Planet Ruby Starrs

Our 'alarm' the next morning rang with endless ships announcements as a lot of guests were leaving the boat at Malaga. There were repeated calls for people's coach to flight arrangments This is all part of Fred.Olsens fly/ cruise initiative. Its not popular with those who booked the whole 57 day cruise. Thers a lot of disgruntlement about the guests changing so often - no continuity - I suspect a little bit of entitlement going on there. Mostly the guest are very pleasant but as in every place one or two are less amenable and make sure everyone knows...  For us it just made staying asleep pretty impossible - not a problem so we were up breakfasted and out...  We took the shuttle bus into town a boring convoluted journey and crossed town to find the lift that would save us the climb to the Alcazaba Castle. We were lucky - our friends on board had located it for us and sent us directions. It was funny really, because you go down this long tunnel an...

We were up at the crack of sparrows having booked the first admission up the Eiffel Tower and we had to get across Paris in the rush hour.   This was indeed a simple but interesting experience.   The Metro was packed to the gills and I'm just amazed how smartly people are dressed and also how many people smoke! (not on the Metro obviously but in between)....  It's easy to think of the Eiffel Tower as just being a lump of metal...  we're all really familiar with it - it's such an iconic landmark we just take it for granted... but looking at it across the Place de Trocadera in the  morning light was really quite special.  Everywhere we looked they were bridal couples having photographs taken and drinking champagne there were brides in white,  black,  green,  every color you could think of... and they seem to be quite a lot of different nationalities. We must have seen at least 40 couples all posing happily let's hope it do...