October 11,2015

Today we are having a very nice sea day, not many waves and just being lazy. Went to the pool for a while, after breakfast, met Val and Jim, but then after an hour or so I knew I needed to get out of the sun.  So now we are on our balcony and it is in the shade, and we just ordered lunch, what a life!

OK, now going back once again. I think I left off at the Paestum Excavations.  The next day 10/02/15 we were to be in Cannes France, and once again the weather did not cooperate and because of high winds and rough seas this port was skipped.  So we had a much appreciated sea day. 

The next day was Barcelona and Ed and I had planed to go into town, as it is one of our favorite places, but again weather,,,,,, it was really raining, and the shuttle bus was $15 PP each way, so we decided we could spend $60 on something better. So we stayed on board. We looked for Irene and Bill and Ken and Claudia, as they were boarding here, but didn't see them, and forgot we were to meet Bill and Irene in Adagios as the patter posted that there was a LGBT get together up there. Any way we all got together the next day when we went to Valencia. 

So now speaking of Valencia Spain, another diapointment, when we received our tour tickets on the second segment, they informed us the tour we had booked to the beach at El Saler, had been changed, and there were no chairs or umbrellas as the concession had closed for the season, and since we had already paid for that we could cancel, so, we did, and had lunch on our balcony. And that was fortuitous as we saw Bill and Irene returning to the ship, and Ken and Claudia too, and then Val and Jim came back too, so we had the first sail away party, fun, fun.  

Next stop was Malaga Spain, we had a tour here to go up in the mountains to Ronda. This tour was wonderful, but weather was NOT. It was cold and rainy. 

We wanted to go to Ronda to see the oldest bull ring in Spain and maybe the world. Along the way we saw a lot of other things. We traveled along the Costa del Sol and then climbed up the mountains to Ronda. When we arrived it was raining and we walked about two miles in the rain to see the the Puente Nuevo bridge that cross over the river Guadalevin and the El Tajo, a gorge that separates the old part of town from the new part of town. 

We then went to the Plaza del Toros, considered the birthplace of the modern Corrida del Toros. The arena the largest and oldest in Spain also houses the Antonio Ordonez Bullfighting Museum. It was very impressive and I wish we had not been so rushed, but often these tours promise more than can be seen in one short day. 

It was then time for shopping, but once again that got skipped, as we had to go to lunch and back to the bus, it was another mile or two.