Sete, Barcelona and Valencia

Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain and Canary Islands
Day 1 11th May

Our ship MV Island Sky has capacity for about 110 passengers but this cruise which is fully booked has only 100 (some passengers have paid for sole occupancy) We are on the starboard side on level 4 which about mid price range . Most passengers are Australians with two New Zealand couples. We have two guest lecturers one a horticulturist (Judy Horton) and one a garden designer (Dr Toby Musgrave)

After an overnight cruise we docked at Sete about 189 nautical miles from Nice, lovely sunny weather for a 90min drive to La Bamouseraie de Prafance. It in fact took 30 min longer due to a traffic accident around Nimes, we bypassed this and detoured via the Carmarge area which is famous for its wild horses, flat lots of windswept water and we did not see any horses. Many modern houses.

The Bamouserai turned out to be a bamboo park with many mature plants from all over the world also a nice Japanese section. We had an excellent guide who told us all we wanted know about bamboo.

A late 2-course lunch at a local restaurant (not easy for 100 people but there was no choices)

The bus then took us to the famous roman viaduct the Pont du Gard, built around 49AD to take water from Uzes to Nimes it is remarkably preserved, It has 3 layers of arches reaching a height of over 50 metres, I think it has 30million tourists a year .

We were to drive through Nimes and past the Roman stadium but due the mornings delay we went straight back to the ship

Next day (another lovely day) was spent at Barcelona with the ship docking within 200m of the CBD. We chose to be bussed out to the Marimurtra Gardens about an hours drive away. These were started about 1920 and have plants from all over the world.
On our return we were dropped off in old part of Barcelona walked through the narrow streets to come out into the magnificent square in front of the Cathedral, a bit more walking took us to the main street (Las Ramblas) back to the port area. This was very wide with the centre strip wide enough for walking, lined with street trees, past out door restaurants only one lane each way for traffic so it really was for pedestrians.

Got back about 4:00pm a lovely day

Steamed about 174 nm to arrive the next day at Valencia so far the sea has been dead calm

Valencia another day of about 33d, here we had basically a walking tour of three gardens. Valencia as you may know is built around the river Turia, the city itself is very old and the river would flood periodically. In 1956 there was a massive flood and many people drowned, so the authorities decided to divert the river completely before it entered the town and turn the 7-10km of river bed into parks and gardens these are now well established and lovely to walk through, there are walkways down into the old river bed by each of the bridges and there is cycling path running the full length. We walked through two of these riverbed gardens and one nearby El Real (Royal Garden)

Another lovely day

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