Second Day of Cruise — Provence
We had been talking before leaving the States that we wanted to take one of the ship sponsored excursions during our time in France, rather than try to figure it out ourselves. But it took us until last night for us to purchase the tickets for our excursion — From our port of Toulon to Marseilles and Aix-en-Provence.
Our tickets said we needed to assemble in the Stardust Theatre at 9 a.m., so I set the alarm for 7 a.m so we could have enough time for showers and to get breakfast before our excursion.
The shower was its own discovery. Different knobs, and figuring out how to get the temperature to get where we wanted. There is a lot of movement to the temperature knob, but only a small section of that movement actually makes most of the temperature change — quite abruptly. Getting 4 showers in an hour will be interesting, but I think we are currently on schedule. I went first, Carly is going now, and I expect Nathan to take a quick one.
We did the Raffles Court buffet for breakfast. I had an omelet prepared by the chef — good but nothing better than what I could get at Home Town Buffet. The buffet was crowded. I think the majority of people were thinking buffet for fast eating and exit without having to dress up for the dining rooms. But it was nice and not so crowded out on the terrace beyond the buffet lines.
When we got to the Stardust lounge for our ship-sponsored excursion, we discovered that the Gillespies were also taking the same excursion. The scheduled docking/departure was 9 a.m., but it was delayed until 9:30 a.m. due to special maneuvers the port made the ship go through, most likely due to the presence of the military ships in the port. All 9 of us ended up getting on bus 8 together when we got going.
The tour guide Marie gave us a lot of information about the valleys and hills we were driving by on the hour ride to Marseilles. It seemed that the region had been burned through a lot, and was awfully barren in a lot of ways, and very fertile for all of that, with its wines and olives.
On the way into Marseilles we also saw the Island prison featured in “The Count of Monte Cristo”
We had a 30-minute stop in Marseilles itself at the Basillica Notre-Dame de la Garde. It had an impressive gilded interior, and the most impressive view of the valley/region. Of course, to get to it we had to climb some 130 steps up and down.
Nathan tried counting the steps, and we couldn’t quite figure if that included the ramp up to the main area or not. Both seemed to have the requisite 130 odd-or-even steps.
From there it was on the way to Aix-en-Provence. They drove us to a major fountain, pointed out where the bus would be meeting us at 3:30, told us the bus couldn’t wait for us there, and then drove us around the historic section until we were lost about where our assembly point was.
We got off the bus, walked a ways, were given some notes on an important church, led twisting and turning through the alleyways stopping at other notable sites, finally ending up a couple of blocks from the original fountain, and given 90 minutes to eat and explore before assembling back.
During the wandering walk down, we were traversing narrow streets that vehicles were trying to drive up, until sometimes we could not continue and got broken up from the group for a few minutes until the vehicle made the corner and got through. One time we almost entirely missed what she was saying, and it wasn’t our fault, since we were hurrying as fast as we could against the traffic.
For lunch we didn’t want to waste our entire time sitting through a meal that might not get done in 90 minutes, so we found a bakery, and ordered a couple of paninis and something that we originally thought was a pretzel shaped like a EUR symbol.
Turns out it was sugar, not salt on the outside of it, and it was soft, not crunchy, more the consistency of a croissant, only slightly sweeter. I’d enjoy having another, and wish I could remember what the name of it was.
We made it back to the bus stop with time to spare, and then slept some on the 90 minute ride back to the ship. We made it just as the return time for the ship for the day, and then went and changed for a 6 p.m. dinner. While we were changing, we heard an announcement about the ship being delayed, because another of the excursions hadn’t gotten back yet, but should be back in the next 20 minutes or so. One of the advantages of being on a ship-sponsored excursion, is if your tour doesn’t get back on time for any reason, the ship has to wait for you.
We had dinner with mom and dad and Isaac at the Garden restaurant. Decided we prefer Windows to Garden. Now we are various places — Nathan and Isaac together, Carly roaming, I took a swim, and now Betsy and I are on the Raffles Terrace writing after having a sweet snack a few minutes ago.
At The Rainbow 