Jen and Jerry's Excellent Adventure

  Lisbon, Portugal                                                                               Tuesday, June 14, 2022             It’s official.   Today marks the beginning of the FINAL segment of our 6-month adventure.   We have been anticipating this day for various reasons:   we’ll be home soon, we’ll see family and friends soon, we will enjoy three very full days in NYC with Marcia and Ruth including 3 Broadway shows, and about 200 new people are boarding just for this “transitioning ride” from Europe to Newfoundland to New York City on July 4.   200 new people means that this half-filled ship is almost full.   We won’t know what to do with lines and people and a newly-popped bubble.   Our final antigen tests yesterday came back negative—hurray!—and we’re hoping that new people won’t rock our boat, so to speak.             Today is one day only in Lisbon.   We hadn’t scheduled a tour through the ship, so we boarded the shuttle bus at 9:30 with about 25 other fearless souls an

  Oporto (Port), Portugal                                                                  Wednesday, June 15, 2022                Sadly, we found the Caringbridge announcement of Bob Roys’ death this morning.  We are so very sad yet we rejoice for the precious time we were able to share with Bob and Kathy in 2021.  Words fail.  Tears prevail.                And yet we had scheduled a private tour for today and had invited Mark and Nancy Heacox to join us.  We shared the news and shifted gears as best as we could.  Did you know that J.K. Rolling lived in   Port, Portugal?  That she was an English teacher, and was inspired by the city’s bookstore shelving for her shifting bridges?  That the same store has lines upon lines of people waiting just to get inside to see said shelves and therefore charges 1 Euro just to get in the door?  That the university students in Port dress in Harry Potter style with women wearing black capes and men wearing the light-colored pants? That port, the

Gijon, Spain                                                                                       Sunday, June 12, 2022             Supposed to be a rainy and low-60s day, and we had no tour scheduled, so we took the shuttle bus toward the old city to walk around for a couple hours.   Didn’t even take Jerry’s good camera; used my cell phone camera instead since it’s easier to keep dry.   Most shops and many museums are not open on Sundays, so we had low expectations.             Right along a short-walled coastline, the old city holds a large church and the underground ruins of a Roman Bath area.   The latter is considered to be one of the most important Roman remains in northern Spain, documented as Rome’s IV Legion Macedonica.   Of note are the fairly newly discovered hippocaust, rooms where hot air was produced for the baths.   The photos will document its importance.   You decide.              In order to wait for the line to the baths to dwindle (underground and Covid), we we

  Bordeaux, France                                                                June 9 & 10, 2022             Wine country!             Spring gardens country!             Luxury and color and taste and smells.   Does it get better than Bordeaux?   Probably not.             We arrived at the port in the late afternoon and dressed up for the 5:30 boarding of buses for the ATW event w#2 at Chateau Giscours which was about 40 minutes north of the city, out in the countryside with vineyards, cattle, a few horses, and lots of space.   There are just a few chateaus left in France, and we passed the signs for a couple of them.   Tourists and weddings and special events help to fund these large estates.                Upon arrival, we were met with four peasant-dressed locals who were on stilts.   Never really knew why, but they stayed on those stilts all the way through the appetizer course.   Whew.   We were on the first bus and poised to take photos before the hoards arrived,

La Rochelle, France                                                            Wednesday, June 8, 2022             This is a new port for everyone, I think, so nobody quite knows what to expect.  The cruise ship offered a few tours for today, but we chose to go it on our own.  We caught the first shuttle bus for the 6-mile trip toward the city, winding through old houses that must have been fishing villages.  Had to make a tight hairpin turn which turned into a 16-point turn due to big bus, too many cars parked legally, and three layers of brick under a tree on the curb.  Driver got a deserving round of applause.             He let us out just where the map showed us, but it looked like a half of a roundabout with water in the distance.  We all walked a couple blocks and immediately saw the first of three medieval towers with gray clouds behind.  Climbing up to walk along the wall toward more towers and the city, we looked around and took lots of pictures, one of which is Europe’s

  Honfleur, France                                                                             Monday, June 6, 2022 Today there were tours from the ship into Paris.   About 2.5 hours by bus one-way, some from the ship took the panoramic (look but don’t stop much) tour so they could at least say they’d seen some of the sites.             We didn’t want the bus trip, so we chose to stay on shore for the day.   What a great decision! Honfleur is an artist colony, AND, it was a festival day in Honfleur, a Pentecost event that had a parade to bless boats.   In the parade were bagpipes, instruments, and families who carried models of boats into the main church, had a ceremony of blessing, then paraded them back to the port and into the waiting restaurants. People dressed in local sailor gear of navy striped shirts and berets, either carried models of boats—some looked heavy!—or shouldered the larger model, carried by four people and almost always with a very young child inside, safely stra