Prolog

Silver Whisper's main dining room was never crowded even with the ship at capacity. There were 350 or so revenue passengers and 300+ crew members in this 28,000 ton, 610 foot long ship. Picture taken from my favorite "two top" table, #18, which is at a starboard side window on Deck 4.

Friday - 30 May 2014 - Boulder, Colorado, USA

It's two weeks from the day we arrived home from the month long, two ship cruise journey. As with each of our wonderful trips, there's always some recap to share the lessons learned.

Here's the one for this trip:

1. Planning for two nights in the cruise's embarkation port makes for much less anxiety all around, and it provides for some local exploration and nice meals, even if it's only Fort Lauderdale. I had always done this for distant cruises before, but now I'm convinced it's a good idea for any cruise.

2. Two ship cruises are fun, especially with a couple of nights stay in a new and interesting city between ships, but maybe if there's a next time it should not involve a transit air flight between cruises. Flying spoils the rhythm of the trip and no matter how smooth the flight goes, it's no longer fun to fly.

3. A long cruise is super, but you don't really want a port a day especially on the latter half. We exhausted ourselves exploring just about every stop on this trip. The ship's excursions can never provide the depth of experience that individual exploration can. But you must do a bunch of pre-trip research to get the most out of each stop. Ya get what you "pay" for.

4. Comparing two ships of the same cruise line certainly brings out even modest shortcomings of the  lessor one. The 550 passenger Silver Spirit can not ever come close to the quality of the food and service than even the "only" 382 maximum passenger Silver Whisper provides. The extra 100 or so crew members make for an additional level of bureaucracy, loss of personal attention, and weaknesses creep into the vessel's physical design details. The latter is true at Silversea especially where there was an attempt to design Spirit to be essentially equal in experience in all details. Didn't and couldn't really happen.

5. It's pretty scary when you realize that the wine tasting offerings in Bordeaux's wine museum are no match for the all inclusive daily pours on your cruise ship, and the executive chef is from Bordeaux and knows how to grill a foie gras steak really well.   

All I Knew About Cherbourg Was a Pretentious Film About Rain or Something

Little Cherbourg was not impressive as we docked at the venerable passenger terminal pier, the departure point of many ocean crossings during the first half of the 20th Century

No, no, it's really Silver Whisper we've come on

Cotentin Peninsula seaside towns were really lovely from the tour bus

The tour guide was a more precise driver than historian as we transited a small town on the way to the "second largest lighthouse in France."

All the statistics of this lighthouse were inspired by the calendar, or so it seemed

Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue's name was inspired by a 1692 battle. This oyster village's harbor was the first to be freed by allied forces in 1944.

I want the rabbit chopped liver. 

St-Vaast's major product for sale

Downtown Cherbourg was pleasant enough for a short walk

Sweet breads with cream is today's special at this Cherbourg cafe

These ramps and nearby terminal were used by trans-Atlantic passenger steamers including the Titanic on its only stop in France. Note Silver Whisper at left choosing to use its own ramp (with elegant astroturf carpet).

Thursday - 15 May 2014 - Cherbourg, France

Shortly after boarding Silver Whisper in Lisbon we were advised that the St. Malo port call had been cancelled due to "a damaged pier". Cherbourg would be substituted for today, the last day of the cruise. A quick look at the map indicated that while the distance from Bordeaux to Cherbourg was similar to the distance to St. Malo, the crossing from Cherbourg to Southampton would be considerably less from this stop. So we were now going to Normandy instead of Brittany and might stay a bit longer in port. 

With an early 7 am arrival, the timing was as expected. The town looked mighty underwhelming, and the now 11 pm departure from Cherbourg would allow for a morning tour and plenty of time to pack for disembarkation the next morning as well as to visit the town before sailing. See, I still plan when I'm on a cruise. It's just very linear.

We blew the rest of our on-board credit on a morning excursion of the Cotentin Peninsular, the protuberance of "Lower Normandy" that is in the North of France and actually further north than the British Isle of Jersey. Before boarding the tour bus, we noticed an alarming sign and hoped that Silver Whisper was not being confused with a ship that had sailed out of this very pier 102 years and some weeks earlier. 

During the drive through the lovely Normandy seaside, the tour guide/bus driver regaled us with an alternative history of the Battle of Hastings, clearly at a different place than the one Barbara and I visited a couple of years ago in England. The winner was the same, but the details of the war were very different. No matter, the lovely French accent and the excesses of the previous evening made it easy to nap on the bus.

We did pass through some lovely seaside towns and made a detour off the main road through a small town that tour buses were not really designed for in order to stop at a very large lighthouse. The guide explained that there are "365 steps to the top, like the days in the year; 12 stories, like the months in the year; and you can see the light from 7 kilometers out to sea, like the days in the week", or maybe it was 52 kilometers, like the weeks in the year, or maybe 57 kilometers like the degrees in a radian. I forgot already. At any rate, such time wasting "photo stops" do not bode well for the rest of the tour. But after "looking up" at the lighthouse, things looked up. 

After another half hour or so of farms and sea landscapes we stopped at the fishing village of Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue. This is the location of a great amount of oyster farming. We didn't see the oyster farms from the shore, but we saw lots of authentic looking fishermen and a bunch of tourist oriented expensive food shops as well as fish markets featuring the town's major product. 

We returned to a narration of the history of Cherbourg which included mention of the overrated 1964 movie and learned that Cherbourg had the "largest man made harbor in Europe" (due to a set of very long manufactured sea walls.) The town had apparently not fared well during WW II, the harbor and associated navy base being a choice target for the Allies. No mention was made of the famous beaches of Utah and Omaha which were just a short distance south of Saint-Vasst. Guess this tour was not the guide's major gig. Perhaps he was better versed on St. Malo.

Returning to Cherbourg we had lunch and packed as planned and headed into town for a nice walk. The town was nice enough, what little of it there is. We passed a cafe promising a special of sweetbreads in cream sauce. Sure beats what seems like the world wide touristic fare of mojitos and pizza we've seen advertised everywhere else we've been. The French have very high standards in theirs as well as others behavior.

We walked back through the docklands to Silver Whisper for the last time on this cruise in time for cocktails and stopped to admire the actual ramps used by Titanic on its first stop after leaving Belfast on its only journey. (Silver Whisper's crew decided to employ the ship's own ramp instead. Maybe a superstition thing.) This dock was the last one of Titanic in France, of course, but also of our cruise as we arrived in Southampton pre-dawn the next morning and returned to Boulder the same (long) day.

Another UNESCO World Heritage Site or You Can't Spit Without Hitting a Chateaux

The area around Bordeaux produces many well known wines. Through the guide's thick accent I believe she said the red area on the map is for red wine, the yellow for white wine, and the other colors for bad wine. Maybe I misheard her.

Typical St. Emilion vineyard 

Theme Park St. Emilion

St. Emilion is on a hillside. That got them extra credit with UNESCO.

Bring on the tourists, the brie is running

Modest chateaux

Many of the vineyards are worked by hand. Note the guy outstanding in his field.

The St. Emilion street had a number of the macaroon shops for which St. Emilion is also famous. Really. 

We came across this work site in front of a church

Quelle surprise when we discovered they were digging up human remains with that backhoe. 

Historic wine museum along the Bordeaux wharves

Side street in Bordeaux

Silver Whisper at its Garonne River berth 70 miles from the North Sea

The ever changing view on our porch as we sailed out of Bordeaux

Doesn't everyone have foie gras appetizers in France?

A modest dairy free dessert

Brand new lift bridge, uh lifted, so we could sail out of Bordeaux

Tuesday - 13 May 2014 - St. Emilion and Bordeaux

After a night at the pier in downtown Bordeaux we decided to spend down our surprise on-board credit on a ship's excursion to St. Emilion, some hour away from downtown and not readily accessible by public transit. The tour's guide pointed out on a map the various wine producing areas around Bordeaux. Medoc and Pomerol are but two of these. I think she said that St. Emilion is famous for producing grapes that are somehow a blend of Cabernet and Merlot. Maybe I got that wrong as I was distracted by counting the familiar "chateaux" as we passed by them. Of course, in France the world chateaux means any building that serves as the headquarters for a wineyard. So some chateaux were made of cement blocks. 

You can see instantly why St. Emilion is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. There's old medieval lookout towers, narrow streets that go up and down the hillside that the town is built on, and the surrounding vineyards look like they are just for show. (With the market for French wines on a decided downturn and many of the wine magazines talking French wines down, for a while some might be.) We walked for miles in and around St. Emilion and the nearby countryside and returned to Bordeaux too early to do some wine tasting at the wineyards, our only regret. 

As sailing was not until 6 pm, Barbara and I couldn't resist walking more around downtown Bordeaux. This time we explored some lovely (and oddly enough very French looking) side streets. We even visited the Bordeaux Wine Museum. This basement (they call it cellar, of course) display area is in a former "chateaux" as all the wineries were really downtown adjacent to the wharves, not in the fields as now. We learned about the rich history and currently the not so rich business of French wine making, but actually we had come for the wine tasting at the museum which was included in the price of admission. The former was better than we expected, and the latter was adequate. Guess we've been spoiled by most of the wines on Silversea.

We took another longish walk on the Garonne waterfront and returned to Silver Whisper to enjoy the sail out under the very new center lift bridge. The ever changing view on the 5 hour transit to the sea from our suite's ledge was most enjoyable. At dinner we enjoyed small (?) foie gras appetizers, and I ended the meal with some very serious dark chocolate somethingorother the chef had prepared. He was in a very good mood as being from Bordeaux he was able to see his family earlier in the day. Can't say I remember the rest of the meal.

Bordeaux is another "can return without problem" destination. After a sea day tomorrow, we would stop at the last port call on this cruise--but not where we had originally planned.

Up the Garonne Without any Foie Gras - First Day in Bordeaux

Modern Tram Line at Cathedral Square, Bordeaux 

Typical downtown tourist district in Bordeaux. The round shopping center at the end of this street had free WiFi and clean toilets. Good to know for the world travelers we are.

The electric trams operate with no overhead wires to block the view in beautiful Bordeaux. I wouldn't suggest straddling the median and one of the tracks.* 

Knock-out fountain commemorating the businessmen of the French revolution. Looks like they were a curious group of guys.

Detail of fountain showing snot squirting horses. I chose not to show the naked ladies and their emissions.

Botanical gardens were once a palace grounds

French contemporary office building just outside of the historical area of Bordeaux

Nice view from our suite

Nicer view from the stern of the ship

Monday - 12 May 2014 - First Day Bordeaux, France

Predawn the Silver Whisper docked at Bordeaux. We had sailed the 70 miles up the Garonne River from the Atlantic since 1 am. This explained why the captain was not available to buy us dinner the previous night. The Hotel Director, Norman, was an excellent host. I told him he had beat out the Cruise Director for dinner, and he agreed we had made a wise choice: something about who is responsible for the housekeeping of our suite.

Bordeaux is one beautiful city. There's more museums than you can shake a wine glass at, there's lovely neo-classical architecture all over the place, great public squares, and many well tended parks (not so common in other cities in France: well tended parks, not parks) and even a knock-out botanical garden were all walking distance from the ship's pier which was right in the middle of town. A very weird (read French) fountain was worth a special trip with its nymphs, naked ladies, strange guys, and a bunch of snot squirting horses.

Il ne peut pas faire mieux que cela.

Two of the main tram lines were right outside the gangway. So, of course we bought an all day tram and bus ticket. We spent the entire day exploring this beautiful city on foot and tram.

We took rides through some modern districts (with very French contemporary architecture), hiked through the gigantic gardens, and went up and down the river promenade. The view from our balcony was fantastic, and the view from the Panorama Lounge at the stern of the ship was even better.

The next day we were going to the wine country.

*The Bordeaux tram system is actually safe. A unique Surface Collection System, called APS in French, indeed uses a third rail placed between the running rails for the parts of the tram routes not power via an underhead catenary, but the lethal power "3rd rail" is only turned on when it is under the tram, according to Siemens, the manufacter. Specifically, the ground level center power is divided electrically into eight-meter segments with three-meter neutral sections between. Each tram has two power collection skates, next to which are antennas that send radio signals to energize the power rail segments as the tram passes over them. At any one time, no more than two consecutive tram covered segments are live. 

I Know Why Most People Come to Bilbao, But My Mission Was Different

Safety Officer, Captain, Local Harbor Pilot, and Staff Captain on starboard bridge wing, but only the captain gets to drive

We were honored with two simultaneous dinners with officers

Suburban Bilbao was kind of lovely 

Downtown Bilbao was OK 

No contemporary architecture other than on the riverfront in downtown Bilbao 

Perhaps Frank Gehry's greatest design

Can't say what kind of drip is being depicted

Contemporary art is in the eyes of the artist, at least

The wonderful Vizkaia Transporter (hanging) Bridge

Pretty view of the Nervion Estuary as we sailed out of Bilbao

Not everyone on the ship wants to enjoy the view. Perhaps they were tweeting their excitement

Sunday - 11 May 2014 - Bilbao, Spain

In very Northeastern Spain, Bilbao is the cultural and commercial capital of the Basque country. We arrived in fog and drizzle as Captain Luigi glided Whisper into the scenic berthage at the mouth of the Nervion River. The itinerary of Silver Whisper dictated that the visit here be shortened by a 3 pm departure. This left Barbara and me as independent explorers with a very tight schedule to see what we had come for. Tonight would be the last formal night on board, and I guess we were so important that we had been invited to two different officer's tables for the same dinner. (This was resolved quickly as the Cruise Director acknowledged that, "One Hotel Director beats a Cruise Director plus a Staff Captain". We had a winning hand, he said". The Captain was not available as he was retiring early for tomorrow's very early transit of the Garonne River to Bordeaux).

The ship having been made clearer or something by those authorities who seemed to beat us to each port, we headed out on the first shuttle bus to downtown Bilbao. The foggy suburban street scenes were very lovely, giving us some hope that Bilbao would be an architectural gem. Well, Bilbao was ok, not fantastic for its street scenes. I did my best to get a couple of nice "framing shots."

We had to make the obligatory visit to the stunning Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim Museum. The museum was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by King Juan Carlos I and has not only become a "must see" tourist destination but according to the guide book has transformed somewhat bland Bilbao to a wonder of contemporary civic design. That means weird street art, a large dog adorned with flowers but enshrouded in scaffolding during our visit, for example, and of course a brand new cable stay bridge, among other distractions.

The UNESCO designated World Heritage Site (!), Bilbao Guggenheim, like its counterparts in other cities around the world houses permanent and rotating contemporary art exhibitions. You never know what you'll see with contemporary art, but you can be sure that they will be the subject of snide comments. Make your own conclusions from the handful of pictures attached to this entry.

Oddly enough we enjoyed the Guggenheim--it's really very well done--and unlike its sister in New York City it integrates the exhibits with the very quirky architecture of the building. We stayed a lot longer than we had expected and hit the next return shuttle bus to the ship quickly to enjoy the view from our suite's shelf as the weather was clearing up. (That means in the Bay of Biscay that the rain has kind of let up and the fog isn't too dense.)

Now I could accomplish my primary mission for booking this cruise. I really wanted to see the Vizkaia Transporter Bridge. This "puente colgante" was the very first of these wonders of late 19th Century/early 20th Century engineering when all problems seemed to be solvable by iron. A cross between a suspension bridge and a ferry, this 1893 innovation was the first of its kind and now one of the only three still operational. (The others are in Middlesbrough, England and Newport, Wales). The Bilbao one is the only transporter bridge in daily operation and runs every 8 minutes throughout the day. You can just make out the 80 foot long bus-like structure hanging just over the water line that is essentially a suspended ferry deck. It's hanging just a few feet above the water, mid-river on its journey across the Nervion.

We sailed out promptly at 15:00 as Barbara and I enjoyed the view the bridge framed by the lovely bay and some of our fellow guests decided that keeping in touch was more important.

Do Your Research Before Visiting a Siderias, or Can You Teach an Old Town New Tricks

Silver Whisper appeared to be berthed in Oman

A shuttle bus ride from the ship to downtown Gijon along a very substantial sea wall

Decaying coal loading equipment but a modern harbor control tower indicated some activity at the port

Gijon is reinventing itself to be a vacation resort despite iffy weather on the Bay of Biscay

Appealing beaches have generated condo development in Gijon

Quiet early morning streets in Old Town, Gijon

Cool railroad museum preserving rich mining history of the region

Narrow and wide gage mining train locomotives

Extensive rail yard with fascinating equipment on display

Locals enjoying the cider but not planning to do much work afterwards

Saturday - 10 May 2014 – Gijon,  Spain

As we docked at the port El Musel we knew that Gijon would most likely not make the UNESCO World Heritage Site designation. There was nothing but sand. The Tour Desk Manager was already out on the pier when those pesky authorities finally pronounced the ship clear (of what I don’t know). This travel expert had never been to this port before and said that he thought we were in Omen.

The shuttle bus ride to the nearby town of Gijon was not auspicious either, but we were still hopeful.  But then we rode for miles along a huge seawall. Guess the old Bay of Biscay can get a bit rambunctious. Along the way we read that this northeast area of Spain is actually, “The Principality of Austurias”, an autonomous community within this fractious country, and that the town of Gijon was nearly 3,000 years old. But as we rode into the city through the monstrous but oddly quiet dockyards, it became clear what Gijon had been all about. This was a coal mining area, and El Musel was essentially a bulk cargo port for shipping this falling out of favor fuel. The coal loading conveyors were all rusted out although some old piles of coal still remained awaiting shipment to non-EU destinations. But the economy of Gijon seemed to be hopeless.

The guide on the shuttle noticed that a few of our fellow passengers were discussing just staying on the bus and returning to the ship and announced that Gijon was seeing a renaissance, and that we should stay awhile. A renaissance, that’s what she said. Apparently, the city fathers of this ancient fishing village had decided to reinvent this port and mining town and were attempting to turn it into, “a major resort”, no doubt at great expense to the European Community and with serious loans from the world’s financial institutions.

We alighted the shuttle bus at a modern small boat mariner and were delighted to find that the waterfront was actually pretty lovely. There were nice beaches (although the Bay of Biscay in the North Sea is definitely not the Costa del Sol in temperament or weather), and there was a very nice network of lovely but undistinguished streets in the old part of town.

After checking out the nice but not unusual (hey, we had been visiting nothing but UNESCO designated places until here) old town and fort we headed back to the ship, calling the rest of the day  a “sea day with a view”. This lasted until after lunch when we decided to venture back into town. Silver Whisper was to be berthed until late, so we figured we should cast our net a bit further—touristic speaking.

After another bizarre shuttle bus ride through the huge but now familiar port, we walked a little further away from town than we had gotten earlier and located the “Austurias Railway Museum”. This little known gem is one of the better railroad museums we have visited, and we have visited a bunch all over the world during the last five years. We spent a couple of hours exploring the huge enclosed building which had been the old railway station before a modern one was built just outside of town, and walked up and back through the large rail yard full of narrow and wide gage mining rail cars, locomotives, and period passenger carriages. Turned out this was a “must see”. Except for a local family, we had the place with its clean toilets and free Internet all to ourselves.

Refreshed, so to speak, we decided to do Gijon right and visit a “siderias”. These are bars dedicated to the locally made hard apple cider for which Austurias is apparently known. Since it was late afternoon, the couple of authentic siderias(es?) were hopping. Before venturing into one of them on the now lively town square, I googled the social protocol for local cider drinking at the nearby town square’s free WiFi site and discovered the following: 1) Sidra comes only in open (!) 750 ml bottles; that’s about a quart, the same size as a large wine bottle, 2) you are expected to drink the entire bottle quickly in large gulps as “the drink oxidizes very fast”, and 3) it is customary to spit the dregs out onto the floor of the bar since the cider is not filtered.  That explained the dogs and pigeons mingling with the increasingly happy and very loud customers.

So Barbara and I regretfully passed up the cider bar and took the next shuttle bus back to the ship where we enjoyed a pleasant and more civilized cocktail in the ship’s Panorama Lounge as I hummed the theme from Lawrence of Arabia. Tomorrow we would stop in Bilbao, a port I was especially looking forward to but not for the usual reason of visiting the very popular Guggenheim.