The travel adventures of Mark & Vanessa Greatorex
I promise I’m not going to start this post off with another rant about UniWorld – I’ll save that for the next post. Instead I’d like to dedicate this rant to the idiot who left his camera resting on the autofocus button overnight, meaning the freshly charged batteries that had been inserted the day before…
Fair warning: from now on it’s going to seem like I’m starting every post with a gripe about UniWorld, and I don’t want to give the wrong impression – we’ve had a great time overall and have loved cruising the River Rhône, it’s just that the gloss has started to wear off and some of…
If this morning’s heat wasn’t bad enough, by the time the afternoon rolled around the conditions were almost unbearable. To complicate things, the SS Catherine, despite all her beautiful decor and million dollar art collection, was totally unsuited to travel in these conditions – the air conditioning in the public areas of the ship was…
In the first installment of this diary entry, I told you about Pierre, our tour guide for the morning, and his amazing story. For this next part, I’ll focus on Viviers, the beautiful village that Pierre is so passionate about. My day actually began with a short trip off the ship to capture some shots…
Today was one of those exceptional days. Just when you think that things might not be going as well as they could have, thanks to the excessive heat, along comes a day like this to remind you of just how wonderful international travel can be. I will add a couple of posts separately regarding our…
We are in the midst of a series of very hot, sunny days at the moment, which makes it a bit more difficult than usual to get to some of these beautiful villages along the Rhône. For starters, they’re usually at the end of steep climb, up high above the river on top of the…
There is not a great deal to say about today really, but there were a few interesting things. The main emphasis was on the heat – temperatures were well into the high 20s as we sat down to breakfast today and by the time we made it out to the buses for our morning tour…
Our ship cruised through to Mâcon overnight, docking at a round midnight, and our morning view from our balcony window was of a lovely sunrise over the city. Looking to the north from our mooring spot we could see the Pont Saint-Lauren, an 11th century stone bridge across the Saône built at the site of…
A very lazy morning today, as we didn’t have to check out of our hotel until midday, so after our long walk in the heat yesterday we felt the need for some R&R. We left our bags in the room and wandered downstairs at around 9:30 am, looking for somewhere to grab our standard morning…
Once again we had croissants and coffee for breakfast, though this time it was among surroundings not nearly so glamorous as a 19th century café, but rather in the departures hall of Gare de Lyon in the 12th Arrondissement. We had to stop briefly at the ticket hall that had caused us so much grief…