Month: October 2025

We could have waited in a long, long queue to get on a bus that would take us in to Barcelona city, but Scamp said she knew the way to the city on foot. After a wee while I did think we might be heading in the wrong direction, so we stopped to ask directions from three police. Unfortunately we spoke almost no Spanish and they spoke no English, however using sign language we did find that we were indeed heading in the right direction.

We seemed to walk for miles, but then I began to remember taking photos of our ship, the last time we’d visited Barcelona and the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle began to slot into place.

Lots to remember about Barcelona like:

• Those polis who showed us the way in to Barcelona city.
• Walking for miles up and over a high bridge that took us into Barcelona proper.
• The red cable cars over our heads.
• Counting six ships in the dock area and ours was the smallest
• Only one ‘Monster’ on La Rambla. There are usually dozens of them eager to frighten passers by.
• Maybe the reason is that La Rambla is presently being dug up. It’s not just Glasgow that’s under reconstruction!
• We visited La Boqueria market on La Rambla. An absolutely enormous open market selling just about everything you could imagine and a few things you couldn’t.
• We had a beer each in a small square and watched a street juggler.
• I bought myself a Cagner – A good luck charm.
• Mine was a standard Cagner. It’s a model of a boy with his pants down defecating with a little jobby under his bum! Lots of other Cagners were available!
• I found a guitar maker’s shop down a side street. I dread to think how much a hand-made guitar would cost.
• We had an ice cream lolly sitting by the harbour.
• We didn’t have a ticket for the return bus, having walked to Barcelona from the ship.
• The queue to get back to the ship was really long, but help appeared.
• A very kind lady from the ship grabbed Scamp as she was passing and hauled her into the queue next to her, saying “Come here, I thought I’d lost you.”
• It wasn’t until she whispered to Scamp “We watched you dancing last night, you were great. I didn’t want you to have to go to the end of the queue. I like to do a good turn every day. You’re my good turn for today.”

Tomorrow it will all be over and we’ll be heading back home.

One of the posh trio of Cannes, Villefranche and Monaco. Cannes is famous for its Film Festival, for its glamorous and luxurious life style, with high-end hotels, boutiques, and restaurants along the promenade. It’s a long time since we were last here and it has increased in size since we we last visited. Cruise ships don’t seem to be welcomed here, although the city appears to be happy enough to take the punters’ money. So we were taken ashore on a local tender.

What we’ll remember:

• Police on motor scooters, very few police cars.
• Folk resting their bums on concrete posts. Looked like a local tradition! Who knew?
• A poshed up Barras Market with a lot of polished glass and silverware on offer.
• A wee girl running through the low level fountains that bubbled gently on the promenade.
• A “Big Panty Woman” decorative glass. Wish I’d bought it!
• Lots of opportunities for candid shots
• Folk being photographed on the red carpet of the film festival steps.
• The wooden Bandstand.
• We didn’t go on the ‘Wee Train’. We remembered a couple of years ago sitting for an hour in a wee train only to be disappointed with the boring route. Once burned twice shy.
• Back on the ship, the disinterested “Expert” dancers, Gabriella and Kevin. Aloof and didn’t want to mix with the ‘ordinary people’.

Livorno is a collection of little linked canals and parks. Big piazzas and cars that seem to go wherever they want without heeding directions. We started out taking a wrong turning and ending up on the opposite side of one of the canals and had to find a way of crossing back.
Like a lot of these small towns, we had been here before and had definite places we wanted to see again.

Here are some of them:

• Canals. Lots of canals, little narrow ones mainly with bridges every few metres.
• More Humming Bird Hawk Moths
• We finally reached the park we were looking for, only to find the gates were locked and padlocked.
• A helpful dog-walker indicated to us by hand signals and broken English that we were trying to get into a dog walking area and had to go further along to find the pedestrian gate.
• Found the proper gate and the pond with the terrapins. I was so glad they were still there.
• We saw two young sisters (?) with their mother (?) just playing in the sunshine, until a fight broke out between them. Neither of us understood what mum was saying, but we got the gist of it!
• Eventually peace reigned again.
• I’ll remember the light shining through the avenues of trees.
• That night we had elephant towel animals on our bed.

We said goodbye to Livorno in the evening and sailed off to Cannes.

We had been here a few times before and thought we knew where we were going, until we realised we were lost and had to backtrack. It seems that hardly anyone goes to Civitavecchia, most tourists are using it as a start point to go to Rome. We’d gone there on a very hot day in mid summer some years ago and been bamboozled by the guide throwing information at us for what seemed like hours. Today we were going our way.
The pronunciation of the place is Chi-veet-ah-veck-ee-ah.

Some things we liked:

• The promenade is one of Scamp’s favourite walks anywhere in the world, beaten only by the prom at Minori, also in Italy.
• A book shop where we bought interesting bits and pieces.
• The girl serving us telling us she’d been to Glencoe and wants to go back to live there some day.
• Yet more bikes. Motorbikes, pedal bikes and scooters … everywhere!
• Partly demolished buildings, painted white along a long elevated piazza.
• A cathedral across the road beautifully lit inside and out by sunlight from high windows.
• A giant hand holding a bunch of coloured pencils in the street.
• Thick glass panels set into the street to allow a view of the Roman ruins of buildings below.
• A metal tree – The edges of the leaves lit at night by light generated from solar panels.
• Weeds fascinate me. Lots of almost dried flowers growing from cracks in the street.
• Humming Bird Hawk Moths – the speed they fly at is amazing.

Tomorrow we’ll be in another old friend – Livorno.

A lovely town. We’d been there maybe twice before, many years ago. Another place with tree lined streets. The leaves were just beginning to change colour, just slightly behind the trees back home.

Thoughts about Ajaccio:

• More motorbikes!
• Lovely clean beach with clear blue water.
• A woman wading thigh high in the water while wearing a straw hat.
• Learners sailing little sail boats and being towed back after their lesson was finished.
• Smart car parked at 90º to the kerb, but taking up just as little space as some of the bigger cars.
• A private garden with exotic flowers and plants and a guard at the gate!
• Plane trees everywhere.
• Shop selling coats for cats and dogs. Scamp remembered the shop from the last time we were in Ajaccio!
• Flying witch outside a toy shop.
• Posh pedal cars for sale across the street.
• In the evening we watched, two Irish girls dancing in the Atrium.

A chance to wander round the ship. Lots of new faces and actually quite a lot more folk in general on the ship. Probably because the schools are out for the October holiday in England.

Things we’ll remember:

• Just watching the sea. Hoping to catch sight of some dolphins. None made an appearance!
• We had become visitors to The Glass House. Food was very good and we had our lunches made fresh for us.
• Watching folk doing Line Dancing from high up in the Atrium. NO, we did not take part.
• Kora La for dinner at night. It’s a paid-for restaurant. I thought it wasn’t quite as good as the last time we were on a Tui ship.

Tomorrow we head to Ajaccio – Corsica

We’d already decided to get an open topped Red Bus to take us from the ship to the cathedral, but the traffic was horrendous and I was beginning to wonder if it was such a good idea, but it was. Beautiful buildings although there were hundreds, if not thousands of folk in the cathedral and the grounds. Lots of Lookie Lookie men doing good business selling bags and other touristy stuff.

The highlights for us were:

• The open topped bus and the cool breeze it created once it was away from the main shopping areas.
• Dates growing on trees.
• Tree lined streets.
• Old wrought iron, ball shaped street lights.
• The Cathedral is magnificent inside and out.
• Stone built windmills. Mostly old and needing some care and attention, but some that looked as if they could be repaired.
• “Lookie Lookie men” everywhere.
• The pond below the cathedral with a ‘crocodile’ in it.

Tomorrow we are at sea again.

Palamos is a staging point on the GR 92 long distance footpath, which runs the length of the Mediterranean coast of Spain. It’s has narrow streets and a medieval castle.

What we’ll remember about it:

• Outdoor fruit and vegetable market.
• Quite a small town.
• An artist shop called Edelmira. Bought myself a painting pad and a sketch book.
• Lovely pastries in Cafe Casamoner.

Next Stop will be Palma where some of the friends we’d made will be leaving to go home.

We actually went to Villefranche – Sur – Mer on a tender. It used to be the case that the cruise ships would drop anchor in the bay and then passengers wishing to see the sights of Villefranche would be ferried ashore in the ship’s tenders, smaller vessels that act as a support for a larger ship, often a cruise ship. However, purpose built craft capable of carrying more passengers, more effectively are now being used instead.

Once we were ashore we headed for the train station, bought tickets and were whisked away along the coast for four stations to Monaco. With our prior knowledge of Monaco station we knew not to walk out on to the the road that form part of the famous F1 GP circuit. The reason being that the only way down to the town proper is a long walk down the sloping road. Instead, we took the lift down to lower exit, saving aching feet from that long walk.

Monaco is a bit of a let down. Almost all the shops are shut until late afternoon and although there are quite a few petrol guzzlers around the Casino, we weren’t all that interested. We’d done it all before and were impressed then, but now not so much. We could have stopped to have an overpriced coffee in one of the roadside cafes, but instead, we went back in the train to Villefranche, then caught a boat back to the ship.

Things we’ll remember:

• Mr Top Hat!
• Morning Glory flowers that lined our path to the station.
• Lantana flowers. Brightly coloured flowers that seem to grow everywhere in the Mediterranean.
• The boat trip to and from Villefranche
• Two show-offs on jet powered surfboards.

PoD just had to be Mr Top Hat.

We were docked in Piombino, a town neither of us had heard of before today. Across from us were what looked like a some abandoned industrial buildings. Lorries that looked like toys from our vantage point in the ship were constantly offloading rubble onto ships. Not the scenic delights we were expecting. However, once we’d taken a free coach to the town, we realised this was a quiet and elegant little town.

What we’ll remember:

• The heat! And this from the man who thought, before he left UK, that he might need a couple more layers because, well, it was October!
• Bumping into an Indian family while we were checking out an open air market. This happened to us quite often!
• In that same market we found an English man selling tables of forks and knives from a market stall.
• Kids zooming about on electric scooters.
• Bruschetta served on a wooden plate outdoors from a restaurant.
• Washing down the food with an Aperol Spritz for Scamp and a lemon flavoured local beer. Sounds awful, but was really refreshing.

PoD was a view down a narrow lane looking out to sea. Lots of narrow lanes in these small towns. Check the street lights.

Tomorrow we’re heading to Monaco home of the Rich and Famous.