Thursday, May 16, 2024

Europe 2024 - Soulac-sur-Mer, France

Our next stop was at the port of Le Verdon in France, where the ship docked just inside the Gironde River in the Bordeaux region. The port had seen better days, and appeared to have been quite important at some point, but was largely vacant now. The parking lot was huge and clearly marked out for many shipping containers, along with rusting cranes and three separate rail lines.

Rather than taking a long and expensive trip into the city of Bordeaux, we opted to take a short shuttle ride and explore the nearby beach town of Soulac-sur-Mer. 

We ran into the nice couple from the U.S. again, and Prince related his story about moving from Nigeria and flying into New York City....and wondering why his friend in Arizona refused to pick him up. He ended up taking a Greyhound, which kept stopping at McDonald's - he kept trying to order rice, believing that surely any restaurant in the world offers a staple like rice. In the end, he survived the three day journey on 7Up, as the only item on the menu he recognized.

We strolled the quiet town at a leisurely pace, and stopped at the local farmer's market for some culture, where we enjoyed some good coffee and croissants....and a little French practice! Wandering down to the shore, we walked along the fine sandy beach for a bit before turning back into the village. 

After some more sightseeing, we found a nice bar on the main street and sipped some lovely Bordeaux wines. On a whim we also checked the nearby gelato shop, who not only had something non-dairy Jane could actually eat....but they even had CASSIS gelato!

Eventually we wandered back to the Basilica square and caught the shuttle bus back to the Star. We sat on our balcony and enjoyed the fine weather, before heading down to the Aqua dining room for dinner. When "all aboard" time drew close, we returned to the balcony to watch for "runners"......but were ultimately the most entertained watching the local port crew try to figure out how the remove the gangway from the ship. I swear they were watching Youtube videos in between the trial and error!

We pushed away from Le Verdon in the evening, and began to make our way a little further up the French coast.

The Port of Le Verdon


Notre Dame de la Fin des Terres Basilica in Soulac

War Memorial

Breakfast at the Soulac farmer's market

Hitting the Beach!

Cool tree arch!

City Hall

Cassis gelato!

Enjoying some of the fruits of Bordeaux at Hotel Neptune

Heading back to the ship


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