Trip to France, Spain and Portugal

Mike and Judy Henderson
September 1 to September 25, 2017

I'm going to leave the map on each page describing this trip so you have an idea of where we are.

9/10/2017  Sailing last night from Bilbao to Gijon the seas were very rough and it was a difficult night for sleeping.  The bed was going up and down all night long.  We both eventually managed to "drift off".

The pitching of the ship was worse than before and the table in our room fell over.  I got up and turned it upside down to keep it from rolling back and forth all night.  I staged this picture in the morning to show what I found in the middle of the night - since I wasn't taking pictures in the middle of the night.

If I hadn't done anything, the table would have rolled around the room all night, smashing into who knows what. It even woke the people in the cabin below us.

I did take this next picture first thing in the morning.  It's dark outside and Judy's still in bed.  Almost everything that was up on a table (not just this table) fell off during the night.  I had put my computer and other electronic things on the floor during the night.  It was a hard night - I'm getting pretty tired of this rough pitching all night long. 

The boat hasn't been rolling very much but its pitching up and down really hard.  The bow comes up on a wave, then slams down with a "bang" when the wave passes.  The slap creates noise and the ship vibrates from bow to stern.  When the bow falls, you feel like you're going weightless for an instant, almost rising up from the bed.  Then, when the bow starts to rise again, you're pushed into the bed.  This repeats all night long.

We arrived in Gijon about dawn and were glad to see port.

After breakfast with friends, we took buses to Oviedo for a walking tour.

On our way into Oviedo, we passed the Palacio de Congreso (the link is in Spanish but maybe you can get Google to translate it), and I was very impressed with the architecture.  The guide didn't say much about it, however.

Here's an aerial view of the building, perhaps better showing the design.

Here we are in Oviedo with our tour guide.

We went to one of the old squares which is the location of the Oviedo Cathedral.

One thing that really impressed me was the amount of public art that we saw.  I'm going to include pictures of the few we saw, but there are more than 100 statues in the town, and they are all at ground level so they may be touched.

This last one was in a open air market.  I thought it was appropriate.

As we were preparing to leave, a group of people in orange vests marched into the old square led by four drummers. The marchers, other than the drummers, carried orange umbrellas.  I don't know what it was all about but they got everyone's attention.  I think it was just a "tourist" thing.

Not a lot to report on Oviedo - nice town, clean, lots of art.  We returned to the ship about 1pm for lunch. 

After lunch I worked on the blog and then Judy and I went to Gijon (which is actually the port town) to wander around and find a restaurant or bar with WiFi access.  We did find a very nice restaurant and had a couple of beers while I uploaded the blog to the web.

Then it was back to the boat for a 6pm departure.  The seas are heavy again but perhaps not quite as bad as last night. 

Dinner was at 7pm and we were already at sea.  The restaurant did not serve anything to drink, not even water,  unless someone asked for it because of the risk of spillage.

We're heading to Ferrol. 

Our adventure continues here.