All we wanted was beer

Good Morning! We are currently docked in the city of Avignon, France. Let us just start out by saying this has been an amazing trip so far. Kim is currently taking a shower and I am up on the skydeck writing this so I may not remember everything without her here telling me, so bare with me.

Yesterday we visited the city of Arles. We slept in a little, got up and made it to lunch which is served at 11:30. Let me just say, lunch on the boat is like dinner, 5 star all the way and each dish was amazing. After lunch we got to do our afternoon excursion. We chose to tour the city of Nimes. A lot of roman history is there. We saw amazing churches, and cathedrals that were built back in B.C. We got to spend a small amount of time on our own so after walking around we decided to go to an outside cafe and have a drink. Of course we couldn't figure out if just went sat at a table and wait for them to serve you or if you go into the cafe and tell them you are there. I bet we deciphered this for at least 20 minutes until we finally decided to ask someone that looked american. I know, I know, we're idiots. Sure enough you just sit down and wait for them to come to you. The whole menu is in french and all we wanted was beer. So after looking at the menu for 5 minutes trying to find anything that might look like beer, which of course there wasn't anything I could tell that said beer, the waiter finally arrived. So I just held the menu pointing to anything that might look like beer and just finally said to him we want BEER. I have no idea what the french term for that is, and he had a big smile on his face and said awwww beer, yes. Shew! He knew, and then we figured out that Beer is really the universal term. Anyway we people watched for a little bit and then it was time to meet back with the group. Let me just say the sights we saw were amazing. We have a ton of pics, but right now the internet connection is very slow and I'm not sure how many pics we will get to upload right now. But we will, so just bare with us.

After the tour, we came back to the boat to change clothes because there was a sail away cocktail party up on the skydeck before dinner. This riverboat is nothing like a cruise ship, you cannot tell you are moving whatsoever. The waters are so calm. This is a relief to me because as some of you may know my last cruise experience was not a good one. So we had a couple of cocktails at the party and then headed down for dinner. Once again, dinner was amazing! 5 course again. It started off with a crawfish/shrimp appetizer, then salad, then some sort of chicken soup which was great, then the main course was rack of lamb which i had and kim ordered something else but they ran out of it so she had the lamb as well. Dessert was homemade chocolate mousse which was amazing. Our dinner mates are Al and Tyler and we met up with two other gentleman, Anthony from New Jersey and Marcus from Germany (we are still trying to figure out if they are gay or not)who sat with us as well. Al and Tyler leave the boat today so we will be finding new dinner mates tonight. I almost forgot to say that yes once again they served wine and more wine from that days port. Kim is still not getting her taste for it, but I sure am! As usual we were the last table to leave dinner. After dinner we headed up to the lounge for more wine and live music. By this time, some of the crew just had about all they could handle and it was time for bed.

Today we will be doing the Rousillon tour here in Avignon, I can't remember the exact details of it so we'll just wait and see and tell you about it tomorrow.

Of course this blog will not be complete without the idiocy list, so here we go:
-After 2 full days on the boat, Kim still cannot figure out the lock on the door, if I wasn't there she would be locked in the room all day

-Nicole has not been on her game, she spent 20 minutes looking for flipflops that were right next to her

-When you are in the city and want to go to a cafe, just sit down and they will come serve you

-When all you want is a beer instead of looking like idiots pointing to something on the menu, just tell the waiter you want BEER and he will know what that is

-Pharmacies here in france and not like the ones back home although Kim thought they were all like CVS....we walked into a "pharmacie" (thats how they spell it) because i'm desperately needing a straightener (remember mine broke) and its all meds. Kim goes to to the counter to ask the lady by pulling at her hair saying do you have a straightener all the while pulling at her hair. The woman looked at us like we were fools and had no idea what we wanted. We should have gotten the clue when we noticed there was nothing but meds in the store.

So its almost time for lunch, I am going to try to upload a pic real quick.

Stay tuned, more later....
Nicole & Kim

P.S. Hey Mom, we left the group for a short period of time and guess what we were not TAKEN!
P.S.S. Hey Jordan, we're giving you a shout out, your camera is still safe....for now...
P.S.S.S - sorry guys the pics won't upload, i'll try again later when we get in a better spot.