On Monday, May 12th, the Endeavour arrived at the final port of our trip, Portsmouth, England.

We had an early final breakfast aboard the Endeavour, and then were off with 22 of our fellow passengers on yet another tour bus, this time with all of our luggage stowed below. After a brief partial tour of Portsmouth we arrived at the Naval Yard, where we got an in-depth, private tour of the HMS Victory. The tour was conducted by Peter Goodwin, the curator of the HMS Victory. Peter and his wife Katy had been on-board with us on the Endeavour since Lisbon, and had been both very informative as well as fun folks to hang out with.

The Traveling Richters pose in front of the HMS Victory

This part of our trip was in fact the only one which exceeded our expectations, as we had not expected to find the HMS Victory or its curator to be so interesting, and getting a private tour by someone as passionate about the Victory as Peter obviously was.

The curator of the HMS Victory, Peter Goodwin, holds up glassware which belonged to Admiral Nelson

The two key things we took away about the HMS Victory are that it is the oldest British Naval vessel still in active service, even though it has been in dry dock for over six decades. And, the HMS Victory is the vessel upon which the much admired Lord Admiral Nelson died during the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21, 1805.

The Victory is a fabulous vessel, and now in excellent shape, thanks in great part to the efforts Peter has been making. But I also learned that back in the early 1800s, people were a lot shorter than I am (as the sore bumps on my head will attest).

After our tour of the HMS Victory, we visited an exhibition which describes how the top sail (which is the size of a soccer field) was being cared for, and what had been learned about its history. This was followed by more touring of Portsmouth.

Peter and Katy also joined us for lunch at a restaurant called the Lemon Sole, where we found the food and service to be mediocre, and the staff reluctant to adapt to eaters who could not or would not eat fish for lunch.

We then bid Peter and Katy adieu, and were off to London on our bus, arriving at the Hilton Hyde Park in the late afternoon. Due to my Gold-level HHonors status we got upgraded to a very nice corner room with the kids next door. The only bad thing was that an ear problem Linda had been suffering from since the prior night had become so painful that we had to have a doctor come pay a visit. He prescribed her some medicine, which we went out to get before having an excellent dinner at Royal China, a small chain of high end Chinese restaurants in London. We opted for Chinese because we had tired a bit of food without a lot of spice and zest during our travels, and were not disappointed.

We went to bed with full tummies, but Linda’s ear problem prevented her from sleeping well, unfortunately.

On Saturday night (May 10th), after two days at see, we approached the walled city of Saint Malo, France. It was after sunset as Lindblad’s National Geographic Endeavour neared the lock that would let us into the protection (and higher water level) of the harbor of Saint Malo. We cleared the lock a bit after 10pm, and moored alongside the city close to 11pm.

A lighthouse island as we approach Saint Malo at night

There was quite a crowd of locals watching our arrival, apparently because vessels the size of the Endeavour were not particularly common in the harbor.

The National Geographic Endeavour moves out of the lock into the harbor at Saint Malo at night

As we needed to sort through our photos for a composite slide show for the following night, and because we were pretty tired, we opted to stay ashore instead of pursue the nightlife, but heard from others that went that the town was hopping. It was a long weekend in France, and many visitors were in Saint Malo taking advantage of their time off and the nice weather at the time.

Saint Malo at Night

In the morning, after having to cope with a problematic and chilly lack of hot water for our showers, we were ushered back onto large motor coaches, and driven to Mont St. Michel, about an hour or so away. For those not familiar with Mont Saint-Michel, it is the place where the abbey on top of a rocky island which was made famous by previously only being accessible at low tide. However, at some point in the past, the government built a causeway from the mainland to the island, and now it is accessible pretty much all the time. And there are plans to replace the causeway with a bridge to resolve a major siltation issue.

However, that change does not preempt the fact that the abbey is a stunning piece of architecture, and only in part because of its altitude and precipitous position high atop the mount. Due to various “owners”, fires, wars, etc., the abbey blends gothic and baroque styles, for example. One other thing that we found interesting was that as a result of revolution in France in the late 1700s against the nobility, and as an perceived collaborator the Catholic Church, all of the friezes and statues which feature Jesus were defaced as revolutionaries expressed their resentment against the Church in physical ways.

Mont St. Michel looms overhead

Mont Saint-Michel, at low tide, is surrounded by miles of wet sand, some of which can act as quicksand. When the tide rushes in, all 14 meters of it (about 45 feet – one of the highest tides in the world) at its extreme, it can sweep away most anything in its way, as it rises very rapidly, and has been the cause of many deaths of livestock and humans alike. Tides are worst during the full moon and the new moon.

It’s about a 20 minute walk up to the abbey from the bottom where all the tour buses park, and further yet from the areas where cars need to park (an area which incidentally is under water during the highest tides). Little shops, cafes, and museums line the medieval walls along the path on the way up to the abbey summit. Our tour guide, Virginie, gave us the history of Mont Saint-Michel, little of which I could hear because I was always playing catch-up with the group because I was taking photos, but let me just point you to the Wikipedia entry on the subject here.

Krystyana, Linda, and Bas on the terrace near the top of Mont Saint-Michel, France

One thing I do remember was that there were three levels in the abbey in terms of common rooms, with the clerics being on the top level, visiting nobility on the middle level, and commoner petitioners in the bottom level. This was allegedly done to remind the nobility of their place before the Church, and commoners of their position relative to both the nobility and clergy.

After we finished our tour, our guide told us we had ten minutes to get to the buses, even though it was at least a 15 minute hike down (more when one considered the crowds clogging the narrow road down). We ignored the deadline a little bit by stopping at a creperie for an assortment of crepes (chestnut cream, apricot jam, banana and chocolate, and hazelnut and chocolate), which we ate on the bus while waiting for everyone else to show up.

As we ended up leaving Mont St. Michel almost an hour late, we had to also forgo the scenic coastal ride back to Saint Malo, and instead took the highway back. During the bus ride I call our concierge service and secured a late lunch reservation at L’Ankerage, a small seafood restaurant situated along the busy rampart wall on the south side of the town. The meal we had was quite good, and the shellfish platter I ordered was chock full of assorted shellfish, including a large crab, whelks, shrimp, langoustines, cockle shells, and more.

Linda and Krystyana examine Jake’s lunch of shellfish in St. Malo

We waddled away from lunch for a walk around the rest of the ramparts, and then caught a Zodiac back to the Endeavour, which had left the dock a few hours earlier due to the tidal situation.

A man in St. Malo befriends a seagull

There was a presentation that evening by Massimo Bassamo, the National Geographic photographer we had on board, followed by the Captain’s Farewell Cocktail party (best quote “CPA means Captiain Pays All”, referring to drinks from the bar). We also had our farewell dinner, which was pretty reasonable. I didn’t enjoy much of the evening though because I was stewing about how little time we had had in Mont Saint-Michel, something that was a repeat of most of the other land-based excursions during our Lindblad trip – basically large buses, large groups, and being rushed, just like on a large cattle boat cruise ship (which also costs maybe half of what a Lindblad trip does based on our experience last Fall).

I therefore found myself working for several hours on a letter to Lindblad management about how we felt the trip had not met our expectations, which in turn were based on their marketing materials and discussions with repeat Lindblad clients. I sent the letter in the following morning, and apparently was not the only one, as Sven Lindblad, the current owner of Lindblad Expeditions sent out a mass e-mail apologizing to everyone about the shortcomings of the trip, and a few days later offered either a cash refund for what worked out to about 25% of the fees paid for us, or a certificate in the value of about 50% of the trip fees to be applied towards a future trip with Lindblad. This refund was offered to every passenger on the trip, and I must say that we are very impressed with how quickly Lindblad admitted they had fallen short, and how quickly they came up with what appears to be a pretty reasonable financial apology for those shortcomings.

We’ll be reviewing other Lindblad trip options to see whether or not we go for the cash refund or the credit certificate. Certainly we have heard nothing but good about Lindblad with respect to natural history expeditions they make to places like the Galapagos or Antarctica.

On Wednesday, the day after we visited Lisbon we docked near Porto, Portugal. Porto is also known as Oporto as a result of linguistic mis-interpretation, as apparently when the Portuguese referred the city of Porto, they would precede it with an article “O”, and foreign traders therefore assumed the actually name of the city was Oporto.

A sure sign that we are in Porto, Portugal

The fame of Oporto, or at least the surrounding area, is that this is where the fortified wine known as Port is distributed from. According to our tour guide, there are 35 primary distributors of Port wine (all of whom are also producers of Port), and 35,000 total producers of Port. The large number of producers can be attributed to small mom and pop Port houses, many of whom sell their production to the larger Port distributors for blending into their larger productions. Until relatively recently, Port wine was shipping to London in casks and bottled there, but now Port is bottled primarily in Porto.

Before we docked in Porto, however, we spent the morning in the lounge of the Endeavour for a presentation by National Geographic photographer Massimo Bassano, a short and energetic Italian who has been a blast to travel with these last 10 days or so. Massimo shared some of his background and his storytelling approach to photography, as well as a video presentation on a long term stay with Curthusian monks in Italy. That was followed by photo critique by Massimo of both Krystyana’s and my photography. We both received kudos for our works and our sense of visual balance (i.e. “having an eye for composition”), as well as some suggestions for how to further improve our images. I hope to get some of our images up on this site when we have a faster (and cheaper) Internet connection.

After lunch we boarded a bus which took us around Porto and its environs, with the first stop being the Porto Cathedral, followed by a visit to the so-called Golden Church of St. Francis. The Church of St. Francis was built by the Franciscan monks after permission was granted in the 1300s from King John the First. We were told that John’s marriage to Phillipa of Lancaster resulted in the first official European agreement of cooperation between nations.

The inside of the St. Francis church is covered in gold, estimated to weigh be between 300 and 400 kilograms, which is a contradiction when considering that the Franciscans are an order of monks with a vow of poverty. However, it turns out that the funds for the ornate interior of the church came from wealthy patrons in the area around Porto in the form of donations in exchange for a promise that when such patrons and their families died, they would be buried in hallowed ground inside the church so that they would be “closer to heaven”.

The front of the St. Francis church in Porto, Portugal

During renovations in the 19th century, when laws in Portugal changed and started to forbid burials inside churches, the bones of those previously laid to rest within the floor of St. Francis were excavated and moved to the nearby consecrated grounds of the catacombs at St. Francis, where we were able to see the bones in person after we left the church.

Another thing that was interesting in the church was the rather graphic portrayal in the form of a three dimensional diorama of the beheading of Christian missionaries by Moors in Morocco and the crucifixion of others in Nagasaki, Japan. These missionaries were thus deemed martyred.
Once we had finished view the church and catacombs (sadly, we could not take photos without getting kicked out), we re-boarded the bus for our final destination, the House of Sandeman in Vila Nova de Gaia, across the Douro river from Porto (although arguably still considered part of Porto).

Sandeman’s extremely rare and old vintages are under lock and key

At Sandeman, we were given a tour of the facilities of Porto’s oldest Port house, started in 1790, and now one of the best known names in Port wine. Port wine is wine whose fermentation is stopped before all the sugars have been converted to alcohol, and then fortified with neutral wine spirits to maintain sweetness as well as boost the alcohol content of Port to about 20%. There are three basic types of Port: White, which is crisper and recommended as an aperitif; tawny, which is brownish red in color and aged in barrels before being bottled; and ruby, which has a dark red and burgundy color, and is used for bottle aged vintage Port. After our tour we were treated to a tasting of white and tawny ports. The kids tried them too but weren’t much enthralled. We ended up buying a vintage port “sampler” of three 375ml bottles, the oldest of which was from 1994 at the company store in the tasting area.

Linda and Krystyana are among those at the Port wine tasting at Sandeman in Porto

After a small bit of something sweet at the neighboring café, we hooked up with Massimo as well as new trip friends Gretchen (from Bermuda), and Natalie and Bruce (from Oahu, Hawaii) and went on a walking tour of Gaia to see the back streets and take pictures, finally ending up at Adega & Presuntaria Transmontana 2, a local restaurant recommended to us by several people.

As soon as we sat down we started being served a wide range of local Tapas, including a cold cut plate, local cheeses, olives, marinated pig’s ears, pickled white anchovies, and pork livers. We topped this off with the house red wine, a “vino tinto” of the Douro river area. While we were not particularly wild about the pig’s ears (too chewy), everything else was pretty good. We ended with a large dessert buffet and some more twilight photography before returning back to the Endeavour, sated in many ways.

Looks like the official daily expedition reports prepared by the staff of the ship we’re on, Lindblad’s National Geographic Endeavour, are slowly starting to trickle onto Lindblad’s web site.

You can look at them here. Make sure to click the date of the entry to read the complete report for that day. There are presently three days posted:

• May 3 - Fez, Morocco
• May 4 - Meknez, Morocco
• May 5 - Silves, Portugal

We’ll post our own entry here on The Traveling Richters for today’s nice visit to Porto, Portugal in the next couple of days as we have to get up very early in the morning to go see the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela tomorrow, and we’re losing an hour due to a time zone change going from Portugal to Spain (we will be six hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast).

Visiting Lisbon, Portugal

This morning, around 6:30am, as the sun rose, we sailed (actually motored) our way to dock in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. Locally, the name of the city is Lisboa, pronounced “Leezh-boh-ah”.

The sun rises over Lisbon, Portugal

We left the ship, after breakfast of course, around 8:30am, boarded the ubiquitous tour buses we’ve so become accustomed to, and got a tour of Lisbon, stopping first at the Tower of Lisbon, then the Explorer’s Monument, and then the Cathedral of Geronimo (where famed explorer Vasco de Gama is buried). The latter two stops were interesting, but the cathedral was overcrowded with tourists.

After the cathedral tour, we stopped in at another Lisbon landmark, Pasteis de Belem, a pastry and coffee shop that has been around since 1837, and which specialized in little custard tarts you sprinkle with powdered sugar and cinnamon. Yum!

Linda, Bas, Diane, and Krystyana after a great cafe stop in Lisbon, Portugal

From there the bus took us out from the Belem area to the heart of Lisbon, and on to the top of the tallest hill of Lisbon, where we disembarked, and made our way down the hill for some sightseeing on foot. We stumbled over a rather derelict building built in 1922 which had phenomenal tile work and statuary, and then after about three quarters of an hour, stopped into a local restaurant with outdoor seating and dined on seafood (Bas had pizza, and Diane, who had joined us, had vegetarian food – a mushroom omelet.

We then took a taxi to visit one of our favorite trip things to see, namely the local aquarium. The one in Lisbon is called the Oceanarium, and is located some ways out of town, but it’s absolutely brilliant. It has one of the best designs for a giant ocean tank, where huge viewing spaces are available all the way around, and other exhibits are well integrated into the environment. The tank was well stocked with a variety of interesting species, including a mola-mola (ocean sunfish), over a half dozen species of sharks, and likewise a number of different species of rays – and all in good health.

Diane and Linda observe the plethora of wildlife in the giant tank at the Lisbon Oceanarium

We had to hustle, as we only had an hour available because we had dawdled a bit at lunch, but we managed to get through everything in that time, making back to the ship only two minutes later than intended (and it did not leave without us).

Pre-dinner we learned how to tie a turban – two different ways and also learned about Spanish wines. During dinner we were joined by a Lindblad staff cultural historian, Steve Blamires from Scotland, who specializes in the history of the British Isles, and had a fascinating discussion on a range of topics including the building of places like Stonehenge, the Celtic peoples and their mythology and languages, cultural elements which gain or lose significance with the passage of time, and the decline of the Roman civilization. While little of our discussion was about the Iberian peninsula where we currently are visiting, the topics we did discuss were incredibly interesting and mentally stimulating. Both kids ended up getting very engrossed as well (although Bas’ tiredness finally won out and he headed back to his room). Steve will continue on the next segment the Endeavour goes on after it drops us off in Portsmouth, which is a tour of the British Isles (which is where David Barnes will be rejoining the vessel as well).

Tomorrow’s (actually by the time this posts it will be today’s, locally speaking) plans include a photography lecture followed by a photo critique session and then the rest of the day in Oporto, Portugal, where we will visit the Sandeman port house (where they make port wine), among other places.

We had an early wake-up at 6:30am Portugal time, which was 5:30am Morocco time, had breakfast, and then attended a presentation by the on-board historian, David Barnes (who sadly had to leave today, Tuesday, for another Lindblad trip), about the Iberian peninsula and the clashes between Christianity and Islam as well as Judaism, or more accurately the followers of each of those three mono-deistic religions.

While much of the Iberian peninsula (which is where Spain and Portugal are now located) was Muslim for hundreds of years, a crusade formed in the Christian northwest of the peninsula under the flag of St. James – who was referred to as Santiago Matamores (“death to the Moors”), even though he had lived and died some 1400 years before the crusade was even initiated. The cathedral at Santiago de Compostela, which we will be visiting in a few days, are said to contain the remains of St. James, and it is the third most popular Christian pilgrimage site in the world, after Jerusalem and the Vatican in Rome.

Another fascinating point David brought up was the history of why one can see the famous Iberian ham shanks at the entrance to most bars and restaurants in Spain, as well as displays of wine. Apparently, after 1492, when the last Moorish stronghold, Granada, fell to the crusade led by Ferdinand and Isabella, Muslims and Jews were told they either had to convert to Christianity or leave the peninsula (or face near certain death for being infidels). The Spanish Inquisition then would assert that converts had falsely converted, and they would be tested by being forced to eat pork (which neither devout Jews nor Muslims would eat) and drink wine (which devout Muslims would not do). Hence the start of the tradition that evolved into tapas – namely that of offering a small plate of ham along with a cup of wine to those entering a bar or similar establishment to weed out false converts to Christianity.

Amazingly, while the effort to weed out “false believers” has faded, the practice of hanging smoked hams and showing wines has lived on and become a part of Spain’s culinary culture.

David’s presentation was fascinating, but short, due in part to a video promoting the partnership of Lindblad and the National Geographic as well as a scheduled presentation on photograph techniques with digital cameras following his presentation. We’ll miss David’s interesting insights and witty commentaries.

While we had been sleeping and watching lectures the ship had made its way to Portugal, and was nearing Portimao, our destination for the day.

We had an early lunch before boarding buses to visit the historical city of Silves (pronounced “Sihl-vihsh”), the site of a Moorish fortress and old cathedral. We were apparently supposed to visit the village of Alte too, but I suspect the whole upset in our cruise schedule contributed to that stop being skipped.

Silves was a village surrounding a rather steep hill upon which a fortress known as Xelb sat, overlooking the town and river below. Xelb, which is now referred to as Castelo Silves, started as Roman fortification that was then later absorbed into a Moorish structure. Directly beneath the fortress was a Catholic cathedral, locally referred to as See of Silves, built sometime in the latter half of the thirteenth century. Parts of the cathedral collapsed during the massive Lisbon earthquake of 1755. This earthquake, incidentally, had a huge range, destroying whole towns and buildings as far south as mid-Morocco, and was felt as far away as Jamaica (presumably as a result of a tsunami generated by the earthquake).

We walked up the hill to the fortress, which is going through renovation/restoration in the courtyard and garden area, so our visit was limited to walking the top of the rather extensive walls. Great views of the surrounding area, but we felt a bit saddened to see how much modern building sprawl there was everywhere, destroying, at least in our minds, the quaintness and atmosphere of antiquity that some parts of the village still showed as we walked uphill through it. Sadly though, many of those older homes appear to be in a state of disrepair, so we have fallen antiquity battling well kept modernity, and the former will likely lose out as people continue to disregard community history in exchange for great personal comfort.

Bas tries to move the sword of a statue in Silves, Portugal

After our circuit of the fortress walls we visited the cathedral and marveled at all the relics and burial markers – a number of people are buried under large marble slabs in the floor of the cathedral, as has been the tradition with older cathedrals for centuries. The newer part of the cathedral, rebuilt after 1755, was noticeably different in structure and tone from the older part that had withstood the great earthquake.

We made our way down to a café where we were treated to ice cream, and then returned to Portimao, stopping at the Mirador of St. Catherine, a small chapel dedicated to St. Catherine surrounded by fortifications. This structure had a great view of the nearby beaches and ocean, but again was surrounded by modern construction.

Lindblad's National Geographic Endeavour in port at Portimao, Portugal

Back on board the ship we dressed up for the Captain’s cocktail party, had a nice dinner, and collapsed to bed, still somewhat tired and sleep deprived, but did finally sleep pretty well.