Day 7

Another amazing day of cycling – in fact it was a day of ‘man’ or ‘woman’ against nature!  We finally had the ‘bad’ day forecast for Sunday – rain pretty well all day.  But, amazingly, we actually got hot while cycling.  At our lunch stop, Bruce found some cycling shorts and put them on – but he still felt numb after another hour.  Because of the rain our guide cut the tour short by 5 km, so we only cycled 45 km!!!  I loved the whole day, even with the rain.  There’s something about cycling with a group of people; you chat with different people during the day, and the countryside is very interesting. There are lots of cows, horses, chickens, and sheep.  It’s really interesting to cycle on top of the dikes and see the neat orderly farms below. 

The food on board is amazing.  We have a young chef on board.  Apparently he’s actually an artist, but can’t make a living at that yet, so he took cooking lessons.  He’s a very good cook.  Every night at dinner time he comes and tells us what the menu is and then says, ‘dessert is a surprise’.  We sit around a big table – all 16 of us, and the food is served ‘family style’; you can have as much as you want.  There’s been a few things we didn’t care for – but it’s really nice not having to even make a decision about what to eat. 

I’ll tell you a little about our shipmates.  From France, we have Jean-Louis (ret’d chemist), Michelle (artist) and their grandson Za-ka-REE(not Zachary).  They speak mostly French but are able to participate easily.  (Most people we’ve met so far, who live here, speak at least 2-4 languages.)  There is another couple from Canada – BC.  Ron (CPA) and Laurie (teacher); David (a diamond seller to tourists) and his wife Paula from the Bahamas - they’re the couple who cycled in Vietnam last year.  Jane is a solicitor from England and her partner Mark is a drama professor from Glasgow.  The honeymoon couple, David and Rose are from Spain. They’re the youngest couple here.   We have another Jane (teacher from Wales, now living in Hong Kong with her husband Yohan (originally from BC), now a professor of business in Hong Kong. So that’s our eclectic group – it keeps life very interesting.