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World Cruise - 2011

a travel blog by rcodel


Alida and Dick
On January 13, 2011, Dick and Alida depart from San Francisco for a 145 day world cruise visiting 67 ports in 30 countries on the Regent Seven Seas Voyager. Our final destination will be Southampton, UK, on June 7.
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Rome

Civitavecchia, Italy

Civitavecchia is the port town for Rome which was too far away to make it worthwhile to visit again.

permalink written by  rcodel on May 24, 2011 from Civitavecchia, Italy
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Portovenere and Pisa

Portovenere, Italy

Portovenere is another quaint coastal fishing village. Here we went to Pisa. Franklin, on our way to Pisa we were within 10 Miles of Lucca .

permalink written by  rcodel on May 25, 2011 from Portovenere, Italy
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Marseille

Marseille, France

We went to Aix-en-Provence which is about half an hour drive from Marseille. This area of France is very dry and it rains only in January and February.

The old town of Marseille is built in the shape of a U with a huge marina in the middle with literally thousands of sailboats and motor boats.

As we left the harbor the captain took us next to the fortress made famous by Alexandre Dumas' character, the Count of Monte Cristo, who was fictional and was actually never locked up here.


Count of Monte Cristo Castle



permalink written by  rcodel on May 26, 2011 from Marseille, France
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Barcelona

Barcelona, Spain

We had been really looking forward to visiting one of our favorite cities, Barcelona, again. Wonderful weather for walking on Las Ramblas. Not much has changed, but we accidentally found ourselves near a demonstration, shots were fired, a police helicopter over us, so we decided to get the heck out. They were probably demonstrating against Spain's austerity programs brought about by Spain's dire economic and financial condition.


Las Ramblas

permalink written by  rcodel on May 27, 2011 from Barcelona, Spain
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Malaga

Malaga, Spain

We went to the beautiful, ritzy, international resort of Marbella, which is on the way to Gibraltar. It is truly a beautiful town. Of course the high-light is the marina which is filled with yachts ranging from 200 feet down to our size.


major Sea Ray market share

permalink written by  rcodel on May 29, 2011 from Malaga, Spain
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Cadiz

Cadiz, Spain

Cadiz is a really nice old town with very narow streets. Lovely typical Spanish old town.


View from balcony

permalink written by  rcodel on May 30, 2011 from Cadiz, Spain
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Lisbon

Lisbon, Portugal


Cascais and Estoril

It was fun being back in Lisbon. We were here about 7 years ago on a round-the-world trip. We went to Sintra, Cascais and Estoril which are all on the Atlantic coast. Mom got homesick since we drove past Caxias where she lived as a teenager.


Belem Tower


Coffee in Sintra

permalink written by  rcodel on May 31, 2011 from Lisbon, Portugal
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Bilbao

Santander, Spain

Our visit to Bilbao, where we wanted to see the Gugenheim Museum, was canceled due to rough seas. So, we stopped in Santander instead for a few hours. After wandering around town on our own we went to a very old cathedral. The construction began in the 12th century. Then, another church was built on top of it, and finally a third one. By chance there was beauriful organ music which, when it stopped, we met the "organist" who was a German man hired by the cathedral to tune the more than 2,000 pipes by blowing on them and banging on them to correct the sound. He has lived in the cathedral for 6 months so far and the plan is to increase the organ's pipes to 6,000.


View from balcony

permalink written by  rcodel on June 2, 2011 from Santander, Spain
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Wine country

Bordeaux, France

Bordeaux is on the Gironde River and is located 70 kilometers up river from the Atlantic. We docked right downtown. Amazingly enough this river has a huge tide of 5 meters so every 6 hours our ship was going up and down vis-a-vis the land.

Most of the buildings in old Bordeaux were built in the 18th century and they all tend to look alike with 4 Story sandstone structures withr rectangular windows. It is a really inviting beautiful city which we thoroughly enjoyed.

Of course the Bordeaux area is known for its Vineyards and wineries. Anyone who has a House and produced approved appellation wine is called a Chateau. There are over 6,000 of them in the Bordeaux area. One day we traveled about 1 hour North of the city of Bordeaux to the Medoc area. We visited the famous Chateau Margaux and went to the Chateau Paloumey for a wine tasting presentation. It was a great learning experience. Franklin, you would have loved it here. By chance the head sommelier was with us and agreed with us that the wine of this small Chateau was mediocre to poor.


Chateau Margaux

In this area the best wines are gorwn in Sandy, gravel soil. The individual vines can live up to 50 -60 years. Once a new vine is a year or two old, irrigation is prohibited by law.

permalink written by  rcodel on June 3, 2011 from Bordeaux, France
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Honfleur

Le Havre, France

Instead of going to Honfleur, due to tides, we docked at [[France/Le-Havre]]. We took a 30 minute bus ride to Honfleur which is an old, quaint fishing village. This was the last day of our cruise and we're off to London tomorrow for a few days.


Honfleur

Honfleur

permalink written by  rcodel on June 6, 2011 from Le Havre, France
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