On The Sea Again, I Just Can't Wait To Get On The Sea Again: Bonjour from Le Havre

If you had a day to spend in a French city, wouldn't you visit a garden, indulge in a forbidden fruit, and absorb some Impressionist art? That's what we did, but more on that later.

After Copenhagen, the first port of call was back to Gothenburg, Sweden. We saw that the weather forecast called for rain so we figured that we might not even get off the ship. So, why not book massages? We had a leisurely morning before our 11AM massages. I had an idea that I might want to go to the Volvo Museum which was adjacent to the pier where we were docked. Several people said that it was worth a visit. Well, by the time we had lunch and and had our after lunch coffee, and it continued to look rainy and cool, and all-aboard time was 2:30pm for our 3:00pm sail-away, I never made it. Maybe next time!

Wednesday was our first and last day at sea for this cruise. Then it will be 11 straight port days. We had a largely quiet and relaxing day. But, lady luck did strike again. They had a raffle for a diamond necklace in the Bellari boutique, and guess who won? Yep, me. Now, let's be honest. This diamond necklace is not worth thousands of dollars. And it might not even be worth more than the $250 that I won last week. But it is a diamond necklace and definitely has more carats of diamonds than the "diamond" pin we received for our 40th cruise. The other highlight of the day was dinner with the General Manager, Marck, in Toscana. It was the first time that he has hosted a guest since their return to cruising so we felt quite honored.

Today, Thursday, we were in Le Havre. Linda and I have been there a few times and I was there several more times on business. But, we had never explored Le Havre itself, just the surrounding area. So today we started off by walking up to Les Jardin Suspendus (The Hanging Gardens) on a nice, sunny day. These gardens are situated on the site of a former fort on a hill overlooking the city. As anticipated, we had to present our EU Digital Covid Certificate before being allowed to enter. (It was a bit of a hassle to get the certificate, but that's another story.) We walked through the greenhouses and around the outside gardens. The greenhouses had quite a variety of interesting plants and the gardens were lovely. It was well worth the hike up the hill.

After the gardens, we headed back into the city. We grabbed some sandwiches at a boulangerie along the way and ate in the park near the Hotel de Ville. And, that's where the forbidden fruit comes in. Linda has been craving a French ham sandwich, so she violated her 'no pork' edict and bit in!

Next we visited the Musee d'Art Moderne Andre Malraux. There, we had to show our Covid certificate as well. It is comforting to know that every one in there was vaccinated and everyone wore masks. Why can't we do this in the US? Oh well, let's not get into the politics.

We wondered about their definition of modern art since they had paintings that spanned the time from the 16th century to today. Nevertheless, it was a good collection of Impressionist Art and an extensive collection of Boudin paintings with a few Dutch paintings to boot.

We may have also discovered paintings that show the Queen Mary leaving Le Havre on her way to Long Beach!

Along the port, there is a very interesting work of art making great use of shipping containers.

The last stop of the day was at Les Halles to check out the central market. They are always fun and we picked up some macarons as a treat for all of the walking we had done.