Not sure of location as weve jumped from Portugal to Spain several times. No we are in Spain for the night and tomorrow we bus to Salamanca. Its meant to be quite something, tell you tomorrow.
off the dance floor where Lee and I were the young couple. Scary sight seeing 80 plus year olds doing the twist or dancing to Abba. Thankfully no photos.
Below is the stuff I typed during the day. It does not include the blurb about our afternoon excursion but hopefully Ill include that tomorrow. I will try and drop the photos although I know most will be upside down as most are selfies.
Beautiful scenery, well gorgeous really! But the gorges play havoc with internet reception so its typing time then post when I can.
Early morning on board. Early morning is anything before 9 oclock as thats when the breakfast stampede really cuts in. I have my a little after 7:30 then I wake Lee about 9 for phase 2. Theres champagne on ice so todays breakfast may be just a single course repeated and repeated! The mornings are brisk here, t shirt and coat up on
the sun deck. Cant say what others have on as I have the entire deck to myself. Theres a promise of a another sunny day here and alread any mist has burnt off. As we move inland, we actually sail into Spain today (do we sail?) the temperature has increased. Yesterday it reached 31 degrees but it is pleasant and easy to work around. That means we get a glass of good but cheap sparking. Unlike our last cruise drinks outside of meal times are and are indeed not cheap. Even sparkling water is charged at €3 per bottle but the ship/boat has sparkling water from a dispenser for free. Couple this with the fact theres a fridge in each room Im surprised anyone buys water but lots do.
Its lock time again, smaller and less impressive but yesterdays was a tough act to beat. Its still good though. Must be close to a 30 m change in height. Its also bought out a few passengers, must be some engineers on board. All but one are male!
Theres another lecture on board today, after we found out everything we ‘wanted to know about Portuguese history yesterday.
Todays covers the history of the Douro River. Im guessing it wont be as well attended as the previous talk and thats based not only on the fact that theres champagne for breakfast.
The afternoon excursion takes us to an old (surprise, surprise!) fortified (but not like port is fortified) hill top town. We return for evening meal so really its just a few hours off the boat/ship. Not sure if it moves as we are away but Ill see. Dont let the cruise director know I havent memorised the daily bulletin!
There are more English tourists on board than Australian although we are well represented. Some have been a bit overwhelmed (correct and appropriate reaction) when I casually mention how many walks Ive done in the UK, particularly if they remark that they are ‘ramblers. Others have the ‘couldnt you just hire a car response! They have been warned not to talk sport with us, or politics or religion so there go most of my conversation starters and when I bring up my Royal family sentiments there goes the last of them. Well not entirely true and I would get away with usually
but every now and then Lee reads my posts so my degree of factuality has increased as a nod to marital harmony.
We are still surrounded by steep sided hills, probably would qualify as a gorge and still without internetness. Thats a new word I just made up. We were warned this would happen so we just have to grin and bare it.
Just ticked over 10 oclock so breakfast is ancient history. Now its only 2 and a bit hours to lunch! The internetness is sort of back so Ive caught up with our daily dose of Julie photos and our likes from our Facebook followers. Bizarre what a ritual thats but its a convenient and easy way to sort Being cut off, even temporarily, makes us feel a bit cheated!
Out of the steep gorges and into the terraced vine laden hills again.
