Part 1 of 3: Greetings from CROSS on day 14 of our cruise. I haven’t posted because I haven’t had the time. We have been burning the candle at both ends and loving every minute of it. I plan to post a cruise review when I get back home. It will be boring because I have almost nothing but superlatives to offer. This cruise has met or exceeded all of our high expectations. The LCT folks we have met are stellar people all. The weather has been mostly clear and sunny with lows in the upper fifties and highs in the mid seventies. The seas have been largely calm. The food and service have been sensational. The ports stops have all been interesting leaving us, in most cases, wanting more. The on board entertainment and other diversions have been quite good. Voyager is in great condition. I am a happy camper and I think most passengers would say the same. I would echo most of the posts you have already read. Here are a few random aspects of our particular experience to date.
We loved our two days in Nice prior to the cruise. On our second day in Nice, we asked our private guide to take us to several of the traditional stops in the mountains surrounding Nice. But we made one deviation and we are ever so glad we did. We scheduled a stop at a local goat farm located a mountain north of Nice. Fred found it on the internet. Our experienced local guide had never heard of it. Our plan was to find the farm, meet the farmer and his goats, buy some goat cheese, and have a nice picnic on our drive back down the mountain. We drove up up up a narrow winding road for thirty minutes. By this time, our guide and at least one of the four of us had begun to have doubts about the sanity of this venture. Those doubts vanished when we stepped out of the car to a breathtaking view of Nice and the full Mediterranean coastline from a farm located on the second highest peak in the mountain chain to the north. Paragliders soared overhead as we were greeted, of all people, by an attractive American college student from Portland who was taking a sabbatical from her studies at Reed College to be a French goat farmer. She walked us up a hill where we met about four dozen of the world’s most personable goats and their equally personable farmer-dad. Along with a dozen Norwegians who were visiting that day, we were given an interesting cheese making demonstration, shown the milking barn, introduced to a friendly and inquisitive male goat who was being nursed back to health after an unfortunate encounter with hostile dogs, and taken to several picnic tables for a cheese tasting. We were expecting a few pieces of cheese on toothpicks. To our surprise, we were offered a full lunch which included a pitcher of local wine, a tasty fresh salad, freshly made French bread, and eight varieties of goat cheese including one that had been made that morning and a dessert cheese. Goat cheese never tasted so good. This was an experience we will never forget and one that most folks who visit Nice never enjoy. It isn’t for everyone. But for us, it was the highlight of our pre-cruise experience.
We like to strike out on our own when in port and we did so during our day and a half in Barcelona. This was a mistake. We should have engaged a guide for the day or taken a couple of the ship’s tours because Barcelona is so congested it is quite hard to get around. We had planned to see the city by using the on and off tour bus. This is an excellent and inexpensive way to visit lots of cities and we expected it to be so in Barcelona. Not so, at least in early November. The problem is there are more bus customers than bus seats. We noticed quite a long line by the kiosk where we purchased our bus tickets and asked the clerk about it. He said “That line is nothing. It often stretches way around the block.” As we stood in that line, three buses pulled up and loaded before we got on one. We also noticed lots of people cutting in line ahead of us. We finally boarded a bus and then saw lines at each of the stops the bus made before we exited. We left lots of people behind at each stop because our bus was totally packed. I have little patience for standing in long lines, particularly during a brief port stop. So we ditched our bus tickets, took a cab to lunch, and then caught the shuttle back to the ship. To be continued... Pat