Day 16 - Tuesday 9th May

I was woken at 6am by the noise of the ship's engines. When I peeped through the curtains onto the balcony, I saw that we'd left Bourg and we were heading along the river. We'd reached Blaye before we went down to the dining room for breakfast at 8:15am. I got the chef to cook an omelette for me.

This morning's excursion was a walking tour of Blaye. Apparently the local rules in Blaye is that you're obliged to use a local guide and so we wouldn't be seeing the guides that have been on previous excursions on this river cruise.

Our guide took us to the citadel at the top of the hill overlooking the river and the town. This is large fortress that was built in the 17th century. As you would expect, it is surrounded by tall stone walls. Inside there is a village consisting of restaurants, shops, museum, tourist office and other buildings.

One of the surprising things about this citadel is the amount of land that it occupies. There are large grassed areas within the walls. So much so that it resembles a park or a picnic area. In fact there is area set aside for camping.

The guide gave us an interesting talk including some history about the people who used to live here. Her tour lasted from 9:30am to almost 11am after which time we were free to wander around to look for ourselves. Suzy decided to look at the shops whereas I walked around most of the perimeter wall.

The town at the river bank level was quaint but perhaps not qite as attractive as some of the other towns we've visited. One problem they need to fix is the creek between the citadel and the town - it looks like an open drain.

We enjoyed our last lunch of the cruise in the main dining room. The desserts in particular were very nice. While we were having lunch, the ship departed from Blaye to head back to Bordeaux.

At about 3:30pm, the ship stopped for refuelling at an industrial wharf close to Bordeaux. It was impressive how the crew gently nudged this long ship gently into the wharf. There are black pads on the wharf columns and the ship has black pads of the same width on the side of the ship. The captain lines up the ship's pads exactly with those on the wharf and the crew jumped ashore to tie the boat up.

Back in Bordeaux, Tania explained the plans for tomorrow before dinner which was another multi-course meal. After dinner, we were entertained in the lounge by a musician.