Day 33 - Saturday 14th October - Cruise

Sailing day today so no early start YAY. Sleep in, late breakfast - bliss. So today I was able to catch up on our blog and have a totally relaxing day. We sat near the coffee machine in the lounge (it had been broken since we started the cruise but it was able to be fixed in Lyon) so that we could get our daily fix easily. John read and I wrote while we cruised along watching the beautiful colours of autumn along the Rhône go by. At 11am there was France and Europe Quiz in which we did very poorly getting only 8/21. However, it seems our whole shop is a bunch of dummies. Then it was time for lunch with instructions not to eat too much cheese because at 3pm we had a Cheese Tasting & education session. We found out that France has about 1500 different cheeses (not all available for tasting though). John  stayed and had cheese paired with wine but I went down to the spa for a much awaited facial. I was surprised when Goran the masseur came to meet me but he was wonderful. He told me he did his training in Germany and it was as good as any facial I've had before and so so relaxing. By the time I was finished, so was the cheese tasting but John had managed to smuggle some cheese and bread to our room for me.  Then it was time for port talk to find out about our time in Tournon. We docked at 5.30pm and we had to be ready for our "Sundowner" Aperitif on the terrace of the medieval castle of Tournon up on the hill we were docked in front of. We all strolled across from the shop and up the steps of the castle, through the courtyard, up a spiral staircase and we were on the South Terrace looking out over the Rhône and the Rhône Valley. What a spectacular view! And being there at dusk made the views even more magical. There was a 2 piece jazz group (guitar and sax) playing lovely music, there was as much wine as we felt able to drink and still make it back to the ship and tray upon tray of canapes (they even had trays of gluten free canapes). We took lots of photos, drank lots of wine and ate lots of canapes. Then it was time to waddle back to the ship. We had a lady from Tournon, Josette, come on board for an amusing lecture on "French Paradoxes". It was amusing and informative and we found out quite a few interesting things about life in France. Then it was once again time to go down to our restaurant for dinner. We sat with 2 new couples - one was our next door neighbours with the berating wife and the other was from Toowoomba. We had a very pleasant evening and didn't leave the restaurant until 9.30pm. Too full, too tired and foot too painful to go down to the lounge so we retired early to our room and I finally caught up on our blog (John watched 'The Big Short' on the cabin TV).