Balvelly Castle and the “deck of cards” homes.

https://www.visitcobh.com/activities/walk-up-the-deck-of-cards/

The roundabout near the Cork airport features giant “paper” airplane sculptures.

Shopping in Kinsale (Ireland). Two Oscars but apparently no Felix.

No shortage of wonderful eats onboard, of course. First one is Indian curries, pakoras, tikka masala, mango chutney etc. Right at the top of my taste buds’ list. Along with sushi.

Wandered around the quaint old town of Bath, which appropriately features ancient Roman baths.

Delivered to the suite pre-dinner, 7:00p-ish. Hello old friend. I’ve missed you.

🎶 “There’ll be bluebirds over, the……” 🎵

Every mile or two on the highway. Seems ominous.

There’s also a narrow gauge choo-choo that takes one on a 20 minute ride, but the walk (1 ½ mile) was prettier.

We went to Exbury Gardens - I confess I had never heard of it before. Wowie, this is as big and beautiful a botanical garden as I’ve ever seen. 200+ acres of explosive color. Owned by the Rothschild family for just over 100 years.

In those days, you could walk freely among the stones, but these days you can’t get much closer than 50 yards or so. I would imagine that a few decades of spray paint graffiti and people chipping off pieces of stone as souvenirs, took their toll.

Stonehenge would have qualified as three bucket list checkmarks in a row, but I’ve been here before. Way back when, my parents did the then-prototypical Rome-Paris-London trip, with young-teen me in tow, Stonehenge included. This was shortly after Stonehenge was built.

It’s an onboard requirement to wave back.

The trip from Rouen up the Seine toward the Channel (or La Manche, as the French would prefer), was quite pretty. And lots of river cruise boats. Gotta try that one of these days.

Lots of bright yellow rapeseed fields everywhere, they bloom in April & May. Cultivated for (less rudely titled) canola oil.