Well, we are now back in Villafranche de Mer! Last time we were here we went to Eze which was quite the trip and as no excursions met our interest this time, we decided to spend the day partly on the ship and then take the tender to the town later in the day. So first thing – breakfast in the Dining Room! Then I worked on my posts on our balcony pictured here for a while, took another nap and then prepared to go ashore! On our trip ashore what did we find in the bay? One of HAL’s ships they sold during COVID to Fred Olson – the old Amsterdam. Except for the blue hull, it is now optimized to their colours and operational! So we arrived at the dock and started checking out Villafranche. It is built on the side of a hill and the first “level” had a sovenier shop and several restaurants. As it was Sunday several restaurants were closed. I wanted to get a t-shirt still and my fridge magnet and the little shop was just not doing it and it looked like there was another road of stores above the front street – albiet with a bunch of stairs going up! So we stopped for some gelato (which I did the whole transaction in French including what flavours were gluten free – impressive and thanks to Dorothy) and I then asked the gelato man if there was a way up to the next road above (almost all in French). We had to walk up and around – so be it – happy to go for a walk up a hill and sweat / perspire a little! So up we went and up we went – we realized after a while we had gone too far so down we walked and what had looked like an entrance to a restaurant was actually a lane to the road (lane) above the front street stores of Villafranche. Well, there was clothing and groceries but no souveniers… So I picked a fairly easy staircase to go down and ended up going to the original souvenier store, getting what I wanted (in French) and off we went back to the ship! As Andrew said I was hogging all the towels on the ship with my towel animals, I decided to take a picture of all of the ones our room steward had made for us so far, and let them go. He was very artistic – also had some extra time on his hands!
