This morning we had a tour of some of the 362 monuments that you could find in the town of Bordeaux. We ended at the Cite’ du Vin, the Wine Museum. The building is very new and modern and the exhibitions are terrific. They are interactive and very informative. There were videos, places to smell ingredients, dioramas and at the top of the building a view of the city and a taste of wine.

We again walked after returning from our excursion. Our mission was to see the Museum du Beaux Artes and the Cathedral. When we got to the museum it was closed up. Some other people also looking to go into the museum told us that this day, May 8, was a holiday, Victory in Europe day. Something well worth celebrating. Fortunately the cathedral was open so we did accomplished part of our plan.

After leaving Bilbao we had a full day of sailing to our next port of Bordeaux. We had much calmer seas. The city of Bordeaux is about 60 miles from the Atlantic Ocean on a very wide river, the Garonne River.

The landscape while sailing up the river was mostly flat, and often you could see vineyards on either side of the river.

To get the pilot on the ship, he was dropped from a helicopter. Unfortunately it happened so quickly there are no photos. The Pont Jacques Chabang-Delmas is the largest vertical lift bridge in Europe and was built around 13 years ago. Our ship docked right in the middle of the city center. There was another cruise ship docked in the same area and the riverboats were farther away from the town center, but only a short distance.

The city had a modernization renaissance about 10 years ago with many buildings built around that time. However, the old limestone buildings are still prevalent in the city center and are beautiful with intricate details and wrought iron Juliet balconies. They have developed an amazing tram system in the city center which is run on electricity and does not pollute. The city of Bordeaux has about 300,000 inhabitants and in the metropolitan area about 900,000 inhabitants.

The real reason to come to Bordeaux is the wine. There are 300,000 acres of vineyards, mostly producing red wines. Bordeaux region is also the 2nd largest region to produce rose’ wine. There are 65 unique wine regions in Bordeaux, with a total of over 6,000 different wineries.

Our excursion took us to the UNESCO village of Saint Emilion. It is about 45 minutes outside of Bordeaux city. The town originated in medieval times as a religious center. This city is on part of the Camino, which we had experienced when we were in A Coruna, Spain.

We heard a great deal about Eleanor of Acquitaine who was both the queen of France and then the Queen of England. Long story, look it up. She was the mother of Richard the Lionhearted and also of King John who signed the Magna Carta in 1215.

We toured Saint Emilion, which is a walled town and has an upper and lower town. The Romans first brought grapevines to this area about 2000 years ago.

Then we went to a boutique winery where we found out about their way of making wine. They had very modern equipment and only about 15 acres of grapes. They only produce about 2500 bottles of wine annually. At this time of year they are tying up the vine tendrils which can grow up to 3 inches a day. Later in the season they may prune some of the vine clusters to have “quality not quantity” from each vine. It takes 8 to 12 bunches of grapes to make each bottle of wine.

When we got back to the ship we walked around a bit, but rains drove us back. Later after dinner we did stroll along side the river.

The town of Bilbao is approximately 8 miles up the river Nervion from the Atlantic. There is a population of about 450,000 in the city itself and 1 million in the suburban area. Until approximately 50 years ago the port for Bilbao was in the city itself. The area was originally a fishing village established in the 14th century. There are many iron mines around this area and the town had many foundries and other processing plants to turn the ore into steel and then products made of steel. There were also many ship building sites in the city.

The city was very rich into the early part of the 20th century but then in the 70s and 80s the economy turned and the city decided to change their history. The port was moved to the mouth of the river and the steel mills and ship building was stopped. The city decided to improve the life of their inhabitants and provide for a better life long term.

The Guggenheim Foundation was looking for a place to have a new museum in Europe and Bilbao threw their hat into the ring. They agreed to fund the entire cost of the museum with the foundation providing the art. When the city decided to do the revitalization they decided that they would only allow buildings, bridges and parks to be designed by well known architects. The results are amazing and the city and landscape of Bilbao is quite sophisticated.

Frank Gehry won the competition for the design of the museum which is quite iconic. It was finished in November 1997 at a cost of 350 million Euro. The first year it opened there were 2 million visitors and now they average over 1 million visitors a year. The town citizens were leery about spending the money to build the museum, but their economy has blossomed because of the tourism it has created.

We started the day with just overcast skies but ended with heavy rains which limited our ability to got photos of the building. The art is very avantgard, but the building itself is what you want to see.

A Coruna, also called La Coruna, is a port city on a promontory in the Galicia region of Northwest Spain. It’s main industry besides tourism is fishing and it is the 2nd largest fish and seafood market in Europe. The bays in the area have this great fishing because of the Gulf Stream pushing plankton rich waters into them. The heritage of the area is Catholic. The climate of the area is mild. It is called the “Coast of Death” because of the rocky shorelines and there are many lighthouses there.

At the headland of the peninsula in which A Coruna sits is a UNESCO World Heritage Site,the Tower of Hercules. It is the oldest lighthouse in the world, built by the Romans in the year 98 AD. Most of it was rebuilt in the 18th century.

Our excursion took us to Santiago de Compostela. This is the church that the pilgrims end their walk when they do the Camino. It contains the remains of the apostle James. Unfortunately for us it was a very rainy and cold day. Our guide gave us the history of the Camino, but we did not see any of the people walking because of the weather. In order to get the certificate to prove you have completed at least 100 km walking or 200 km biking you have to have a special passport stamped at certain churches along the way.

The highlight of the day was finding a pharmacy and buying a heating pad. Sore backs are now happy.

After boarding our ship, Silversea Silver Dawn yesterday, May 2, we sailed for our first stop, Porto, Portugal.

The seas were a little rough over night, but we were still tired from our travel and then day in Lisbon we were both able to sleep well. We did have one adventure on the first night aboard. We had brought a heating pad because of our elderly bodies needing one on occasion. I accidentally used the wrong connection to plug it into the wall and that resulted in sparks and blowing out half the lights in our cabin. The heating pad was toast and the ship’s engineer was able to restore our lights. We had done something similar many years ago in Sydney, I guess some mistakes happen again.

The port for Porto is Leixoes and is about 45 minutes away from the city center. It is the largest harbor in Northern Portugal. The main industry in this area is fishing and tourism. The Portuguese eat a lot of fish, being the largest fish consuming country at 60 kilos per person annually. Most people around the world consume only about 20 kilos per capita. The fish that the Portuguese mostly consume is codfish, but it is not fished locally, but is imported from Norway.

The Porto area is the only area in Portugal that does not produce wine. It is famous for port wine, but that is made elsewhere and is aged in Porto. There is a whole elaborate network of credentials that have to be adhered to for wine to be declared as Port.

Our excursion has us touring the Stock Exchange Palace, which is now used for city offices. It was built from 1842 to 1909. The building is very elaborate.

We next went to Saint Francis Church. It was built on the ruins of a convent. Apparently Saint Francis has 3 different orders. One is for priests, one for nuns and one for lay people who want to do charitable work. The church we went to was for the 3rd order.

We next walked down to the Douro River and we had some time to walk around and then we had a snack stop with a glass of Port wine and one of the yummy Pastel de Nata cakes.

Our last stop of the day was at Saint Benedict Train Station. The interior is covered with more of the beautiful blue and while tiles. These actually are murals and very interesting to see.

One fact that our guide was very much intent in telling us was that Napoleon tried to invade Portugal 3 times but failed because of the long alliance Portugal had with the United Kingdom.

The weather was mostly cloudy, and we did get intermittent showers.

We had very rough seas when we sailed and the prediction of a rainy day the next day.

We left Fort Myers around 4:30 PM on April 30 heading to Lisbon through Philadelphia. Our first flight was on time and after a quick dinner in Philadelphia we were on our flight to Lisbon. We arrived in Lisbon about 30 minutes early and after customs got our bags and were transferred to our hotel in the central part of Lisbon’s old town.

We were able to use the hotel spa to freshen up and we were off. A quick lunch and then we met our private tour guide, Sara. We had booked a 3 hour walking tour and we did walk. We visited many of the different areas in Lisbon. She explained the different characteristics of the various neighborhoods and how they came to be over the years.

The city was 90% destroyed on November 1, 1755 by an earthquake and then a tsunami. This allowed the city to be developed with a more modern plan with streets that were in a grid like pattern. The streets are narrow but straight.

The sidewalks are made of white limestone and black basalt tiles and are intricate in design. Many of the buildings are covered in tiles as decoration. Most were blue and white.

Lisbon’s current population is around 600,000 but the metropolitan area has around 3 million residents. To live in Lisbon is very expensive so most of the people live outside the city and across the river.

Sara was able to give us a very extensive education about the history of Lisbon from the time of the Phoenicians through the world wars and then explained how they became a democracy in 1974.

One of the stops we made was to sample the special pastry Lisbon is famous for, Pastel de Nata. It is phyllo pastry filled with custard and it is yummy.

We climbed many of the hills that make up the old town area and learned a great deal about Lisbon and Portugal.

After an early dinner we crashed.

Bette tried to keep a list of all the animals we saw. The spelling may not be correct.

Baboons with babies

Lions – females with cubs, huge group hunting, males, males with females keeping other males away

Thompson gazelle

Elephants – huge herds, lots of small groups, one memorable time with a 2 week old that the females protected

Zebra – huge herds, migrating with the wildebeest

Cape buffalo – huge herds

Wildebeest- one day we estimated there were 10s of thousands, pictures can not describe what we saw, they were migrating along with the zebra also in the thousands

Hippos – huge pool with literally hundreds, small water areas with some, even saw a few out of the water to include one on the way to our balloon ride that was in the road

Topi – big antelope

Warthog

Silver backed jackal

Ostrich – both the colorful males and the drab grey females

African white hooded vultures and several other types

Spotted hyena

Eland – the biggest antelope in Africa

Cokes hartebeaste

Serval cats – saw them 2 times very hard to do

Tony eagle

Impala – identified by a “m” on their butt

Rock Hyrex

Masai giraffe

Black faced vervet monkey

Crocodile

Black bat jackal

Cheetah and 3 cubs – saw once on the side of the road and a second time from our balloon

Leopard – we had 5 amazing spotting of these very elusive animals

Agama lizard

Secretary birds

Egyptian goose

Black heron

Yellow billed stork

Banded mongoose

Botha reedbock

Brown snake eagle

Waterbuck

Leopard turtle

Martial eagle

Grant’s gazelle

Flamingo

Masai ostrich

Sedo billed stork

Crowned cranes

Kori bustard

Blue monkey

Red billed hornbill

Mongoose

Eastern goshawk

Cattle egrets

Southern ground hornbill

Fish eagle

Crowned plover

Hadada ibis

Brown snake eagle

We may not have been able to get a photo of each one, but are amazed at all we saw.

First, our lodge is very different. The main lobby and dining area is built around a huge baobab tree. It is all open facing the pool and waterhole. The rooms are spaced very far apart and are built next to or touching baobab trees. The rooms are framed with wood but the walls are all screens. You have to climb a spiral staircase to get to the room. At night they close a trap door at the top to keep “visitors” out. Unfortunately it did not work for Jennifer and Sunny they had a mouse visit every night. The fist night it opened the cookie jar and the second it knocked over the water bottle. Not the animal excitement they were looking for.

This day we had a full day game drive to a different area of the park. It was along a beautiful lake that ran for miles. We saw lots of zebra, Cape buffalo and huge herds of elephants. There were also many beautiful birds.

We then had another bush lunch and headed back to the lodge. We need to tell you that the lunches prepared by the lodges were amazing. They usually had 2 different meat dishes, several salads, fruit and of course dessert. We had expected sandwiches and chips and were very surprised and pleased.

When we arrived back at the lodge we had some elephants at the waterhole.

For our final evening we had dinner in the boma with Richard joining us. It was a fabulous end to an amazing trip.

This was our wake up call the last morning. Right next to our treehouse.

We have now started back. Jennifer, Sunny, Jacob and Abby are off to Zanzibar for a few days. Bob and Bette back home.

It was truly a wonderful, eye opening trip. We saw so much and learned quite a bit about Tanzania.

We left the crater area and were on our way to Tarangire National Park. On the way we stopped at a fabulous shopping gallery with all kinds of native and traditional goods. There were wood carvings, beaded goods from the Masai, copper goods, cloth, art and Tanzanite. We had an enjoyable half hour buying some things for ourselves and to bring back as gifts.

Then we were off to Mto Wa Mbu village for a guided walk. We met our two guides and we were off. They said that they live “the banana life”. We walked through the banana plantation and they told us about how they use every part of the banana. We then went to an art school. We saw the village school, which was out for the month of June for vacation. This school looked like they really were teaching the young people, unlike the Masai school which did not look like much education happened in it. We stopped at the local tavern for banana beer, we did not try it because it looked like we might get tummy issues if we did. We then went to the local market and walked and saw what was being sold. The people of this village grow most of their food and the vegetables on display were very good looking. We had some very interesting conversations with our guides. They asked questions about our lives and it was difficult to tell them about the excess of our lives in comparison to theirs. When we talked about the houses in the village we were told that the first one you build is a mud and stick house, followed by a mud house and finally if you save enough you might build a block house. It was hard to say we lived in the type of homes we do with water, electricity and all the other amenities we take for granted.

Then we went to lunch in the Tarangire National Park and did a game drive to our hotel. The Tarangire National Park is known as the home of two giants – the baobab tree and the huge herds of elephants. Our hotel, called Treetops was actually built on or around the baobab trees.

This day we were scheduled for 2 activities. A crater rim walk in the morning and a game drive after lunch. However at this time of year the mornings are very foggy so we did them in reverse. The road into the crater was one way and was paved with cobble stones. All of the roads we had been riding on so far were dirt. It is the only unbroken caldera in the world. It covers 264 square kilometers and is from 10 to 22 kilometers wide. It is 610 meters deep. In the center is a huge salt lake. We saw a lot of animals. Here are some photos of them.

We also saw flamingos and a rhinoceros but they were way in the distance and our pictures were not too good.

Then it was lunchtime. We went to the picnic area and used the restrooms. Then we started driving down a path that said rangers only and not to the picnic area. Suddenly there was a tent and servers and a cook. It was an amazing lunch out on the floor of the crater.

We then left the crater and came back to our lodge. We met our ranger guide and did a crater rim walk. On the way we learned about the plants, saw Masai herding their goats and cattle and had amazing views.