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Today it was my turn to start my unpacking.

It was pretty much a rerun of yesterday. I also began cutting out some of the deadwood in the photos I’d taken. Lightroom didn’t help. It started putting photos in the wrong sections of the computer. It has happened occasionally in the past and I did manage to get most of the images back in their proper place again. There are reports of this happening all the time in the Lightroom blogs. They concentrate on bringing out new whizzo topics, but don’t go back and solve the problems that are still there from Lightroom 6. Annoying.

Anyway, I think we’re getting there with tidying up the physical room. It’s much easier than working with the digital version.

Today’s PoD is again in St Mo’s. This time it’s a narrow channel that was designed and dug to provide cover for waterfowl and it works really well. I liked the sky.

Tomorrow will probably be another version of today!

I suppose we could have gone for a walk through the town, but our hearts weren’t really in it.

However, Scamp had a plan. We’d go up to “The Glass House”, have a coffee there and read for a while. That would allow those who were leaving early to have breakfast. Then when the bizz had gone, we would go down and have our breakfast. We had to be out of the cabin by 10am anyway, so wandering around the ship was fine for an hour or so.

As it happened, it was a boring day. Too much time on our hands and all day to do nothing. The good thing about it was that our ship card was still valid until we checked out at about 5pm, so we could have as much to drink and eat as we wanted … we just didn’t want to.

We said a few goodbyes to folk who we knew and were staying on for another week and then as the time ticked away, we got organised, checked out and picked up our cases. As usual, everything went like clockwork.

Through security and an absolutely beautiful slab pizza. Meat based for me and veggie for Scamp. It was so good I thought of going back for another one!

After landing and picking up our cases in Glasgow, Scamp phoned our taxi and by the time we got to the pickup place he was pulling in to the kerb.

Back home we could relax after a long, long day.

Tomorrow will be washing day!

PoD was the view from the terminal at Palma. Nice sunset!

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.