Nice 2016 - The January Report

Ah, back to apartment living in Europe.  The sounds of the lift running (if you're lucky enough to have one), dogs barking, horns honking, children screaming, doors slamming, seagulls crying, drunks singing, bums hollering, and the upstairs neighbor playing piano exercises (never a song, only exercises) at seven a.m..  But the sun's streaming in from our balcony, the wine's good, the food's fine, and all's right with the world.

We've already been to Monaco twice for Circus and the final day of the annual Monte-Carlo Rallye.

Now, Monaco.  It used to look like this:

But in the past few years, the building up, and we do mean "up" has gotten a touch out of control. The principality gets taller and taller...take a corner with a four-story building containing a couple of businesses and maybe 12 apartments.  Tear that down and build a 20-story building with a couple of businesses and maybe 80 apartments.  But don't add another grocery store anywhere!  Pretty soon the sun will never reach the ground except at the Prince's humble abode.  Don't get us wrong.  We still love it.  We'll post some shots of the newer architecture later.

We headed over for the annual circus parade and see the circus animals.  Nice kitty:

The parade is always well-attended, and while it's a short one, it's not bad.  All the circus entertainers walk or ride up the hill to the palace, where a free, open-air show is held for the crowd (and of course, their Serene Highnesses).

 
Next up, the WRC Monte-Carlo Rallye.  In Monaco, all one gets to see is the freshly washed cars returning from the final stage held up near La Turbie, and checking in at the last timing station at the port.  Here's one of the early arrivals working the crowd:

The competitors took a different route down the hill this year and that included a drive through the famous tunnel.  It offered us an opportunity to take photos, finally, from a different angle.  First up, Sebastian Ogier, who three-peated this year:

And here's some of the rest of the field arriving.  This first guy is missing a grill, but hey, he finished!

For the most part, everyone we know around Nice is still here.  The lady at the Spar store who stashes armagnac away for us, the optician, and the tailor downstairs are doing fine.  The weather's been good and we've gotten plenty of exercise.  Every Friday is a pilgrimage, pulling the grocery caddy, to the Carrefour and each Sunday we try to walk down the promenade by the sea to the airport and back.  It's actually nice to not worry about where to park a car.  February will bring Historic Rallye and Carnaval in Nice.  In March, we'll go to Barcelona for Formula 1 testing and also fly up to Vienna to see the kids.  Stay tuned!

Heading Back to Miami from the Amazon

We dropped anchor off Devil's Island, French Guiana, and watched the local Navy, or maybe Coast Guard, do their morning fishing from one of their vessels nearby.  Looked like it was going to be a big fish lunch.  We stayed aboard and made it a "sea day".  After a day of cruising the Atlantic, we visited Bridgetown, Barbados and then St. John's, Antigua (the saints are marching in again).

The Navigator gives guests a unique opportunity to watch the docking process.  Here we were arriving in Antigua.  That's our Captain at the controls, although we never did figure out who the dude in the blue shirt was.

For a little fun photography, here's our ship, reflected in the Aida cruise ship parked next door!

And more fun photography.  The little town of St. John's.

The final stop before Miami was San Juan, Puerto Rico, which offered yet another opportunity to visit the rainforest!  So, of course, we went to the El Yunque National Forest, the only rainforest in the United States National Forest system.  Absolutely beautiful.  Here are some different perspectives of El Yunque.

And so ended another fabulous trip, with a glass of wine and a sunset.

As always, we submit the Wiener Dog count, and in the Christmas spirit, no less.

  While there are lots of coconut retrievers in the Amazon, there are no wiener dogs.  Count:  0 to 0.

We did still have a tight schedule.  It was time to unpack, wash, visit doctors, dentists, and hairdressers and repack...headed out for Nice on January 1 for three months!  And then there's always the minor nuisance of Christmas and New Years...so that's why you didn't get a Christmas card.

On The Amazon

Upon entering the Amazon River, the first stop was at the immigration station at Macapa, Brazil for a check of the paperwork and to pick up the three pilots, who traveled upriver with us to Manaus.
Pilots are on the bridge at all times, since while the river is well charted, things change rapidly.  There are two seasons along this equatorial river: dry and rainy.  Our visit was just at the end of the dry season, and everyone was looking forward to the rains coming.  Hard to understand why, when those rains raise the river level by an amazing amount, covering up everything along the shore, including the bottom floors of a lot of houses (the people just move up to the next floor and wait for the water to go down and the crocodiles to get out of the kitchen).  If you have a vision of the Amazon looking like it would on a Tarzan episode (bird noises, narrow areas with trees and vines overhead), well, it's not like that.  The river is often 2 1/2 miles across and it's more like being on a large, brown lake.

On the way upriver from Macapa, several things are noticeable.  First, the entire area smells like wood smoke.  The heavy, humid air holds the smoke from whatever everyone seems to be burning (garbage, fallen branches, etc.).  Second, it's hot, hot, hot and humid.  We crossed the equator and then ran along just south of it for the rest of the journey.  Lastly, there are critters in the air.  Mostly bug-type critters and we were roundly admonished to "kindly" keep our balcony doors closed unless we wanted to be infested, but apparently something was left open.  During happy hour, there came several crew members armed with brooms and buckets and chasing a bat.  The bat swooped through the bar (astonished looks all around) and was cornered near the back door.  He was promptly broomed out to freedom, having luckily avoided the bucket.

Our first stop was Santarem, where we visited the jungle at Tapajos National Forest.  The trip to Tapajos was interesting...local jitney-type busses with no air conditioning.  The forest, however, was worth the trip:

Next stop, Boca Da Valeria.  The ship had to stop, because if you blink, you'll miss Boca, even at only 10 knots.  A number of people tendered ashore to have their pictures taken with the local children, decked out in costume and carrying birds and sloths.  We passed on that one, and were glad we did because we saw the elusive "Boto".  The local name Boto refers to the Amazon River Pink Dolphin.  We heard about them from the lecturer, but never imagined we'd see any.  We saw a whole bunch of them, swimming right next to the ship, and they are definitely pink.  Bubble gum pink. Like all dolphins, they only pop up to breathe, so getting a picture was a lost cause, but check them out here:  http://www.wildernessclassroom.com/wilderness-library/pink-river-dolphin/

The day ended with an Amazon sunset.

Our overnight stop at Manaus allowed us to have two shore experiences.  First, we visited the jungle again, this time led by a real local.  Most people who live along the river are Caboclos, people who have descended from the indigenous tribes mixed with Portuguese and other nationalities.  Our guide, and two of his four children, were born in the jungle and are indigenous.  This guy knew that forest and everything in it and he's one of only four english-speaking guides.  We learned about weaving for fun and shelter, hunting, fishing, trapping, and drinking caipirinhas.  Here's our intrepid leader:

And here's a view of the forest.

Next, we took a boat trip to see the "meeting of the waters".  This is where the Rio Negro joins the Amazon.  The two rivers, each a different color, flow side by side for 6 kilometers without mixing. See  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_Waters  for a little bit more information.  On the way, we passed some typical riverside housing and boat works:

The houses nearest the river are on stilts, and during the rainy season, they will still often be flooded. Loved the Amazon "dry dock" (note the boats pulled up on the sand).  Boat work has to be done during dry season...the beach won't be there in a couple of months.

OK!  Here's the meeting of the waters.  We know it looks like the beach, but it's really the two rivers flowing side by side:

No Amazon trip, apparently, is complete without a visit to the jungle, so here we go again.  We walked into this area, but in the rainy season, one must go in via canoe, and the trees seen here will be underwater up to about twenty feet.  Fish actually lay their eggs in the trees.

Now it was time to change pilots and head down river with a couple of beach stops at Parintins and Alter Do Chao.  We chose to stay aboard since we're not really beach people.  We're more like martini people.  Another low pass through Macapa to drop off the pilots and pass the paperwork and we were on our way to French Guiana.

On The Way To The Amazon

Several weeks prior to leaving on our previous cruise, we were contacted by Regent and asked if we were still interested in the Amazon cruise we had inquired about earlier in the year.  We responded that we were interested, but it would make our schedule too tight.  We were offered some incentives that all of a sudden made the cruise fit perfectly into our schedule and would also allow us an opportunity to try out our new camera prior to our upcoming Galapagos Cruise (next September).

So, the plane was scheduled to depart O'Hare, headed for Miami, at 0645 on Saturday morning.  By the preceding Monday, ABC 7's Own Jerry Taft hit us with the first dire warning:  big snow storm coming!  Big snow storm coming Friday night!

We were due to leave home at 0430 on Saturday...oh, we weren't worried about O'Hare or the tollways, because those people know how to deal with snow.  What concerned us was our driveway. Our Mr. Plow gets going early, but not that early on a Saturday.  Ah! A stroke of genius!  Does the O'Hare Hilton have weekend rates?  You betcha.  Calling an audible, we moved to the hotel on Friday night (one can walk to the terminals, through tunnels, from the hotel) and let it snow.  Our plane left right on time.

After a night in Miami, we boarded the Seven Seas Navigator and departed for the Amazon, via the Caribbean.  First stop, Gustavia, St. Barts, for an overview of the island.  Speaking of view:

Our next stop was Castries, St. Lucia.  Again, an Island Splendor overview tour.

Then, on to St. George's, Grenada.  Looked like we were finally going to run out of Saints for a while.  Nearby, though, we stopped at a mountain rainforest area and came across St. Lizard, in a cocoa tree:

  

We also learned that the biggest export from Grenada is nutmeg, in all its forms.  The nutmeg is grown by locals, often on very small farms, and then brought to town to sell to the processors.  The product is then sorted mostly by hand and bagged for export.

Next stop was Trinidad, where we were greeted by the mandatory steel drum band.  Sorry, no pictures from Trinidad...we went to the Angostura Bitters and Rum distillery and one is not allowed to take pictures inside. Having been invented in the 1800's, the Bitters recipe is jealously guarded, hidden in a bank in New York, and known to only four people. The spices are sent individually to England, where the four secret-holders blend the spices and send the resulting mixture somehow to Trinidad, where the finished product is then extracted.  Oh, yes, they make rum, too.  Very nice rum.

TransAtlantic 2015

The trip got off to a wonderful start!  The night before the cruise, Pati "drop-kicked" the easy chair in the hotel room and broke her toe.  She managed to hobble to the ship the next day, but was unable to wear anything but Birkenstock sandals for the remainder of the trip.  Formal attire looks just swell with Birkenstocks; however, there shall be no photographic record of this new dress code.

This year's crossing was on the Seabourn Odyssey.  It's a beautiful ship, but upon arriving in Florida, we decided that the Seabourn crowd's a little stuffy.  Oh, not the crew, mind you, they're great. Especially the bartender who whipped up the best Gibsons after tea while our Portuguese waiter tried to entice us with sandwiches and sweets.  His descriptions of the tea cakes were priceless.  He could describe that chocolate cake in a manner that'd make your mouth water, but struggled with one of the items.  That one was "it's pink, it has a red thing on the top, and there's a cookie on the bottom".  We roared!

OK, first stop, Malaga, Spain where the park along the waterfront was in bloom:

No stop in Malaga is complete without a stop at their fabulous market for sugar-coated dried figs and Marcona almonds.  This time, the vendor showed us how to pop the fig open, but the almond inside, and take a bite that'll send you straight to heaven.  Malaga's beach seen from the cruise terminal:

Next stop, Gibraltar.  We didn't go ashore because town was too far for Pati's toe to handle and the view from the ship was fine.  All day long, the wind passing over the "rock" continued to generate this cloud!

We were happy to visit Funchal, Madeira again.  They've done a lot of work along the waterfront and now it's a beautiful park/event area.  Here's our humble ship photographed from the park.

Here's the park!

Another town park, this one located kitty-corner from the lovely Hotel Madeira, where we've always stayed.

Casting off from Funchal, nine days at sea stretched ahead, including a bout with heavy weather. Everything that could be tied down, was.  The wind howled all night, the ship tossed like a cork, the Captain was on the bridge all night, and in the morning everyone looked a bit green.  The weather did improve after a couple of days.  But in the middle of the Atlantic, there were no ships to see, no aircraft overhead. We were totally alone out there, a little over 500 passengers and a couple of stowaway seabirds, with well-stocked bars, plenty of lamb chops, the wind at our back and a Scotsman at the helm.

Made it to Ft. Lauderdale!  We took a couple of days to look at the Ft. Myers area and decided that Florida, for the most part, looks the same no matter where one goes.  So we drove back to Palm Beach for cuban food before flying home.  Three weeks until departure for the Amazon rain forest!

Return to Barcelona

October took us to Barcelona again, ahead of our annual transAtlantic cruise.  We revisited our favorite spots, the Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi buildings, Decthlon (sportswear) and Desigual (unusual clothing.  Very unusual clothing).

Detail from the Sagrada Familia, north face:

We wonder how long we'll have to live to see the Sagrada Familia without cranes and construction fencing?  Mr. Gaudi, when construction began, said that God is his customer and is in no great hurry. Could be a long wait.  The crane is the official bird of the Sagrada Familia.

La Pedrera, still an occupied apartment building:

Casa Batllo:

And no trip to Barcelona is complete without a stop at the famous market:

Which was closed.  That kept us from eating our way through La Boqueria, but we did want some photos of all that food!

British Union Car Show 2015

Entered the red car in the car show in September.  Perfect weather and lots of cars to see.  Our first adventure with our new DSLR camera, purchased because we're thinking ahead to the Amazon and the Galapagos.

We didn't win (again) but got lots of smiles (again).  Good news: we know, for a fact, that several people voted for our car.  Besides us, of course.  Bad news:  The gents in the Land Rover who followed us on the way to the show reported that our tail lights aren't working.  Oh Lucas, Prince of Darkness.

Our car:

Reflections of a car show: