Saturday: July 12
Marseilles France, Quest for Honey
I slept the same as last night. For some unobvious reason, I woke up around 5:30, and I couldn’t get back to sleep afterwards. I definitely have a cold. When the alarm went off at 7, and I got up, the room was almost spinning. I was scheduled in the morning for the free “tour” of Marseilles. This was basically a drive through, followed by free time. I decided to skip it.
I got up and had breakfast with Amy. Then I went back to bed. I was hoping to get about 3 hours of sleep, but around 9:30 or 10, they started doing emergency drills for the crew. I didn’t have to participate, but every 5 minutes or so, they would sound the chime and make some loud announcement over the PA system. I don’t think I would have slept anyway, but with the loud announcements, any thought of sleep was a joke.
I got up around 11:45 and had lunch. I wasn’t that hungry, but I figured that I needed to eat something before dinner. I was having the devil of a time with Wordle today. I thought I was going to lose my streak for sure. I eventually ended up one guess left, and I could find no viable word. I decided that it had to have a third vowel, and just before I left for the afternoon tour, I thought of starting with “EX” which proved to be correct.
Today, I wore my fanny pack, which was much easier to deal with than my backpack. For this trip, I’m finding that my normal “day” clothes were the KETL long sleeve hoodie and long pants (along with my sun hat). For the evening, it is a pair of pants and a tee shirt under a polo shirt.
We took a very slow tour through Marseilles. The roads, particularly near the church, were very small and winding. There were several times that I think the driver cleared obstacles by inches. One time, he had to back up slightly to reposition the bus to complete the turn. It didn’t help that the local drivers (and pedestrians) are crazy.
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We first went to the top of a hill to Notre Dame de la Garde. It is topped by a large gold statue of Mary holding Jesus, and it is the hallmark of the city. Unfortunately, it is being re-gilded, so all you can see at this time is an impenetrable block of scaffolding.
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Our guide described the inside of the church for us, as they don’t allowed guided groups inside. Then we had free time to explore the inside by ourselves.
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Then we drove down the hill, with the bus having to make an almost impossible 180 hairpin curve. Then we visited the oldest church, which used to be an Abbey. I think she said that the first church was built there around the fifth century.
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After the tour inside the church, we had about 15 minutes of free time. I asked the guide if there was any place around here that would sell Lavender Honey. She spent some time on her phone, and then walked me about a block away around the corner, where there was a small local vegetable store. This was not aimed at tourists; this was for local residents. Fortunately for me, they had the honey. I had to wait in line with people buying vegetables, but I eventually got to the front and bought it. I got back to the meeting location at the church with even a few minutes to spare.
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We walked to the bus, and got driven back to the ship. The guide was almost laughing when she compared the size of our ship to the behemoths next to us.
We had to through security on shore. Their metal detector was more sensitive than most that I’ve experienced on this trip. I put pretty much everything on the tray, including my pocket knife and my coins, but I still set off the metal detector. Apparently it took exception to my quiet-box audio unit. When I went back through and put it in a tray, the detector didn’t complain.
I went up to the room, took a shower, and changed into my evening clothes. About that time, Amy got back from her excursion, showered, and changed as well. I did a little typing on the terrace, then came down, got Amy, and we went to Russel Lee’s third and last talk (for this cruise).
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They were doing grilled lobster tails in the cafe, and I saw that they also had king crab legs there, so we ate there rather than in The Restaurant.
Then we went down to a farewell reception / Beatles Songbook.
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That was good, sort of very similar to the ABBA routine. Then we went up to the room, watched the port talk, and went to bed.