Much of today was going to be spent cruising the rivers to our next destination.  But the morning was an opportunity to explore more of the city of Bordeaux.  We had a guided tour through the old section of town, and the main town square.  The highlight was the Quinconces Fountain. The monument and park were erected to memorialize the Girondists who played an important role in the beginnings of the French Revolution. No history lesson forthcoming, other than to say somehow they ended up on the wrong side of the political wave at the time and were wiped out to start the Reign of Terror portion of the Revolution.

Our little band strolled through the city, the city square and down Catherine Street which is the longest pedestrian-only sh opping street in Europe.  I’d love to say it was a long stretch of charming shops, and there were a few cute ones along the way (mostly pastry and bread shops), but it is more like and open-air, modern day shopping mall replete with the requisite chain stores.

We looped down a small side street to the old city gate, then past the Bourse and water mirror.  I had been down here on our first day to get those wonderful night shots of the fountain and Bourse.  Today, there was all sorts of activity in the fountain! Children, parents, teens, dogs were all splashing through the water cooling off on a hot summer day!

Then back to the boat for lunch and settling in for a relaxing afternoon of cruising up the Garrone River to the Giron estuary, then down the Giron to our next port of call, Libourne.  Most of my time was spent sitting in the lounge (editing photos and reading!).  I have to say, sitting in a comfortable chair with a lovely glass of wine, reading a good book while staring out a window with the world passing by slowly has it's attractions!  Others sat on the top sun deck, played cards, or just napped (getting over jet lag still).  Generally, a nice quiet afternoon on board ship

There were some on-board activities if someone wanted to participate. Our executive chef, Daniel and pastry chef Michael gave us a demonstration on how to back French macarons. Those are small, round morsels of pastry heaven – light airy cakes about the size of a silver dollar, sandwiched around a sweet, creamy filling. Now, I watched this demonstration, have the recipe, but I can’t see me successfully executing this recipe if my life depended on it!  Fortunately my friend Connie is a great cook and she’s going to give it a whirl when we get home.

Dinner that night was a special event – our friend Ted’s birthday replete with a tour of the kitchen by Daniel, and a surprise birthday cake accompanied by a simply awful rendition of a French birthday song by the wait staff!  As dinner was ending, we pulled into port in Lilbourne just as the sun was setting. Perfect ending to another delightful day!

All the photos from our trip through day six are under "Our Travels-Bordeaux" on my web site.

After consuming a great deal of the area’s bounty at dinner last night, we were scheduled for a field trip today to the town of C adillac and a visit to one of the chateaux that produces the region’s famous Sauterne wines.  But first we had to go through the required safety drill, with everyone evacuating to the top deck with our life jackets on.  Because we all look so fabulous in orange!  

Cadillac still has several vestiges of it’s Medieval roots, including two city gates, several sections of the city wall, and an entire street of houses from that era.  The stroll took about an hour, then back on the bus to the vineyard: Chateau Rayne Vigneau.  We passed mile after mile of rolling hills highlighted by the neat and tidy rows of grape vines, punctuated occasionally with chateaux and small villages.

We toured through the vineyard itself, learned about how the vines are grown and maintained, and how the different soil in the region will produce different types of grapes, even within the same area.  I did not know that older vines produce better grapes for wine making than do the younger ones – some of the vines are 40 or 50 years old and are still hearty producers!  To make the “sweeter” Sauterne wines, the grapes are not harvested until they are almost raison like in appearance and texture; the purpose is to allow the sugars in the fruit to concentrate in the grapes.  But, this results in less juice in the fruit, therefore it takes a lot more grapes to produce a Sauterne than other types of wine – about twice as many! That’s one of the reasons Sauterne can be more expensive than other wines – the yield per acre is much smaller.

The barrel room was interesting – above and beyond the row upon row of French oak barrels with the aging wine.  The owner of the chateau was fascinated with the birds of North America, and purchased several stuffed specimens during a visit to the US.  They are perched on top of the barrels all through the barrel room!

We had three wines starting with a very light vintage that wasn’t sweet at all, progressing to the sweetest of them – a rich golden colored 1^st Grand Class Cru.  It was almost syrupy in texture and flavor.  It also runs 90 euro (or more depending on year) a bottle!

After the tasting, back on the bus change for dinner, and another evening with our old and new friends on board the Foresti!

All the photos from our trip so far are under "Our Travels-Bordeaux"

Train travel in Europe is amazingly easy, efficient and comfortable.  We were taking the new high speed line to Bordeaux, traveling the distance in just under 2 hours.  These high speed trains are going between 200-300 km/hour and you hardly feel the movement at all.

Arriving in Bordeaux we found the taxi stand (after rolling, or rather JOLTING our luggage over the cobblestones) and hailed the first available to take us to our ship.  A smaller city without tremendous traffic problems, we arrived on the dock in only 10-15 minutes.

Let me tell you about Viking River Tours.  You'll see a lot of accolades for them in commercials and on line. Every . single . word . is .  true.  From the moment we stepped out of the cab we have felt like royalty.  Every staff member, including the ship director, captain, right through to the housekeeping and boat crew, exist to make everything about the experience top notch.

We have a stateroom (left) with a small balcony, and the room is much more comfortable and spacious than I thought - lots of room for storage and what not. 

Below was the view of Bordeaux Quai from our stateroom.

We got settled in than walked around the ship to familiarize ourselves with the layout and amenities. Our friends were here, but were napping to get over their jet lag.  Dale and I joined a short, half-hour orientation walk into the town of Bordeaux and upon our return, retired to the upper deck with a lovely glass of wine before the evening's orientation lecture and dinner

Top Sun Deck:

The evening started off with a welcome from the Ship Director, Bea, and introductions to the team that would be coordinating our various on and off-board activities for the week.  The Program Director, Dan, gave an overview of the history of Bordeaux, and the evolution of the wine making trade in the area.  He's adorable - very French and very funny!  Each night in the lounge, Dan gives an overview of the next day's program and plans.  They also provide a handout that outlines the day so everyone knows what's going on at what time. For someone like myself that is completely compulsive about timing and schedules, this is the next best thing to vacation heaven.

The Executive Chef is Daniel (with a last name that is Greek and impossibly to spell correctly from memory) and every night he will provide a preview of the dinner menu.  They have a very nice selection of options, and each evening, the "chef's recommendation" which will be a 3-course meal of regional specialities.  If Daniel wasn't a chef, he would be a stand up comic. Absolutely marvelous sense of timing and a dry-British sense of humor!

This evening, the entire group that traveled from Pittsburgh was able to share a table, and our waiter enthusiastically took our photo for us.

First night, dinner on board. Notice the multiple bottles of wine at the end of the table.  I'm going to be hungover for a week!!

There was a formal, guided tour of Bordeaux by Night offered, but I only wanted to do one thing - which involved night photography again! I wanted to get a shot of the Bourse and Water Mirror - a very famous landmark here in Bordeaux (Dale was tired and decided to pack it in for the night so I was going solo on this).  I asked the Program Manager how to get to the Bourse, and he offered to actually take me down there!  We took the tram and walked down to the Bourse area. 

This is a popular spot for obvious reasons, and the place was very crowded.  I did get a great spot, set up my tripod and began shooting away!  I managed to get what I came for as well (see below). After finishing up, I walked back to the boat, keeping my fingers crossed that I'd find the right one (easier than I thought).  Yes, it is perfectly safe for a woman to walk alone, at night, in Bordeaux.  There were people of all ages out along the riverside. Besides, I was carrying my tripod like a walking stick.  Never mess with an old broad carrying a tripod!!  :-)

Hopefully will update again tomorrow!

The tour itself was ok, but the headset used by our guide for the "silent vox" portion was lousy and we didn't get a lot out of her narrative.  Basically we were on our own and just took full advantage of that - wandering around the lily ponds and sumptuous garden outside the manor house.  The amount of work, and love of gardening that goes into maintaining the grounds must be staggering! 

We wrapped up the day with a visit to Sacre Cour on Montmartre.  This spectacular cathedral has a commanding view of Paris and is a popular spot with tourists as you can imagine.  Steps and lawn areas leading up to the top of the hill were full of people - tourists and vendors alike.  It was a bit annoying actually.  The number of "vendors" selling water and beer (yes, beer) from the cases they obviously bought at the store was astonishing.  Dale stated that it couldn't possibly be legal!  LOL!

At the end of the day, we were beat, and knew we had an early call to get to the train station the next morning for our journey down to Bordeaux.  We grabbed some sandwiches and snacks, headed back to the room and bunked in for the evening.

Next up:  Bordeaux!!

Again, all of the photos from our time in Paris can be found on my web site "Our Travels - Paris"

Started our day blissfully sleeping in and getting over our jet lag, then headed out to the Picasso Museum - one of the hundreds of smaller museums we never quite got to visit while we lived in Belgium. 

The museum is housed in a building that was once a hotel (left)

After another lovely lunch at a little out of the way sidewalk cafe, we walked, essentially from the Louvre, through the Marais district, and up to the Opera.  Most of the way was quiet and relatively unpopulated, and away from the heavy tourist areas.  Delightful to say the least.

August is vacation month in France, and many shops and restaurants close for weeks, or even the entire month as their proprietors take holiday.  I can't imagine anything like that happening back home!

The highlight of today though was our dinner cruise on the Seine.   Having a lovely dinner while watching Paris slowly roll by is a delight.  Our cruise departed at 9 pm so we were able to enjoy sunset and twilight over the river on our walk to the boat, and, of course, see the Eiffel Tower at night:

Above, the Seine looking towards Notre Dame.  The Orsay is on the right (actually the left bank), and the Louvre is partially visible on the left.

Below, well, you can probably figure that out yourself.  And yes, that is a downsized version of the Statue of Liberty!  Sort of a lousy photo actually - taken through the window of the boat.

One of the things I wanted to do this trip was apply some of my "lessons learned" from a night photography class I took last year.  I bought a wonderful, lightweight tripod for traveling and, of course, had it with me this evening.  My original goal was to get a killer shot of the Champs Elysee, but I was very disappointed with that final result (too tired at that point to really work at it), however, I was able to capture this marvelous shot of the Louvre.

One more day in Paris to go!

We took off on a direct flight from Pittsburgh to Paris last night (August 14).  I'm happy to report that our flight was totally uneventful, if a little late leaving (but right on time arrival).  Unfortunately, ours must have been the last international flight arriving in Paris this morning and our wait to clear passport control was well over an hour. But, our luggage was waiting for us, we breezed through customs (I don't even think the folks there looked at us!) and we got a cab into the city. Today is a holiday in France, so traffic was very light (for Paris) and we were in the city in no time.

After checking into our hotel we set off to re-familiarize ourselves with a city that was almost a second home to us when we lived in Belgium; we must have visited there 13-14 times in two years and have always felt so comfortable with everything here.

First stop, lunch at a great little bistro we've been to several times before and had a wonderful meal, and the best bread we've tasted in 10 years!  No one bakes better bread than the French - it just melts in your mouth.

Revitalized, we picked out a route in a fabulous little tour book we have:  Paris Walks.  We love to do walking tours and the maps and explanations of the route are some of the best we've ever used.  We had an older version when we lived here, and picked up the newest version before this trip.

To be honest, we didn't finish this one today - after 2-3 hours of walking around we had it - it had been a long couple of days - and headed back to the room for a rest.  I'm putting this together now, but we'll probably be going back out in another hour or two for dinner and to enjoy Paris after dark.  I may just need to take both my camera AND tripod for that!

A few photos from today are below.  All of the edited photos can be found in the "Our Travels - Paris" section of my web site

Above: Jardin Tuileries. This is a big, beautiful green space in the middle of Paris.  Fountains, gardens, green expanses, meticulously sculpted trees and hedges dot the landscape.  It's a favorite of both Parisians and visitors. Today, they had a large festival going on with bands, a carnival and many other activities.

One of the fun thing for kids to do is "sail" boats in the large fountains in the park.  I don't know if this little boy, left, is from Pittsburgh or not, but his boat was flying the Jolly Roger!!

Below, standing on the quai watching the boats pass by the Musee d'Orsay

The fireworks are shot from five barges in the middle of the river and make for an amazing display.  Over 3 million people gather on the banks of the river - about 2 million on the Manhattan side, the rest in Brooklyn to watch the displays.

You can see all the photos from our most recent trip to NYC, including our visits to the Bronx Botanical Garden, Brooklyn Museum and just great New York scenery under the "Our Travels: I Love New York" section of my web site.

The Adventure of Midnight the Wonder Cat

or: Moving our cat from the US to Belgium

In the summer of 2006, we were preparing for our move to Belgium. Who would have thought that most traumatic event of the move would center on our loyal feline, Midnight.

We arranged a direct flight from Dulles to Brussels in business class and were taking her into the cabin with us as one of my “carry on” allowances (remember this little factual nugget for later in the story), which was far superior to her being shipped in the cargo hold (a little extreme for an 8-pound cat I think!).  Instead of a connecting flight in a commuter jet from Pittsburgh to Washington, we were driving the first leg of our journey. 

Early on a Saturday morning we all hop in an over-stuffed rental car and head for Washington, DC.  After two days of being moved around from room to room in the house because of the  movers and packer, then being stuffed into a small carrier, taken to a strange hotel for two more days, then stuffed back into a carrier, followed by a four-hour car ride, poor Midnight was terribly confused.  Despite all, she was still hanging in there with us, sitting on my lap purring away. Little did she, or we, know the hurdles we’d be jumping over during the trip!

Hurdle #1 – check in

We arrive at Dulles:  Dale drops me and all of our stuff at the curbside check-in and goes to the car rental return station. I get to loiter around in the ticketing area, looking like a homeless person with the 7 pieces of luggage and the cat, waiting for him to join me so we can check in for the flight,

We check in at the United counter, the agent checks our paperwork, and checks all of Midnight’s paperwork (clearance from the Belgian Veterinary Commission plus, of all things, a pet visa!), collects our $60 pet-on-board fee, prints our boarding passes and confirms our seat assignments, and we head off to security.  Please remember the seat assignment part, particularly since the cat carrier must go under the seat in front of us on the plane.

Hurdle #2 - Security

Obviously the pet carrier must go through the x-ray machine, however, the live animal cannot.  So here’s the sequence picture in one long, run-on sentence:

I remove my laptop from my rolling carry-on case and from the protective sleeve and place it in a separate bin for scanning, put my carry-on bag, my purse, shoes, belt, jacket in another bin for scanning, take Midnight out of her carriers and walk through the metal detector with her squirming and freaking out, trying to keep her from clawing me to death, retrieve the carrier from the belt, get her back into the carrier (which of course she resists to the death), retrieve my laptop and put it back into its sleeve and the carry-on, put my shoes, belt and jacket back on, reorganize myself, and then run to catch up to Dale who, at this point, is half-way down the Concourse without a blooming care in the world!

It wasn’t a pretty sight.  The experienced business travelers took one look at the unfolding comedy routine being played out and moved to a completely different security line.

Hurdle #3 – the wait

We had three hours to kill before boarding time, so we headed for the United Club.  The nice people there gave me an OK to let Midnight out of her carrier as long as she was leashed, and the club wasn’t too crowded.  I found an out of the way corner for us, near the windows (I thought she might like that), and opened the carrier for her.  She was scared silly and spent most of the time hiding between two chairs, but things couldn’t be that simple.  Midnight managed to discover a way to climb under my chair – between the bottom upholstery cover and the springs.  The only way to remove her was to turn the chair upside down and pry her out; yep, making another incredible impression on business travelers world-wide.  I hope United doesn’t mind that new rip in the chair lining.

Hurdle #4 – settling in

Finally, time to board the plane.  Dale and I are just a bundle of excitement, looking forward to our overseas assignment and new experiences.  Business class boards first, so we get on the plane, head for our seats and discover: WE’VE BEEN ASSIGNED THE BULKHEAD ROW! There is NO seat in front of us for the cat carrier. Can anyone explain WHY the desk agent, after thoroughly examining our carry-on cat’s immigration paperwork and charging us the $60 fee, assigned us the bulkhead rows when we checked in THREE hours previously?

I can’t very well put Midnight in the overhead bin, so we ask the flight attendant if we can switch seats with someone.  She asks the couple in the seats immediately behind us first, and the man refused saying “I paid for these seats and THIS is where I’m sitting”.  Jerk.  A very nice couple four rows back agreed to switch so that problem was solved.  Midnight’s carrier fit very comfortably under the seat in front of us, we settled in and soon we off to the friendly skies of United.

Setting the Stage:

By the time we were airborne, our poor Midnight was totally spaced out.  Her carrier was a soft-sided but sturdy and allowed us to easily check on her, give her a little ear scratch, while still having locking zippers and snaps to keep her secure. Occasionally we’d check on her, bring the carrier onto our laps and what-not to try and comfort her.

Business class is a wonderful way to fly! In addition to actually edible food with real silverware on linen table covers and the all-you-can-drink free booze (YO!), there is plenty of leg room, and the seats recline almost to a prone level.  That makes for some comfortable sleeping on an overnight flight. So, after dinner, and a little TV, we did one final Midnight check before the cabin lights were dimmed and everyone stretched out for a long nap.  Remember this tidbit for later – darkened cabin, night flight, almost everyone sleeping.

Houdini Act

So, Dale and I are peacefully snoozing away, but I suddenly find myself wide awake, startled by a feeling that something is wrong.  I decided to check on Midnight. I raise my seat back, lower my footrest, reach down and pick up her carrier and thought “this seems awfully light” and quickly realize . . .

SHE WAS GONE!!  The carrier top snaps and zipper had been breached!  The damned cat got out of the carrier and was wandering around the cabin somewhere.  Total panic set in.

I immediately started Dale out of his sound sleep. He was baffled.  I was hysterical.

We got the flight attendant and explained what happened.  He was so cool and calm about the whole thing saying “don’t worry, this happens all the time”.  REALLY?  He gave us a couple of penlight flashlights (seriously - that’s ALL they provide?) to begin searching for the cat and understand, this cat is named Midnight for a reason. She’s ALL BLACK.  So now we have two adults, crawling down the aisles of business class on hands and knees, with penlight flashlights . . .

. . . looking for a black cat . . .

. . . in a darkened plane cabin  . . .

. . . 30,000 feet in the air

. . . at night . . .

. . . where people are sleeping.

After what seemed an eternity of unsuccessful searching, I realized that we were only about 90 minutes from landing.  I began to visualize the announcement, in three languages: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived in Brussels, but we can’t open the cabin doors until we find the Harmon’s cat who is hiding somewhere in the cabin”, or a vision of Midnight cowering somewhere in coach and jumping on the lap of some person that hates cats resulting in the individual totally spazing out mid-flight.

Suddenly I heard a man’s voice say “Here she is!”  Lo and behold, there was Midnights, just three rows up from our seats, under the feet of a sleeping woman. Poor thing was scared to death and huddled as far back under the seat as she could be.  I gave the nice gentleman a big hug of thanks, gathered up the kitty and got her back into her carrier. She seemed relieved too.

Oh – the person that found her?  The same jerk-wad that refused to trade seats with us!  Eh – he deserved the hug regardless.

Happy Ending

The remaining trip, including our drive to our new temp living quarters, was completely uneventful. Midnight quickly adjusted to her new home and surroundings and was a very happy cat again!

Post-Script

A couple years later and we are being transferred back the US, and are planning the same flight-drive logistics (in reverse) we used before.  However, we are advised that pets are no longer permitted in business or first class on United flights.  Apparently the new rule was implemented “about two years ago”, which, oddly enough, corresponds to our little episode.  Dale and I decided to call the change “the Midnight rule”!