Strait of Gibraltar or Not

Originally, we were scheduled to go through the Strait of Gibraltar at dusk. As it happened, we left Malaga late and as we go through the Strait of Gibraltar, we are able to see absolutely nothing except the town's lights at the strait.

If only we could have seen the Rock of Gibraltar. Oh well...

So today, instead of pictures of the strait, I will share some other events of our trip.

TIME CHANGES

As we head to Galveston, we are going to go through seven time zones. Since we also have to worry about daylight savings time, we will be changing our clock one hour basically every two days. Talk about being messed up. But I guess it is better than changing 8 hours all at once.

BULL FIGHTING

I wanted to share Just a short note about bullfighting in Barcelona. It is now banned in Barcelona, so they have turned the bull fighting arena into shops, etc.

Isn’t this Arena just beautiful?

We are now out of the Mediterranean Sea and we have another sea day tomorrow as we prepare to stop at the Canary Islands on Wednesday.

Rexie just made a comment that if you write tomorrow's date it could look like this:

11/1/11

On that note, Good Night!

Marseilles, France

We have just been notified that the ship's stern side thruster needs repair and we will not be going to Grand Turk. instead, we will be going to Freeport and will be spending two days there to get this repaired.

I think this is the same thruster that they worked on in Civitavvechiea (Rome) a couple of weeks ago.  I guess they didn't get it fixed then.

Oh well...

Now, a report on Marseilles, France. As cities go, we were not as impressed with this one as we have been with other cities.

We actually visited the Village of Cassis some distance from Marseilles. On the way out of town, I was able to take a few pictures of the cathedral.

 I also was able to get a few shots of the buildings and streets in Marseilles.

They actually have several Irish/English pubs in town similar to the Shamrock.

Of course, no city on the Mediterranean Sea would be without there castle.

Also the island shown is reportedly the Count of Monte Christi was kept and the legends surrounding him were born.

As we get near the Village,  we can see the bay from the hills.

Wouldn't you love to have this little vehicle to put around in? These are very common sights for delivering throughout the area.

No village by the sea would be without the lighthouse.

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While this is not a huge fish market, each day the fisherman bring in their catch to sell by their boat.

The village is very nice and has become a minor tourism location.

And so we have no more French ports.

Monaco and Nice

When we had our port of call at Monaco, we visited Nice and Eze France. I reported on Eze earlier, but today I would like to talk about Nice and Monaco.

After our visit of Eze, we drove along the French Rivera to Nice. Nice is a large city, but like most cities in Europe, it has an old town section.

Like all large cities, Nice has it's share of traffic problems also.

 

As we entered the old section of town, the streets are usually reserved for pedestrians because of how narrow they are.

This is obviously a tourist area as the streets are filled with little shops.  Most are selling tourist type items, but few shops would be considered to be selling cheap tourist trinkets. In fact, since this is the French Riviera, many are upscale shops.

There are plenty of side walk cafes, pastry, and candy shops.

And of course, it is always amazing to see the latest street cars running near the old sections of town.

As we drive back to Monaco, there are sail boats, motor boats, and yachts galore. They seem to be everywhere on the Mediterranean Sea.

One can not think of Monaco without thinking of Princess Grace. After her accident, they renamed the highway going into Monaco for her and placed this plaque as a memorial to her.

This monument overlooks Monaco.

For those interested, our bus drove over the starting line of the Formula I race and by the pit area for the race. The casino at Monte Carlo is really not that large and does not open until late afternoon. If you just want to go in and look around, it costs you 10 Euros. I saved my money and lost it on the slots on our ship.

As the ship leaves the port, we take one last look at Monte Carlo and the country of Monaco.