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| THE FLAVORS OF WESTERN EUROPE, AND A VISIT TO LONDON |
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| 10 DAYS IN MAY & JUNE, 2024 |
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OUR SHIP, THE REGENT SPLENDOR, DOCKED RIGHT ON THE STREETS OF BORDEAUX | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| As I have written on my previous travel pages, we like cruises, although we don't exclusively do cruises. Usually, we do a cruise about every 2 years or so. All of our cruises have been in and around Europe, and we are running out of itineraries. This cruise appealed to us as soon as we saw it, because it included places we have been, and would be happy for a return visit, and several places we had never been. The cruise started and ended in Southampton, UK (about 90 KM from London), which allowed us to visit London either at the beginning or end of the cruise. The cruise was with "Regent 7 Seas Cruises", which is one of the most upscale luxury cruise lines. Their cruises are expensive and are very inclusive. Below is the itinerary. |  check out our home page |
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| Regent
Cruises are very inclusive. Most everything is included in the price,
which means that the price of the cruise includes all alcoholic drinks
(except for a few expensive exceptions), several tours in each port
(there are always a few non-free alternatives, as well), all gratuities,
and all dining venues. The cruise was very enjoyable, the ship (The 7
Seas Splendor) is new and beautiful, and the service was exceptional.
The only disappointment was the food, which in general, was excellent,
but there were quite a few hiccups. More details later. |
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| Below is a description of what we did. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| While in London, we spent 4 nights at the Landmark Hotel, in Marylebone. The
Landmark is a luxurious 5 star hotel and I would never have picked it
myself. We stayed there because our cruise price included 1 hotel night
in London, and this is the hotel selected by Regent, so we of course,
we added 3 nights to the single Regent night in order not to have to change
hotels. |
 ALISA WITH THE LANDMARK PIANIST |
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I
couldn’t find anything to fault at this hotel. It is a high class,
fully 5 star hotel in central London. The service was excellent, the
breakfast was excellent, and the location is as good as it gets. It even has a
back entrance which is right across the street from the Maryleborne train
station. As for the neighborhood of Marylebone, I had never even heard of it before this visit, and I would never have selected it. However, we found it to be a very interesting neighborhood, with several of London's most famous attractions, such as Madame Tussaud's wax museum, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and several notable art museums. It also has lots of restaurant, pubs and shops, and has a village feel about it. It doesn't feel at all like central London. It feels like Marylebone Village! |
 ALISA WITH THE LANDMARK DOORMAN |
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 THE WALLACE COLLECTION ENTRANCE |
While we were in London we visited 2 museums. The first was a small art and history museum called The Wallace Collection. This lovely museum is located
in stately villa on the edge of Marylebone. It displays a collection of
fine arts and armor from the 15 to the 19th centuries. Entry to the
permanent collection is free, as it is in most museums in London. It was a
pleasant visit. |
 ARMOR IN THE WALLACE COLLECTION |
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 URNWARE IN THE WALLACE COLLECTION |
The other museum we visited was the Victoria and Albert Museum
(V&A for short). It's located in South Kensington, and was a
pleasant surprise for us. It turned out to be the favorite museum we
have ever visited in London. Acording to the V&A web site, it describes itself as ä "...family
of museums dedicated to the power of creativity. Our mission is to
champion design and creativity in all its forms, advance cultural
knowledge, and inspire makers, creators and innovators everywhere." |
 INCREDIBLE GLASS SCULPTURE IN THE V&A MUSEUM |
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| The
museum was founded in 1862 in honor of Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert. We really enjoyed this museum. It was the most interesting
museum we have ever visited in London, and that includes the British
Museum as well as Tate Modern. It is full of incredible collections of everything under the
sun, including glass, jewelry, pottery, furniture, and historical
statuary and lots more that I don’t remember. |
 STATUARY IN THE V-A MUSEUM |
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The most surprising activity we
did in London was to take a "canal cruise". I had no idea that there
are canals in central London, until I did some research for this visit.
Then I found out that there are several canals, and there are regularly
scheduled canal boat rides, sailing from “Little Venice”, to Camden
Market and back. We rode on Jason’s Trip, which bills itself as the “Original London Canal Trip”.
We got to the dock at 10 AM for the 10:30 canal trip, and bought our tickets with no problem. The boat was not full and there was plenty of room. The canal sail was fun, and the live, running commentary was interesting and enlightening. |
A VIDEO TOUR OF LITTLE VENICE A WALKING TOUR OF REGENT'S CANAL 30 MINUTE VIDEO ABOUT CAMDEN MARKET |
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 AT CAMDEN MARKET |
The canal sail obviously sails in both directions. We took it from Little Venice, and we ended up in Camden Market,
a huge urban market full of stores and restaurants. It's exactly what
you would expect - lots of visitors, junk shops, clothing stores,
souvenir stands and restaurants. But, it’s great fun and it's a great way to end a sail on the canal. |
 SUNBATHING AT CAMDEN MARKET |
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| The other thing we did was go to 2 musicals in the West End. We saw Moulin Rouge at the Piccadilly Theatre, and the Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre. |
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| We thoroughly enjoyed Moulin Rouge. It's a
wonderful and fantastic musical, and the overall experience at the
Piccadilly Theatre was very good. We sat in the first row of the royal
circle, which is described as “partially obstructed” because of the bar
on top of the ledge, however, this was no problem. Alisa is 5 feet
tall, and she had no problem seeing everything. The acoustics and the
staging were fantastic! |
 MOULIN ROUGE |
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 IN THE AMBASSADOR LOUNGE |
As for the Lion King, we were
disappointed, both by the play, and by the theatre. Access to our seats
was difficult because we bought access to the Lyceum Ambassador Lounge.
That sounds strange, but because of the lounge experience, we were led
to our seats by a lounge "stewardess" at the very last minute and most
of the audience was already seated. That forced us to take a long
circuitous route to get to our seats, which were in the first row of
the royal circle. The seats were terrific, but the trek to get there
was downright dangerous, as the aisle leading down to the seats had no
railing at all. For us older folks, this was a scary experience. As for
the musical itself, we found the singing average, and the second half
slow and boring. On the positive side, the Ambassador Lounge was a revelation, and well worth the price.
As far as I can tell, the lounge experience is available in most of the
West End theatres, and if you can afford it, it's well worth the money.
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 LION KING |
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| THE ROYAL OAK |
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 AT THE ROYAL OAK |
The Royal
Oak is a classic pub located very near our hotel. We enjoyed our early
dinner here, but mostly, we enjoyed the raucous atmosphere. The place
filled up with football fans, who had just returned from a big game at
Wembley. The place filled up completely and everybody had a great time. The beer was cold, the food was standard, but tasty pub food, and the atmosphere was super lively. |
 SUNDAY ROAST AT THE TOYAL OAK |
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| MIELO |
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 AT MIELO |
Mielo
is an upscale Mediterranean restaurant in the middle of Maryleborne.
The service was excellent, and we had a wonderful lunch here. Our main
dishes were black cod (can’t find this everywhere) and salmon. All our
dishes were excellent. |
 SALMON AT MIELO |
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| MURANO |
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 ARTICHOKE RISOTTO AT MURANO |
Murano
is a well-known Italian restaurant with a Michelin star and which is
owned by Angela Hartnett, a well-known British celebrity chef. It's
located in Mayfair. We had lunch here and everything was perfect. The
restaurant is well deserving of its star.We had a tasting menu which
included scallops, sea bass, roast duck, asparagus, and artichoke
risotto. Everything was excellent. |
 ROAST DUCK AT MURANO |
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| BAOZIINN |
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| This
is apparently a chain of several Asian restaurants in London. The one
we ate at in Camden Market is pretty much a fast-food restaurant,
although the description of the 2 others in London (Soho and London
Bridge) look more sophisticated. We had a shrimp dish and a fish dish. One dish was far too spicy and the other was edible but nothing special. Being that we were eating in Camden Market, this meal was better than we anticipated. |
 BAOZIINN AT CAMDEN MARKET |
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| Below is a quick description of all the ports we visited. |
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| SAINT MALO | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| St.
Malo is one of the most popular cities to visit in Brittany, France. It
was also one place we really wanted to (re)visit. Ironically, the docking
here was cancelled due to high seas. St. Malo is known for its walls, its
crepes and its oysters. It's also fairly close to Mont Saint-Michel,
probably the most popular attraction in Normandy (after the WWII
military cemeteries). Here is a link to our trip to Brittany in 2018. |
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| BREST, FRANCE |
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 BREST SEA COAST |
Brest is the biggest city in Brittany. It's also a major port and French naval base. The tour we took here didn't spend any time in Brest, but drove to the coast north of Brest, where we visited a little village called Lilia, and walked a short distance to see the famous lighthouse on a tiny island called Île Vierge (Virgin Island). Brittany is famous for 2 things - oysters and lighthouses! |  VIRGIN ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE |
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| LORIENT, FRANCE |
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 ENTRY TO CONCARNEAU |
Lorient
is a small town on the southern coast of Brittany. The tour we took
here was to the walled town of Concarneau, a lovely little town about
an hour's drive from Lorient. We spent an hour or 2 in Concarneau, and enjoyed just walking around and shopping. |
 LOVELY VIEW IN CONCARNEAU |
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| LE VERDON, FRANCE |
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| Le Verdon was pretty much a parking lot on our way to Bordeaux. We
stopped there in the morning on our way to Bordeaux. The tours from
here took people for a ride through the Bordeaux countryside, some
visited a winery or 2, and all finished up in the city of Bordeaux,
where people reboarded the ship after it docked in the city of
Bordeaux. We stayed on the ship, and spent some time in the gym. |
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| BORDEAUX, FRANCE |
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 BORDEAUX ELEVATOR BRIDGE |
I bet a lot
of people took this cruise just because of the 1.5 day stay in Bordeaux.
This was the only stop on the cruise where we were docked overnight in
a port. We docked at 6:30 PM, and stayed for a full 24 hours. And, what
a place to dock it was! We were literally docked right on the street in
downtown Bordeaux. There was no terminal, or long walk to get into the
city. We just walked off the boat and we were in town. To the right is
a picture of our boat docked in Bordeaux. |
 OUR SHIP DOCKED ON THE STREETS OF BORDEAUX |
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| Bordeaux is an
interesting city, but far from beautiful, and if it wasn't the center
of the most famous wine area in the world, I doubt that it would be
much of a tourist attraction. We
strolled around town on the first evening, just to get our bearings and
find out where we were, and the following morning we knew ecactly where
to go.
In the morning, we found a nice wine shop and bought a couple of nice Bordeaux wines to
take home, and we found a supermarket and bought a few specialty items
to bring home as well. |
 BORDEAUX CATHEDRAL |
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 THE BORDEAUX WINE MUSEUM |
In the afternoon we had a tour of the city, and a visit to the new wine museum, called, Cité du Vin (The City of Wine, in French). We are long-time wine lovers, but we were sorely disappoined here. The architecture is stunning, but the content of the museum was designed for children, or for adults who know absolutely nothing about wine. It’s also laid out in an unusual and confusing fashion, and we couldn’t even find the elevator to get to the top floor which houses the main exhibition, and we had to use the stairs. We spent most of our time in the museum store, which had a nice array of wine related gifts. |  AT BORDEAUX WINE MUSEUM |
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| BIARRITZ, FRANCE |
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 THE BIARRITZ LIGHTHOUSE |
Biarritz
is a lovely city in the Basque region of France. It is a very wealthy
city, and reminded us of Monaco. Here we had our best guide of the
cruise, whose name was Charles, and whose English was excellent. We docked in a small town called St. Jean de Luz, which
is about 20 KM from Biarritz. We spent a few minutes touring St. Jean
de Luz, and then drove by bus to Biarritz, which was the main
attraction for this day. |
 TOUR IN BIARRITZ |
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| In Biarritz,
we visited its famous lighthouse (pic to the left), and drove around
town admiring the beautiful homes and buildings. The downtown area near
the beach was filled with visitors, and we broke away from the group to
wander around by ourselves. Alisa found a beautiful chocolate shop where
we indulged, and bought quite a bit to take home. |
 LOVELY VIEW IN BIARRITZ |
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| SANTANDER, SPAIN |
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 SANTANDER CENTRAL MARKET |
In
Santander on the Basque coast of Spain, we also docked right on
the street. Here we had a tour of the city, including an in depth visit
to the very interesting cathedral, and which ended with a pintxos tasting at the local market. Pintxos are often confused with tapas by tourists visiting Spain. There is a big difference, and pintxos are only popular in northern Spain (mainly Basque country), and tapas are popular in the rest of Spain. |
the difference between tapas and pintxos? |
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We docked near one of the landmarks of Santander, the Botin Center, an art museum built on the shoreline, but designed in a way so as not to obstruct the view of the bay. To the right is a picture of a corner of this museum, with our ship in the background. |
 BOTIN CENTER AND OUR SHIP IN SANTANDER |
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| GIJON, SPAIN |
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 LILIANA, OUR GUIDE IN OVIEDO WITH "FRIEND" |
Gijon is in the Asturius region of Spain, but we didn't spend any time there. Our tour took us straight to Oviedo, a lovely little town with a lot of history and an incredible cathedral. We spent most of our time in the cathedral, and then had about an hour to stroll the old town and do some shopping. The
old town was very nice for a stroll, and was fillled with quite a few
black bronze statues, depicting the city's history and culture. There's
one in the picture to the left. |
 INCREDIBLE APSE IN OVIEDO CATHEDRAL |
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| Below are our opinions about this cruise. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| OUR SHIP, THE SPLENDOR The ship is new, and beautiful. It's well designed, everything is laid out well, and it was easy to navigate. |
 SUNSET ON SPLENDOR |
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 ALISA ON THE SPLENDOR POOL DECK |
THE CABIN All the cabins on this ship are defined as suites. Our site was excellently designed, with lots of storage area, and all the right amenities. |
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| THE SERVICE All the service was exceptional. That's not surprising considering the very high ratio of crew to passengers. Regent boasts one of the highest ratios in the industry. |
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| PRE-CRUISE SUPPORT Regent's pre-cruise support is
excellent. We had a particular agent based in Miami, who answered all of
our questions, and kept in contact with us through the entire process.
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| THE TOURS There was a wide selection of tours in all ports, and we had no trouble finding tours that suited us perfectly. Most of the tours were included in the cruise fare. For the most part, the guides were pretty good, although there were a couple of hiccupps. One of the guides was a Chinese immigrant, whose English accent was terrible. Another of the guides was suffering from a sciatic attack, and limped her way through the tour, but all in all, the tours and guides were just fine. |
 THAT'S ME IN THE SPLENDOR GYM |
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 KELLY, THE PIANIST ON SPLENDOR |
EMBARCATION AND DISEMBARCATION Both processes went smoothly,
particularly getting off the ship. I have to say that the
disembarcation was the smoothest and fastest we have ever experianced.
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| THE ENTERTAINMENT The entertainment was varied and of high quality. There was also a nice selection of entertainment in the 3 bar - lounges on the ship. |
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 ROAST DUCK AT CHARTREUSE |
THE FOOD For many cruisers, the food is
the most important thing on the ship. On this cruise, in general, the
food was very good, but there were a few too many "lapses". There
are quite a few dining venues. The 2 main dining areas are the Terrace
(featuring a buffet), and the Compass Rose, which is sitdown and full
table service. At several ports, they served a local specialty, like
paella in Spain, or builliabaise in France. These attempts at local cuisine flell far short of the mark.
|  DELICIOUS LEMON TART AT PRIME 7 |
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 SPLENDOR HALLWAY |
As for the
specialty restaurants, there are 3 - "Chartreuse" (French cuisine),
"Pacific Rim" (Asian), and "Prime 7", a classic grill room. The best of
the three was Prime 7, where all the dishes we had were just fine. At
the other 2, each dinner had a dish which was a big disappointment. At
one meal, we actually sent back a dish, something we had never done
before on a cruise. |
 BEST SEAFOOD DISH ON WE HAD ON SPLENDOR |
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| FINAL SUMMATION We would definitely sail again
with Regent, despite the high prices. This cruise was the most
expensive cruise we have ever sailed on. Howver, everything was exeptional, except for a few culinary disappointments.
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| CRUISE CRITIC (the best site for advice, reviews and information about cruises) |
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HUFFPOST ON THE QUESTION: TO CRUISE OR NOT TO CRUISE
(an insightful article if you are contemplating taking your first cruise) |
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| CRUISE LINES, RANKED FROM WORST TO FIRST (one critic's opinion, and an informative read) |
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| CRUISEMAPPER (find any cruise ship anywhere) |
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| WHO ARE THE BASQUE PEOPLE? |
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| ATG THEATRE TICKETS IN LONDON (where we ordered our London theatre tickets) |
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| STUNNING GREEN SPACES TO VISIT IN LONDON |
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| HOW TO PAY FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION IN LONDON |
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This is a page from our site "Travels with Steve & Alisa". It describes one of the many trips we have made together. We've built these pages not just to describe our trips, but to help other travelers if we can. Please use the information we've provided freely, and let us know if you have any questions we might be able to answer about your own planned trip, or just let us know if we have helped you. Or perhaps you have some information we could add to the site. Visit our home page using the link to the right.
Enjoy
your next
trip!!
~Steve & Alisa~
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