FRENCH KISSING IN MISTRAL

 Another walking tour, this time in Tournon-sur- Rhone. This is opposite Hermitage on the other bank which makes pretty expensive wines. They have something above organic in growing the grapes, nothing artificial, no machinery and only one variety of grape for red wine - syrah. It's been pretty cold here, but today we had high winds which make 5C feel like minus 1C. This is the Mistral blowing down from the Alps and is very nice when it's 40C but not so good today. While out, our guide bumped into a friend and we had a bit of kiss-kiss. She explained the etiquette. No lip touching on any part of the face, you must make the moui sound, in Tournon it's 3 kisses, (different number in other places) start on the left, although that changes in other places, too. She said that's all there is to French kisses - apparently they didn't have a word for tongue-in-mouth French kisses until about 15 years ago. It's Galoche.

Marc Seguin, the statuesque guy, is from round here and apparently invented the suspension bridge and the steam locomotive boiler. He built a suspension bridge here in Tournon in the early 1800's. When they knocked it down a few years back, they covered the statue's head with a blanket so he wouldn't witness it's destruction. When you look into it, Seguin was more of an improver than inventor. The Menai suspension bridge by Telford was earlier & Seguin had visited Stockton-Darlington to see Stephenson's Rocket before inventing an improved version.

Hope the Mistral stops soon- I would like to get out on the bike.

VIENNE

 Went for a walk with a guide around Vienne, not to be confused with Vienna. It's a small town on the the banks of the Rhone who's rulers were/are obsessed with taxing people. Brings Sadiq to mind! They had towers on all the roads to tax anyone who entered(congestion charge), the houses had beautiful stone mullion windows, some with 4, 6 or 8 panes of glass - not now, all the mullions were smashed out because they used to tax you per pane of glass, don't tell Sadiq. Parking is complicated here, different coloured boxes in the road determine the fee & how long you can park. They make more from fines than from parking charges(Sadiq already knows this)

Lots of Roman remains,

A temple to Augustus converted to a church, then restored to original. A theatre still in use as a music venue, holds at least 10,000 people.

Since they lost they lost their windows, they have taken to painting the sides of their houses, not just windows but whole panoramas.

Back on board for cheese tasting. They gave us 5 cheeses ranked in order of strength of flavour. Hadn't heard of many of them, but all nice.

LYON 2.0

 Nice easy boarding, bit of lunch, afternoon kip, set us for day 2. Not so, over indulged with cheese soufflé starter, coq au vin followed by rum baba but eaten too late to avoid the 1:30am heartburn. Combine that with further disrupted sleep, lost time change hour and early tour start - now exhausted and couped. Have to recoup with another afternoon snooze.

Tour was good, went firstly to the food market hall. Lyon is apparently famous for it's food, I really only know the potatoes. Paul Bocuse is the chef that made the food scene happen. 50 years with 3 Michelin stars - is that good? Anyway, he is immortalised on the buildings.

We had a food tasting showcasing local products. You have to be careful though, we managed to tack onto a second group by mistake, so 2 lots of wine, cheese, sausage & pork pie, all by 9:30am. Ces't la vie.

The cold & wind has been pretty brutal here especially as we didn't plan for it. We went up to the basilica around 10:30 which is situated on top of a high hill, you had to find a wind sheltered spot in the sun to be comfortable. Very busy, impossible to get inside. There is a very large marathon going with 30 thousand extra people in the centre.

That's our hotel in the middle. The locals call them the rubber, the crayon & the charcoal.

We had a wander around the old town on the banks of the Rhone. It is tightly packed, narrow roads & alleys with lots of little restaurants. As the area developed people took to building big in their back gardens, some 4-5 floors high and filling all the space between one street & the next. The entry to these blocks is through narrow alleys next to the original houses, then up spiral staircases. The houses are old & protected, so no lifts. You have to be young and fit to live in this district to climb the winding stairs up to your apartment. Being young to live here and also well off, as it's pricey, means that this district is party central as well. The alleys into these areas are blocked by secure doors & largely inaccessible to the public. Difficult to find the public ones if you don't have a guide.

ROAMIN' IN THE RHONE-IN LYON

We are off on a river cruise down the Rhone from Lyon to Marseilles. I am not sure what we are doing, but I know that Emerald will look after us. 7:40 flight from Gatwick which meant a silly-o-clock get up and a struggle around the M25 orbital. Many sections closed with "workers in carriageway" signs. I did not see any carriages, nor did I see anyone working. Frustrating to have speed limits suddenly reduced and to have to leave the road unnecessarily. As we neared the M23 turn we got repeated "junction closed" up on the electronic sign, Mr Google helped out & took us on a 5 mile detour for us to find when we actually got to the junction it was open! Oh the joys of the open road - did I get a radar speeding ticket. Who knows? 

Fast track at the airport & speedy boarding to a emergency row seat made up for it - almost. I muddled up the flight confusing it with a second Lyon flight that was delayed an hour. Spotted the error luckily before my muddle did any damage. Boarded, Captain comes on & says we are going to push back early - great, 5 minutes later he comes back on & says a few people had decided not take the flight and their baggage has to be offloaded. So we missed our take off slot and departed an hour late - not so great. 

Arrived in Lyon, it's freezing here, only a couple of hours from the Alps ski resorts and the cold air must have been falling off the mountains. 

Booked into the Radisson hotel on the 37th floor ( hey you, get off of my cloud) Lovely hotel, room and views to die for.

Went out and had drinks & savoury pancakes in a bar. Lin has Parma ham & rocket, I went for Provencale minced beef with a soft fried egg in the centre. Nice! Boarded the boat, lunch followed by a stroll along the river bank to where the Rhone & Saone meet. It's a gentrified old dock land but seems a bit run down, may be better after Easter.

REFLECTIONS ON A CRUISE

 from 40,000 feet with free internet on Singapore Air. Let's see if it can deal with blogging.

Miscellaneous thoughts in no particular order.

3000 people on ship, bit overcrowded at entertainment. Quite rewarding to see 150 people doing line dancing in the piazza with the ship rocking & rolling. Dunno about that, it's a nightmare typing up here in the bumpy air. Food service has been suspended, all staff strapped in. The spell check has been having a field day with all the mistypes.

Had a nightmare on the first day, rushed to the loo, big dump, got up & turned around. Hell of a mess getting all the poo out, and there where to put it! Linda put me right.

Breakfast with character, I like my fry up and the waiter always tried a different approach, you have to admire the expressions.

The last one's chowder in bread.

The plane is bumpy again, but eased so food service could start again. I thought, right let's get the boa flight socks on. No sooner had I got one shoe off and one sock off then the food arrived - diddle diddle dumpling, eh. See I am speaking Canadian now. Still one foot's chilled.

Dealing with immigration & customs has been a nightmare, how can I spend one ten thousandth of my life waiting in queues. I'm never going to get that time back.

I've been doing impressions Jürgen Klopp, I've met his wife Klippety you know, she's very nice.

Still haven't got a sock on!

Highlight for me was Japan, would like to go back. Especially Shimizu, get to so those Geishas, try an onsen, see the tea plantation lady. What was that car?

Got a drink problem, just tipped wine over Linda, and earlier in the hol got this espresso martini all over me. Thank goodness for the onboard laundromat.

HO CHI MINH - OH

 ......what fun. Had to be up at silly o'clock to meet in the ships theatre at 7:15. Phone alarms on for 5:45, need to get the body & bowels prepared for a 2 hour coach trip to HCM, formerly Saigon. Nice light breakfast & caffeine rich coffee in the cabin to get us started. Sitting in jim jams at 6:20 Linda put the telly on & noticed ship clock said 7:20, both phones said 6:20. Panic ensued, Linda left me on the toilet, no make up, blouse on back to front in what passes for a run towards the theatre. I caught her up in the lobby where the is always a scrum for the lifts. No need for rush, it was pandemonium in the theatre, everything was running late, immigration staff on board checking landing cards, getting through gangways a nightmare. All in all we boarded the coach about 9:30. I discovered later that our phones knew it was daylight saving in the UK and decided to change time automatically for us - very helpful.

Weather good not too hot & humidity OK. By-passed the tallest building in Vietnam on the way. Lots of construction going on, new international airport & roads being built, it was similar yesterday in Cam Rahn, where loads of international chain companies were building swanky resorts along the coast. Traffic heavy, stop start most of the way.

First stop was at the relics museum, not what you might expect compared to British Museum relics.

They had more weaponry in there than the British army & RAF can muster. Very one sided story, I spent the hour there fighting the evil French, Americans & their allies. It had nice photo records from war photo journalists, but not enough time to do it justice.

Next stop lunch in an excellent Accor hotel. French influence meant delicious pastries.

For some reason an old Post Office is always on the tour, Hong Kong as well?

Presidential palace where South Vietnam ran the war from. Weaponry seems a big thing there, lots of smaller places cashing in on the tourist trade. The underground bit of the palace was pretty hot & humid. Final stop to pay tribute to uncle Ho, I'm not sure he ever visited his city. Nice part of the city, busy with markets & shopping malls cheeky by jowel.

NHA TRANG

First a sea day, nice after all the hectic coach tours. You don't actually dock at Nha Trang, I think the docking area was deemed unsafe for tendering and the ships are now docked at Cam Ranh. This is a military naval base complete with armed guards, barbed wire, the full nine yards. There is no just wandering off the ship. 

Took a ships tour on cyclocabs - these are like the pedal rickshaws you see around London. You can flag them down just like a taxi.

Very busy, difficult to decern the rules of the road, lots of motorbikes and very noisy.

They don't have Uber, their equivalent is Grab. They have Grab bikes as well as cars. You just use the app, the bike turns up and gives you a helmet. I don't know if they take 2 passengers on a bike, you do see bikes with three people riding.

There was a communist festival of some sort going on. They lit a fire in our honour.

We finished our tour at a craft centre for a Vietnamese buffet lunch. This is a large outdoor centre where artists & crafts people come together to work and sell their products. There were painters, sculptors, basket weavers, jewellers and many other crafts people. All of the work was excellent. They had tables, solid wood probably 25ft x 10ft and 9 inches thick - beautiful.

Interesting little game - the sitting folk bang their poles together to music, the dancers try to avoid getting their ankles trapped, count the bruises at the end to see who's won, 10 point bonus for a fracture.

All the cane furniture was made by them, wine as well.