Tue, 4/15/25    Villefranche

 Day 100 - Tuesday, April 15th, 2025 – Villefranche, France

Day 100 of our trip happens to be tax day. I didn't mention it earlier, but we did complete our taxes through e-mail to our tax guy, Tommy. To our surprise we are getting a little money back. By a little I mean pocket change, but that's better than giving pocket change. The other part of this is I cannot believe it is Day 100. You know it is getting real when you have your first discussion on packing to leave. Yes, we had that conversation. We were trying to figure out how to get this line home without it breaking. Mary will be on the hunt for bubble wrap. We will have to add this to our routine of T-shirts, magnets, postcards, stamps and now bubble wrap. I think I mentioned this earlier too, that is no hill for a climber.

This was the first tender spot in a while. It had been decided that I was going to stay in to work the log. Mary went to seven to get breakfast. She brought me back three potato pancakes. I started working on the log while she left. She had to go down to four and get on the little boat to get across to the mainland. Once she was on the mainland, she picked up a map and started walking towards this church she was interested in. As she got up to the church, she realized that it was closed. She then walked around the fort and took pictures of it. From there she saw the Hop on Hop off bus and decided to get on it and take the 1 1/2 hour loop that took her from Villefranche to Nice. There were several spots where Mary could have got off the bus, but she did not feel comfortable. She was afraid she might get lost. She got off at the Town Center. She started looking for T-shirts, etc. but was not able to find T-shirts that said Villefranche. They all said Nice. She was able to everything else except bubble wrap. Get back to the ferry which then got her back to the ship. She was gone for about 4 1/2 hours. Hopefully, the pictures will help you understand what Villefranche France is like.

 Mary said really good thing that I could not get off the ship. It was unlikely I would have been able to go far due to the hills and cobblestones. I did make progress on the notes. I was able to publish 3 days. Part of the time in the morning was getting the website set up for these future days. That took a couple of hours and itself.

We decided to go to dinner. We had chicken dumpling soup and the manager’s pasta. For my entree I had rainbow trout, it was very good. Mary had veal cordon Bleu. She liked it. The waiter talked her into a chocolate pudding which was not a chocolate pudding. It was like a chocolate cake. I had vanilla ice cream with caramel.

On the way back from dinner we stopped at the jewelry store in Mary entered her lottery thing. We were not able to get our lottery tickets updated because the casino was still closed. We were still docked in port because of some medical emergency. We didn't leave until even after we were in bed, I think.

Another successful day!