A shared breakfast at the Waterfront early and a #11 ticket for our tender.A tender is the life boat in real life but since we can't anchor at some of our shore excursions we use these to take us to the jetty on the Isle of Pines. This island has 2000 inhabitants mostly involved with the tourism industry of cruise ships. It is part of New Caledonia so French is spoken as well as native languages and a little English. We disembarked in Kuto Bay and had a little walk around to start our day. There is an obvious fort like fence near this port, possibly built by the French to keep out the locals. The locals had set up stalls with food and souvenirs for sale, there was dancing and music displays and every thing ... read more

Large swells of up to 9 metres kept the ship rocking a little during the night on our course to New Caledonia. You certainly feel it particularly at the front of the ship. We are going at the speed of around 17 knots so not really fast. Climbed the 7 flights of stairs this morning up to the 12th floor to the Plantation Restaurant for breakfast which is buffet service. Must admit this made me feel quite queasy and breakfast sort of settled it down. It will be very tempting to overeat during this cruise, there is so much available and being no cost, you just say " sure another piece of toast would be ok". Hence my wanting to climb the stairs and not use the lifts, plenty of them but an easy option. ... read more

Germany is a country of middle sized cities. No sprawl such as is seen in Shanghai or Istanbul, rather a city seems to be an extension of the village feel. A church or two or five, a market place or a few and shopping streets rather than massive indoor malls everywhere. I spent my last day in Germany in Frankfurt and Kronberg with my hosts Connie and Jonas. They live in Kronberg which is an easy 20 minute commute on the S Bahn from the centre of Frankfurt. Kronberg is a small village with very narrow old streets, famous for its apple wine festival which lasts a whole week, and the whole area is famous for its green sauce. This sauce was invented by Goethe's mother ( Goethe is known as the genius of modern German ... read more

Yesterday was a walk around the city day, taking in the old architecture from this very beautiful city. Leipzig was established in the 11th century and by the 17th century was one of the leading cultural cities in Europe with the composers JSBach, Schumann, and Mendelssohn all calling this place home. Leipzig was the largest city under the former GDR years of 1949 to 1989 and a lot of the uprising and the overthrow of the former government occured with the peace prayers and peace movement hosted in St Nicholas church. Staasi police were sent to these Monday prayers to monitor the citizens who were attending but the citizens were undaunted and continued with up to 2000 attending just before the unification of Germany. St Nicholas church was formerly a Catholic church and like many changed ... read more

My last day in Montelimar was an arty one. Anais and walked to the town centre to have a look at the art exhibition of Cathelin who was a famous local artist. He was born in Paris in 1919 and died in 2004 with much of his art work featuring the Montelimar area. His art work features mostly bold colours in bands and his women he painted were quite faceless and featureless. He also painted works inspired by his travels abroad and many of these have been reproduced as woven tapestries. In the evening we went to the tiny village of Viviers to the Cathedral of St Vincent. This village was the home of the archbishop therefore instead of the usual small village church a larger more grander church was built. Woven taspestries are hung on ... read more