’re a bit mental on the TV. However, these tables were part of ‘Cruise Club’. These are people that have been on a lot of cruises. By a lot I mean like 70+.

So they get invites to things like this, and free drinks vouchers. A woman told us so. But you all know the first rule of Cruise Club…

Monaco baby!

Nice and Cannes today.

Too much food....

Corsica /Ajaccio

A minor port of call for the Needhams. We mooched around for a couple of hours taking a few pictures. Ajaccio is nice but there isn’t much to see really. Bonapart was born here, his house was an old building, like all the other old buildings.

Noticed more people taking photos with tablets here. What is that about? Especially when you have a camera in your hand.  Freaks.

Rome

What to say about Rome. Again J

Religious? Figures. Basketcases.

Bustling? Uhuh.

Chaotic? Definitely.

A later start this time around, a nice easy 8:45 on the coach and 90 minutes to Rome from Civitavecchia. Traffic as ever was horrendous in Rome. The traffic in Kenya could be bad with poor/insane drivers. Rome takes this and adds 50 times the vehicles. Utter chaos, how anyone actually lives in Rome is beyond me.

Once off the coach we proceeded to our meeting point next to St Peters as we were…….doing Rome on our own. Yipes! We hopped on the open top bus to the Coliseum and made our way back on foot stopping off at the usual places, Forum, Trevvi fountain , Pantheon etc and Pizza Novana where we had a spot of lunch. 12 euros for a pizza, no worries….7 euros for Carlsberg. WTF??? 40cl of Carlsberg 7 euros!! Wowsers. Still, not as bad as the bottle of coke we paid 4 euros for later on.

One thing I noticed about Rome this time doing it on our own was the commercialisation of the whole thing. You know it’s there but the extent became apparent without the distraction of a tour guide. Queues into everywhere, market stalls everywhere and lucky lucky men. You know the sort, sell anything. They really were EVERYWHERE. Having the same hats thrust in my face got boring the 50^th time.  There were a few last time we came but this time was beyond a joke. Crossing a bridge over the river opposite Castle Sant’Angelo you had nowhere for photos as all the pathways were taken up by them. It’s a plague that Rome needs to deal with.

People. Lots of them, never seen it so busy. Being a Saturday didn’t help but the number of people was mind boggling, think Old Trafford sized crowds leaving the ground, a sea of people. Most of the time our walking was a slow amble at snail’s pace, before stopping at a road crossing waiting for the lights to change to halt the relentless flow of traffic.

As I said, how anyone lives here is beyond me. Having had a whine as I do, we still enjoyed it immensely. Just wish the other people would feck off ;) 

A view to a beer

This is my view.  Yours?

Duel post

Day at Sea

Another day at sea which threatened to be poor weather wise but the clouds soon broke and although it was only 14c it felt warmer out of the wind.

Spent the morning, after a full English breakfast, again, on the balcony in the sun, away from that wind. Toasty warm. Saw some dolphins jumping around as well, but didn't manage to get any photos. Aka couldn’t be bother to get the camera…

Afternoon we dropped by Breakers bar on the top deck and I got slightly drunk, again. Sue me. Interesting sight of today was a woman who clearly couldn’t be bothered to go back to her room to change so just whipped her top off and sunbathed in her bra. The staff were clearly having a good laugh at her.

Evening was a meal in the posh restaurant called Seventeen. Very very nice food and they cooked my flambé crepes in front of my eyes. We then struggled to find a bar with space so ended up in the Sindhu Bar. The Sindhu restaurant is owned by Atul Kochher who was on board chatting away with the cruise staff with people gawping in when they walked past. He just cooks food people!!!

Speaking of food, on La Coruna day we went to the Italian and they had the lava rock steak on which is the same as the one on Ventura. Utter heaven.  Mr Ben Jackson, I mock you.

Gibgibgibgibraltar.

Monkeys, bus driver who hates the Spanish, planes landing across a road, British telephone boxes, pounds and euros, old gimmers, narrow streets, sunny, World War II tunnels which were very interesting with our group being split in two, we got the Anglo version. Hans probably told another version…

Surprise surprise back on the boat we had a few beers. It’s terrible conditions here.

We are going to do a collage of….interesting….pictures of people in the coming day or two and will post….we found them amusing…