April 26 - Up the Seine to Rouen

After two lovely days at sea we’ve sailed up the river Seine in the early hours of this Sunday morning and I will shortly be on my way to visit Versailles.  I’ve never been there and it entails a long bus ride, but I’m told it’s worth going.

The ship was cleared and we boarded our bus for the one-and-a-half-hour ride to Versailles.  Strangely (at least I think so) our guide is a Japanese man named Shota Suzuki, who happens to have a very pronounced Japanese accent.  He came to France 25 years ago to study history and he knows his stuff, but he still sounds  like he just came from Tokyo.

As we rode along the countryside we passed through lots of fields of canola.  I remember seeing these when I’ve been here and driving through some of the English countryside too.  Since olive trees don’t grow in this part of the country, I guess canola oil is used instead.

It's boring I know, but that golden field in the back is canola and we passed hundreds just like it.

Versailles, as I’m sure everyone knows, is the former royal residence located a little more than 10 miles west of Paris.  During the reign of King Louis XIII in the first quarter of the 17th century it was built as a hunting lodge. It wasn’t until his son Louis XIV, the Sun King, that Versailles became the marvel that it is today.  Louis XIV became king of France at the age of 4.  His father Louis XIII had stipulated in his will that a regency council govern in his son’s stead until he reached the age of majority. XIV’s mother, Queen Anne (good name!) with whom he was very close, had the will annulled by the Parlément of France and she became the sole regent.  She appointed Cardinal Mazarin as Chief Minister to take care of day-to-day policy and it was he who was Louis XIV’s chief advisor and mentor on affairs of state until he reached the age of majority and until Mazarin died in 1661.  That is a very oversimplified and abbreviated history of one of the most important of France’s monarchs.

Louis XIV began the expansion of the hunting château to a palace in 1661.  It went through several phases of expansion between then and 1715.  In 1682 the King made Versailles his principal residence making it the de facto capital of France.  It remained as the seat of both the court and government through the reign of Louis XV. It wasn’t until the onset of the French Revolution in 1789 that the ill-fated King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette moved back to Paris.  The palace at Versailles was sacked and remained empty and abandoned for the remainder of the Revolution.  In fact, even now many of the rooms are devoid of furniture.    Napoleon considered making his residence the palace at Versailles, but he abandoned that idea because of the cost to renovate it. In the 1920’s John D. Rockefeller contributed the equivalent of about $40 million dollars to restore the palace. He was also the benefactor of Colonial Williamsburg in my hometown.

Versailles played a little part in our American history. In 1783 Versailles was the site of the signing of two of the three Treaties of Paris which ended our Revolutionary War. The American delegates signed one treaty in the city of Paris itself, but Spain and France signed separate treaties formally ending the war in September 1783 in Versailles. In June 1919 after six months of negotiations the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles was the site of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles ending the First World War.

Upon our arrival in Versailles the first order of business was to feed us at a local restaurant almost next door to the palace.  Heaven knows on cruise ships they have to make sure we’re never hungry!  We had an interesting lunch that consisted of a first course that was like salmon sushi followed by a boeuf bourguignon, and finally a tart tatin.  It was all tasty, but an odd assortment.

The restaurant where we had our eclectic lunch

We proceeded to walk to the palace then.  I can attest to the fact that cobblestones are not good for knees that have been replaced.  It was a beautiful Sunday so there were throngs of visitors to see the place.  There were queues everywhere and it was hard making sure we were following the right person. We had a time slot to enter the building and we finally proceeded through metal detectors to enter the huge building.  Unfortunately Louis lived before Mr. Otis invented the elevator so I walked up and down more steps than I have in ages.  We passed through the royal chapel, reception rooms, waiting rooms, and others whose purpose I can’t remember. As I mentioned earlier most of those had little or no furniture in them.  Instead the walls were covered with paintings in many gilt frames and the ceilings were full of frescoes.  From what our guide told us many of the paintings involved Greek and Roman gods and often included portrayals of a member of the royal family as one of those gods.  I tried taking photos but there were so many people around that most of them include lots of people’s heads and I rarely could get a clean shot.

Thegate before the main gate.  Clearly Louis XIV liked gold because everything is covered with gilt or made of gold. 

This is part of the inner fence also all gilded

One room in the Petit Appartement du Roi (the little apartment of the king as opposed to the big one – everyone needs more than one!) is called the Salon de la Pendule.  It houses one of the more interesting items of furnishings in the palace, the Passemant Astronomical Clock.  This is a very ornate rococo style clock standing more than 6 feet tall.  It’s encased in what I assume must be a bulletproof case.  It was presented to Louis XV in the mid-18th century who clearly prized it enough that he placed it in its own room and named the room after the clock.

The famous clock

These are some of the rooms we walked through which were reception and waiting rooms, all splendidly decorated

Apparently Louis XIV was captivated by Caesar and Roman gods and this is a likeness of him decked out like one

We were unable to see the king’s apartments because some of the rooms were closed for renovation.  We did pass through the Hall of Mirrors which is quite spectacular. The room is about 240 feet long by 35 feet wide.  On one side are 17 large windows facing toward the gardens.   On the opposing wall are 17 equally large mirrors composed of more than 350 mirrored surfaces.  In front of the windows and mirrors are gilt torcheres, classical statues holding what are now crystal electrified candelabra and which would have of course been holding candles. The ceiling and walls are decorated with paintings depicting different events during the reign of Louis XIV.  We had a few minutes to walk through a room that would probably take days or weeks to appreciate, and we were accompanied by hordes of other visitors.  It was overwhelming. Upon leaving the Hall of Mirrors we walked through the Queen’s apartments.  Again these are richly appointed with lots of gilt and painting, but not too much furniture.  The one painting that stood out to me was a family portrait of Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette with their two children.  The family lived at Versailles and after the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 they were eventually in October forced to move to the Tuileries Palace in Paris.  Versailles was ransacked after that.

The Hall of Mirrors. Sorry the photos aren't better but there were just too many people there.

The Queen’s apartment was the last of the room s that we saw.  Our guide then gave us free time to visit the gardens.  I was tired and my one knee was killing me so I returned to the bus.  I had to walk across the large cobblestone courtyard and car park.  My travel companions who did go in the garden said it wasn’t really very spectacular because nothing was really blooming yet.  Once everyone returned we headed back to Rouen after a very long day.

The Queen's bedroom

The family portrait of the ill-fated monarchs

I have some impressions of what I saw.  While the scale of Versailles is definitely impressive, I think I’ve seen some palaces I liked better.  I thought the Winter Palace and Catherine Palace in St. Petersburg were more beautiful.  A couple of King Ludwig’s in Bavaria are more romantic.  Or maybe I was just tired and things in my memory always seem grander.  Anyway, I was glad I went and finally saw Versailles.

I’ll write about my second day in Rouen in my next post.

April 22 and 23 - Wine, wine and more wine

Continuing where I left off in my last post, our guide told us all about Bordeaux wine.  Here’s a little of what I remember.

Bordeaux as I mentioned lies on the Garonne River. Because of the proximity to the ocean the area has an oceanic climate which borders on semi-tropical.  The soil on the left bank of the river is more gravelly which provides for good drainage and the right is primarily limestone and clay which provides more moisture for plantings.  The terroir dictates which varietals of grapes are planted in the more than 10,000 wine estates in the region.  Cabernet sauvignon vines like the good-drainage on the left bank and merlot, cabernet franc and several other varietals do better in the other soil.  There are rules established for what may be called Bordeaux wine.  First and foremost is that all Bordeaux is a blend of varieties of grapes.  About 60- 65% of the red grapes grown in this area of France are Merlot, with 22% Cabernet Sauvignon and about 9% Cabernet Franc.  White wine grapes which are not nearly as widely grown are primarily 45% Sémillion and 45% Sauvignon Blanc. There is a sweet wine, Sauterne, produced in the region.  This wine is produced from the two white varietals and muscadelle grapes which have been affected by a fungus which causes the grapes to become raisined and accentuates the sugars.

In 1855 the area around Bordeaux was divided into “Appellations,” which included both geographical districts and apparently also caliber of wines produced.  It all became very confusing as Barbara, our guide explained it.  There are evidently four vineyards which fall in the top category and those include two Châteaux with the name Rothschild in them.  The vineyard we went to, Château Kirwan is in the third appellation, which is one of the highest quality ones.  As we rode into the countryside one of the first thing I noticed was that the vines are not very tall.  Whereas in most places, including Virginia, they grow to at least waist height, here they are very low to the ground.  Barbara told us this is done to retain the moisture (they don’t irrigate their vines at all) and to allow the grapes to get more warmth from the ground.  She told us much more, but honestly I don’t remember it all.

My visit was to the Château Kirwan which is in the Margaux Appellation, a part of the Médoc area, in the Bordeaux area. (How confusing this all is to me.) The vineyard covers 94 acres, planted with 47% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, and the remainder Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Sauvignon Blanc.  As I mentioned earlier all the wine is blended.  We first visited the cellars and got a little history of the place and instruction in the wine-making process.  I found it interesting that the name Kirwan came from the first owner who was an Irishman from Galway who bought two adjoining vineyards back in the late 18th century when some Irish businessmen moved to this area.  In the 19th century a German bought the vineyard and at some point in that century it passed to a different owner. But in the 1920’s members of the first German owners bought it again and the descendants of that family own it still.  In fact, in the summer there will be a 100th anniversary celebration.

The château

This little guy was  snoozing in the bushes around the front of the château

Our guide explained that at Château Kirwan the grapes are mechanically picked but sorted by hand.  After the sorting they are placed in large concrete tanks because those can be precisely temperature controlled so that the yeast and bacteria used in the fermentation process can be used optimally.  After about three weeks the wine is placed into barrels which are entirely made of French oak for two years before bottling.  The wine in the barrels is rotated and tasted by the master winemaker every three months to check its progress.  Of course, as we walked through the various parts of the building and cellars we sampled several of the wines.  I’m not a red wine lover but it tasted good.  The canapés we had with it tasted better.  We had some lovely foie gras, prawns, prosciutto wrapped around a radish,  smoked salmon and a lovely samosa filled with vegetables. Oops, I just realized when writing this that I took no photos of the food.  I wish I had because it was good and beautifully presented. Oh well.

After our tasting we moved into a lovely dining room where we had a wonderful meal starting with seared ahi tuna, followed by roast chicken with a great truffle sauce and finishing with a double chocolate cake. Each course was naturally paired with a wine from Château Kirwan.  I was at a table with a very nice gentleman from San Diego with whom I've cruised before and with a gay couple from Melbourne.  They were all pleasant dinner companions.  We got back to the ship at nearly 11:30 PM so it was actually too late to go to the Club.  I went straight to my cabin which was about the earliest I’ve gone to bed.  Orrin, the gentlemen from San Diego, was kind enough to give me his arm and walk me around at the winery.  I sailed with him on a previous voyage and he's been on my trivia team.

That's Orrin and me on her way to the cellar.  Ignore the person on the right.

This was a special sculptural door to the cellar at Château Kirwan that if you look closely you'll see words pertaining to wine and wine-making.  It's hard to see, but it's the best I could.

The sorting machine where the grapes are sorted by hand.

Concrete vats that Kirwan stored its juice in until the fermentation process and bacteris process are done.

100% french oiak where the wine is stored for two years

Thursday morning the 23rd I awoke to another beautiful day still in Bordeaux.  I had an afternoon tour booked to a different winery for another wine tasting along with a scenic drive through Bordeaux.  I must have bad luck because every site that the guide pointed out on our drive turned out to be on the other one from which I was seated.  I could get a glimpse but a photo was virtually impossible.

One of the old city gates

Some city scenes on our drive

This was the most expensive shopping area.  That's a Hermès store where you can buy $10 K scarves!

The spires of the Cathedral of St. Andrew

The vineyard we went to was still on the left side of the Garonne, the one with the gravelly terroir, but this was south in the Pessac-Léognan Appellation. I confess that I don’t understand this whole Appellation business;  I only know that evidently here in Bordeaux the system came about in 1855 when Napoleon III was Emperor of France and it was apparently done for the purpose of show-casing French wines at an early international fair. Anyway, the vineyard we went to grows more cabernet grapes than last night’s château, but once again all the wine is a blend.  We tasted two, a white and a red, and I liked yesterday’s better.  

These photos are of Château Bouscat, today's vineyard

Our guide today told us a little about the history of Bordeaux during our ride and I found that very interesting.  The Celts established a town named Burdigala around 300 BC.  In the 1st century BC the area was conquered by the Romans and it became an important trading center for tin and lead. As the Roman Empire weakened it was sacked by the Vandals followed by the Visigoths and then the Franks.  After the Moorish Arabs conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula they moved across the Pyrenees but were defeated at the Battle of Poitiers not far away by the then ruler of the region which was known as Aquitaine.  That name may be familiar to many of us because there was a famous woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine,  who as the Duchess of Aquitaine in the 12th century married an English duke who became King Henry II of England.  Through that marriage England ruled and claimed much of France as its territory and wars were fought over those claims.  Most notably the Hundred Years War was fought.  Eleanor and Henry were the parents of two English kings many of us learned about in history classes, Richard the Lionhearted and King John who was forced to sign the Magna Carta.  This is all a very abbreviated version of a complex history, but I know that I and my fellow travelers who included many British people found it interesting.  Natalie, our guide who was as French as one can be, obviously was not in love with that period of her country’s history.

We stayed docked in Bordeaux until just after 1 AM on Friday the 24th.  Seabourn was actually very misleading in the presentation of the itinerary because the it inerary made it sound like we would be in Bordeaux for three full nights.  Some Australian friends were all set to go to lunch at a place they had passed.  I know there is a big tidal shift on the river and so I think our time in port and departure were based on that, but I think Seabourn could have been a little clearer.  I had a nice time and I think Bordeaux is a lovely city.  If I were inclined to make land trips, it’s a place that I think I would like to come back to, but as a solo traveler I don’t think it would be as much fun.

Only two lines left to be released as we prepared to sail from Bordeaux around 1:15 AM.

Now we have two days at sea and I’m looking forward to them.  For now, bye-bye.

April 22 - We’re at the Port of the Moon!

No, I haven’t taken a flight to the moon.  We’re docked in Bordeaux, France, right downtown.  Bordeaux is on the Garonne River and as the river flows through the city it does so in a shape of a crescent moon.  The romantic French named it the “Port de la Lune”(port of the moon). We picked up a pilot in the early morning on Wednesday the 22nd and sailed about 15 miles upriver to this city of approximately 1.4 million (including the metropolitan area). I didn’t wake up until nearly 10 AM and when I looked out from my cabin it didn’t look really exciting.  The banks I saw were just flat and green.  We docked close to noon and then had to be cleared by the French customs authorities.

I had booked two excursions for our time in Bordeaux and the first wasn’t until the evening, so  on Wednesday afternoon I went ashore and took a walk along the promenade on the river. The  Ovation is docked right in front of the Bourse Maritime,  an impressive neo-classical style government building.  It’s the anchor of a large square in which today there is an “antiques” market.  Some of my British friends called it a “rubbish” market because truthfully much of what was in there looked like what you might find in a yard or garage sale at home.  There were a couple of things that struck me about what I saw on this first glimpse of Bordeaux.  First, I didn’t see a single building more than a few stories tall, nor were any at all modern looking built of glass and steel.  Second, one takes one’s life in one’s hands trying to avoid the bicyclists and  e-scooters (not the motorized kind – I mean the ones on which you stand) which share the walkways along the river. They whizzed by and I had to be careful if I stopped and turned to get a better look at something that I didn’t get run over.

These two are the promenade along the river Garonne

I walked for a mile or so and then headed back.  Some of my fellow shipmates told me later that they experienced the same thing I did.  After only a few minutes my eyes felt gritty as if I’d walked through a sandstorm and they began itching and my nose was running.  There is evidently something blooming here which has created a cloud of pollen.  I had a nice walk nonetheless and got quite a few steps in.

This is the Bourse Maritime building which is some kind of administrative building

Can you see how yellow the air is?  It was pollen central.

The flea market  right across the street from the promenade. I didn't feel tempted.

My evening excursion was to the Château Kirwan, a vineyard for a wine tasting and dinner.  Our group gathered for the 45 minute ride to the Château.  Along the way our guide Barbara told us more about Bordeaux wine than I can ever remember but I will try to recount some of what I learned.  I’m going to end this post and write all about what I remember in the next post because I don’t want each to be too long.  So for now À Bientôt.

April 21 - Spain is a country that inspires the imagination and stirs the soul. (Picasso)

How true that statement is!  Today we arrived in Getxo, the port for Bilbao.  Bilbao is the largest city in the autonomous region of the Basque community of Spain.  Including its metro area it has a population of more than 1 million people making it the largest city in all northern Spain.  The city lies on the Nervión River and which is not navigable because it’s subject to large tidal swings; hence we docked in Getxo, which at one time was an upperclass residential community for merchants and businessman who worked in nearby Bilbao.  At one time the larger city was the center of the wood, wool, and iron trade in Spain.

This region of Spain includes the Basque people and I think they deserve some commentary.  The Basque language is the only language unrelated to any European languages.  From everything I’ve read, no one really knows what the origin of the language is, but there have been some linguists who speculate that it  is the closest to what would have been Cro-Magnon speech.  The Basque people occupy several provinces in Spain and a couple in France.  Until not so very long ago there was a pretty strong separatist movement, especially in Spain, but after being given more autonomy that seems to have calmed down.

Today I had a free tour provided by a representative of a travel agent consortium of which my agent is a part.  It was free so I figured, why not?  We took a half hour bus ride into Bilbao and arrived at the Guggenheim Museum. The museum was funded by the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation which has built several other such facilities around the world.  It opened in 1997 and houses  contemporary Spanish works of art.  The building itself is a metal structure designed by the architect Frank Gehry and which Gehry himself described as a “randomness of curves” designed to capture the light and to provide views of the surrounding hills of the Basque country.  The atrium has been described as an opening flower as it rises from the ground level to the upper stories.   That all sounds pretty grand doesn’t it?  If I’m perfectly honest, the building itself I find pretty interesting, but the art it contains just isn’t my cup of tea.  I guess I just don’t understand some of it and I would much rather see some impressionist or even Picasso or Dali work. 

It is a unique building!

These next few are some of the art I saw.  They didn;t do much for me.

I did love this indoor puppy though!

There are some very interesting sculptures outside the museum worth mentioning.  One is a massive puppy created by Jeff Koons. It is a 43-foot-tall topiary covered by thousands of flowers with an internal irrigation system to keep them alive.  It was originally brought here on loan when the museum opened, but it became so beloved by the locals that when it was slated to be moved there were huge protests so a decision was made to leave it here.  The other is a gigantic metal sculpture of a spider named Maman created by an artist named Louise Bourgeois.  She has made several of these located at museums around the world.  The spider is about 33 feet tall and the same width.

The topiary puppy

I only got a photo of Maman through a museum window but you can see how big she is.

After our very brief visit to the museum we headed into the old part of the city which is for pedestrians only and had pinxos (the Basque word for tapas) and some wine in a small local restaurant.  There were three kinds of crusty bread topped with a local crab and cheese mixture,  a squid ink and spinach mixture and a potato and truffle one.  They were all tasty and pretty filling.  After our pause for food it was already time to head back to the ship.  It doesn’t sound like we did very much but somehow I managed to get in more than 8,000 steps and I was pooped when I got back.

This pinxo was crab and cheese - very tasty!

A couple of photos of downtown Bilbao

An interesting thing I forgot to mention.  In days gone by some boats would evidently come up the Nervión River if the tide was right but as the tide went out they could become trapped on a sand bar.  To free them women would tie ropes around their waitsts and pull them free.  Along the river we saw this statue commemorating those women.

Not the white cliffs of Dover, instead the white cliffs of Getxo as we sailed away

In the evening I met two friends in the Observation Bar for a pre-dinner cocktail and then we dined at the Colonnade restaurant for barbecue ribs night.  We sat outside and it was quite lovely.  The ribs aren’t as good as some we can get at home, but the ambiance makes up for that.  Of course I went to the show and the Club afterward and even did a little dancing.  Then it was time to call it a night.  We’re leaving Spain tonight, so Adiós España until la proxima vez.