Trip Day 13 B - 4th of July

Part B

Yes, today is the 250th birthday of the USA. James and I have very fond memories of the 200 years celebration when we lived in Fort Lee NJ and had the whole skyline of Manhattan out of our living room. Oh yes….

It is Saturday which does not really make a difference when you are on vacation and on a ship but the crew was very much into “helping us to celebrate “.

But first, when I looked out of our cabin window, I saw that somebody else already had celebrated … and unfortunately littered. 

The maid had also left an “artwork” on our bed while we were in Salamanca. 

The ship was “sailing” the whole afternoon so we decided to get comfortable, take advantage of the complimentary bottle of bubbly we had found in our room on arrival and I tried to do some catch-up on blogs. It is not easy to stay current. And it gets very difficult when too much time passes. That's why I like writing our blogs: sorting all our wonderful experiences.

The landscape going past was very nice and it looked so peaceful. Sometimes we saw houses and sometimes estates. And sometimes we pointed out “Look, a fixer upper! How about it?” We had fun.

The crew had also decorated the lounge and we were asked to come earlier to the port talk. We were all standing up and singing the national anthem. 

They also had prepared an USA cocktail. 

I must say that they try very hard for the meals to be very special every time. We get a menu the night before. Breakfast and dinner is always buffet. Dinner main course has usually 3 choices and we are asked to choose the evening before. We get a button (red for beef, blue for fish etc etc) to bring to the meal and put in front of us on the table. Quite well organized. 

Sorry, Kim, lost the dinner menu for this day. I can't remember what  mine (above) was but it was very good. Could those green vegetables be edamame?

James had opted for vegetarian pasta this time. He liked it.

We are docked and can go for a walk. 

It is a tiny little village, there is a party going on at the park on the river with some already asleep in the grass, and we walk past a dog sleeping in the middle of the street and some cats. 

We thought we could walk a circle back to the ship but at the main intersection didn't see where to continue so just turned around. In America we would probably call this country living. I think we were told that the village had 28 houses. We were also told that there are quite a large number of houses in the country side which get abandoned because younger people want to move to the big cities, even though in cities like Porto and Lisbon the rent is astronomical.

Entertainment tonight was Bingo Portuguese style. Just learned the rules at our church's bingo evening recentlyand now learned new. 

Hope you all had a fun 4th of July day too. Night, night!

(PS: I think by now you know noticed that there was a time laps blogging. This one and the previous were almost all done. The next days have not been started. I will try my best soon. For James and me and all who enjoy them. And soon you will find out what happened too. I am not ready to put that "on paper".)

Trip Day 13 A - Salamanca Spain

Saturday July 4 - Part A

Today we are driving into Spain to Salamanca. The green group leaves in the bus at 8:30 am. After a couple of hours we have a stop.

The countryside looked mainly like this. It seemed to be lacking water. 

At about 11:30 am we had exited the bus, had our whispers ready and listen to the local guide. The main topic and buildings to visit was the Univercity of Salamanca, founded in 1218, it is the oldest institution of higher education and the fourth oldest globally. Very impressive!

It never fails. A wedding was going to be happening in this church.

We had a peak through the open door and ...

... waited for the bride.

The Plaza Mayor, a very impressive place.

And right there was our restaurant where we were going to have lunch. Sara had asked us the day before what our choice of meal would be. 

My starter was Poached egg with garlic prawns, potato chips and ali oli. It would have been really great if it had been bread instead of potato chips which were hard and didn't pick up the lovely sauce and runny egg yolk.

The main course we both had was Iberian pork tenderloin with pistachio, apple and goat cheese. I was very happy with mine and decided that I needed to let Maren's friend Pia know about this combination. James was not quite so happy because he said one of his two pieces was very hard. Mine melted in my mouse. (Iberian pork comes mainly from wild black pigs which eat nothing but acorns which gives their meat a lovely taste.)

The dessert was Santiago almond cake with white chocolate and salted caramel ice cream. 

Then we had some freetime and walked slowly towards the meeting point to walk to the bus. But on the way to the restaurant we had seen briefly this stork's nest on top of this church. I wanted to find it again and take a photo. We saw lots of storks all over from the bus between Portugal and Spain.

The cathedral was the meeting point. 

We were told to find some carved figures at the pillars on the left side of the doors. Found the astronaut ...

... and the Whimsical Figure which is a combination of dragon eating ice-cream with a head looking more like a lion. The figures were added during the 1992 restoration. It is actually a combination of two cathedrals, one from the 12th century and a new one from the 16th-18th century. 

While we were sitting in the shade waiting for our leader (since we are not really shoppers) we watch these (probably) students setting up and making music. Quite nice. 

The bus ride back was very nice too but hard to take photos of the beautiful landscape. It was quite hilly and curvy. To see Salamanca in Spain was another good experience. Now back to the boat (eh, ship!).