WOW!
What a cruise we have had!
Hello all, thanks for joining in on my adventures. I hope you are enjoying reading along as much as I enjoy filling you in!
So as you may have read, Lara & Rob, my sister and her husband, my brother-in-law, joined us in Southampton and stayed through the end of the cruise in Barcelona. We took off heading to St. Malo, France and on the way I showed them both around this ship and they became familiar with all the amazing levels of pampering that Silversea has to offer. We arrived in St. Malo, and unfortunately I had IPM, so I couldn’t get off the ship with them, because I wanted to get my IPM out of the way in a place I had been to before. It turned out to be a great thing.
Upon leaving St. Malo, we had a day at sea, and then we headed for Bordeaux, France. Bordeaux is a beautiful city, with some amazing Parisian looking buildings. In fact, it looks almost exactly like a little Paris. This is mostly because the architects in the 17th and 18th centuries worked on designs for both cities. Rob, Lara and I went on our first tour the moment we arrived to the Graves area, which produces some wonderful white wines. Our tour unfortunately left a bit to be desired as the wines we tasted were not the best. Oh well, you win some you loose some I guess. It’s been worse. After the tour we went out to explore the beautiful city during the evening and then found a wonderful bistro that had some amazing escargots, moules frites, and of course a crepe for dessert all for 15 euro! Rob and Lara also got a Charcuterie plate and a fromage plate, which are meat and cheese plates. We stumbled around the city with the cast looking for somewhere to dance, and it turned out that the city didn’t really get buzzing until 2am! So we decided to head back to the area around the ship. While we were on the train, some gangster type Frenchmen started to annoy some of the girls and Marlin was born. I stepped in, but suddenly in an Australian accent, a very bold and courageous character came out. Marlin, from Sydney, who wouldn’t stop talking to the Frenchmen, in a very polite and friendly manner I might add, made the Frenchmen back off as it wasn’t worth the trouble. HAH! As we had an overnight in the amazing Bordeaux, the next day we had our next tour, which was of the Medóc region, where we visited the unbelievably amazing and incredibly tasty Chateau Lynch Bages, which produces some of the best red wine in the amazing wine region of Bordeaux. They took us around the winery and we tasted a couple of there amazing reds. Then we headed back to the ship and we took off.
The weather where we were headed in St. Jean de Luz, France was supposed to be a bit rough, so the Captain, in the first time ever since I’ve been on board, decided to skip the town and arrive in our next city a day early. It turned out to be a wonderful thing as we headed into Bilbao, Spain. Upon arriving we headed into the city and took a wander. We headed over the famous Guggenheim museum of Bilbao, but as it was a Monday it was closed. However the building itself is a marvel, designed by the great Frank Gehery. If you happen to be a Disney fan (lol) it looks very similar to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California designed by the same man. It just has more sandstone elements to it and is more of a gold version. It also had a giant flower dog outside of the museum, which I can only describe with this picture:
**By the way that's me standing beneath it!**
We walked around the building and then headed into the heart of the city for a delicious lunch made up of white asparagus, langoustine salad, and Rob of course got a plate of jamón, or ham! It was delicious. We headed back to the ship, as there was our second show to do, fittingly our Latin show, Fiesta Latina Nights. As this was our surprise last overnight we were able to go out the next morning on a tour of the Rioja region of wine in the north of Spain. We visited a beautiful little town on top of a hill (which most of my readers will know as the same name as my home airport) La Guardia. It had a castle, which we retuned later to eat a fabulous lunch in, and its little alleyways and streets were not to be missed. Unfortunately Lara wasn’t feeling too well the morning we left so it was up to Rob and I to enjoy it for her. We then headed over to the famous and oldest Rioja winery Marques de Riscal:
During our tour of the amazing winery (did I mention that the Hotel which sits on the winery was another of the amazing buildings designed by Frank Gehery which I almost prefer to the Guggenheim. It really is a marvel:
) we got to see bottling in the works and it was so neat to see the atomized machines placing the labels on the bottles and such. We went into their “cathedral” which had wines from every year of production since the winery opened in 1819! After touring the entire place, we had a tasting of their white, which was lovely and their reserve red, which was also really scrumptious! What an amazing tour it was to see everything in production. When we got back to the ship we had our Broadway show that night and after the show ended I did a special encore number, in which I performed the song “In Whatever Time We Have.” The last time that I sang the song was six years ago after Lara and Rob said their vows to each other and so it was a special dedication to them on their six-year anniversary, and I think they really enjoyed it.
We then had a day at sea, in which Lara and Rob had an onboard wine tasting, the three of us went to the onboard Galley Lunch, in which they open up the galley, or kitchen, and put up a bountiful display of food including an Eiffel tower made of chocolate and a little Italian chef- man made of marzipan. The two of them also went to the amazing restaurant Le Champagne onboard that evening, and they really enjoyed the menu consisting of, and each dish based around Foie Gras. Rob even said he got the duck sweats from too much duck! Lol.
The next day we hit Lisbon, Portugal. With the sun shining high in the sky, the beautiful hot days that we’ve been having kept up strong. Lara, Rob, and I walked around the beautiful hilly city, visiting an amazing elevator, the only vertical elevator in the city, built in 1908, among other neat places. Back on board to leave at one, there was a bit of a hiccough. The drummer was missing. Our drummer was no-where to be found, so the ship had to leave without him. That night we did two shows, our Italian show, and that evening was Jazz a la carte. Jazz with no drummer was an interesting show indeed, but it was fine because prior to it the cast joined Lara and Rob for dinner in our lovely La Terrazza restaurant! Mmm yumm!
The next day we changed countries again, and hit Cadiz, Spain. Lara and Rob and I went on a wonderful tour of the Jarez area famous for being the home of Sherry! We went to one of the most known and oldest Sherry makers Gonzalez-Byass. Now the wine which makes some of the sherrys, Tio Pepe is not the best of the best, which is too bad and rather funny because so many Spaniards drink it quite regularly as its fairly cheap. The Sherrys that are made however, are absolutely phenomenal. We did a tasting of 9 wines, four of which were sherrys that were over thirty years old, mixed from over 150 vineyards! Talk about drinking history. A side note and funny little story: On the way back from Gonzalez-Byass, who’s wine Tio Pepe’s logo is a wine bottle with a guitar (don’t ask me why), we passed some pools of salt water outside of Cadiz where they make sea salt by having the water evaporate over time. In the pools were hundreds of little pinkish white dots and when asked, our guide explained that they were flamingos! Flamingos which fly from miles away where their nests are and spend eight hours feeding in these pools and then fly back. Now you might be asking yourself what about the baby flamingos who cant fly that far, well, I am happy to report that the flamingos have a daycare system! Two parents stay behind to watch all the children for the day and the “mother and father” couple swaps every day! “Alright its Fred and Barb’s turn to watch all the kids! Hah!”
Our next stop was Malaga.
We headed into the foot traffic city center for some lunch and boy, was it a beautiful area. The streets were paved with beautiful shiny tile as far as the eye could see. It was like being in an indoor mall outside with gorgeous buildings and 28 / 83 degree weather! It was gorgeous. We had lunch at a wonderful little tapas place called Salinas 3! Haha! It was amazing; we had kangaroo, croquettes of cheese, foie gras with caramelized apples, ham, mini burgers, among other things. The lunch was rockin’! We then walked around looking for some ice cream but decided later to not get any and headed back for the ship. The cast prepped for Studio 54, but for the first time we were having it done the proper way, as we were back in the heat, we had a deck BBQ and our show follows that outside on the deck! So we rehearsed in the 83 degree weather at 4.30PM and then we came back to perform the show drenched in sweat at 9PM. It was so awesome up there and the energy felt much better then it did in the dark theatre, especially for that show.
We then had a day at sea, in which it was very hard to come to terms with the fact that Lara and Rob would be leaving the next day, so we played lots of UNO and spent a lot of time together. The next day we arrived in Barcelona and we left the ship to go have some famous churros and chocolate, which is like drinkable liquid hot chocolate that you dip the delicious churros into. Tasty Tasty. We walked back to the taxi line and said our goodbyes and then they headed off to the airport. CIAO! I then embarked a few guests and went out once more in Barcelona in search of La Sagrada Familia, which I found by using the metro. It was so beautiful! The gorgeous Gaudi designed church which was on the front of my Spanish book in middle school, did not disappoint.
It was only a shame that I didn’t have forever to explore it.
That leads us into our next cruise. A quickie; back to Lisbon!
See you then!
Lots of love,
Rhett
