Getting to the Boat

Getting to Marseilles was interesting. We made a couple of wrong turns and couldn’t find a gas station to fill up the rental car. We finally just turned the car in and waited to meet the bus to take us to the boat. We had about a 45 minute wait and considering the number of wrong turns, we were doing okay. When everyone congregated, there were 33 people who loaded onto a bus. We gathered from conversations that some people from the mid-west had been affected by Hurricane Ike – they had trouble getting to, and then out of, Chicago O’Hare airport with all of the wind and rain. Smaller planes were even hydroplaning on the runway. In addition to Americans, our cruise includes Canadians, British and South Africans. With the possible exception of a South African couple, we may be the youngest couple on the cruise. Gosh, you work all your life and then you finally get to enjoy the fruits of your labor when it’s hard to walk around and to remember all of the medicine you have to take.

Anyhow, it took about an hour to get from the Marseilles airport to the boat which was moored on the Rhone River outside the walls of the old city of Arles. We dumped our stuff in our stateroom – we’re on the upper deck – had a quick lunch and took a walk through the old city. We had no idea where we were going and hopefully tomorrow we will get an explanation of some of the Roman ruins that we saw today (e.g., Constantine Thermes and the Ramparts) during our guided tour of Arles. We did understand something about the Roman Amphitheatre and that is where we decided to take a break and have a café au lait and some ice cream which we both enjoyed immensely. Bull fighting was introduced to Arles in 1850 and it has remained popular with the locals. There are a series of bull fights in the Roman Amphitheatre this weekend. We saw the remains of the running of the bulls on the street as we were walking around….We made it back to the boat for the safety lecture and the discussion of tomorrow’s agenda. Dinner was served promptly at 7:00. That brings you up-to-date….