Forced to Relax

We should've known that today was going to go not according to Hoyle as half of our cabin's electric power wasn't working this morning, discovered by Cheryl whocouldn't get the hair dryer to work.  Seems like my suggestion last night for plugging a heating pad into a 220 outlet caused it to fry and knock out power, discovered this morning.    A quick response this morning by their engineer who said he "worked magic" (i.e., reset the fuse) fixed the problem, got the hair dry, and sent us off to breakfast.

Here's what the Abbey of Cluney would've looked like
had we been able to see it with our own eyes.

Counting on a nice leisurely morning before our afternoon tour of the Abbey of Cluney, that thought was interrupted in the middle of my eggs by the overhead announcement that the bus for the tour of Burgundy and the afternoon excursion was leaving.   Seems as if our move from one dock to another during the night poleaxed their ability to separate the two excursions from each other, so it was leave then - midbreakfast - or miss the Abbey of Cluney.

Cheryl tells me that I can be diplomatic like Henry Kissinger but I was anything but when I went to the desk to doublecheck my hearing.  I was told that, in fact, it was leave now or miss the afternoon tour.  And, a cab ride later to the Abbey of Cluney was a mere 100 Euros (about $130) so that didn't present a practical option. Faced with a quick decision on how to spend the next several hours, we chose to skip both so now it is 9:00 a.m. in France and we're giving thought to how to spend the rest of the day.

We ventured up onto the top deck to look around and found, no surprise, we're docked in a fairly industrial area so looks like we won't be walking around the city.  Perhaps a nap (or two or more) might be in order.  After all, isn't vacation supposed to be restful?  (Hence my decision not to rush around and go on a tour I didn't want to this morning and spend the whole day out running around)

Just after noon, the ship moved from its overnight dock back up the Rhone river to our original location.  That made it possible for Cheryl and I to venture back uptown so we made our way toward the public square where I was yesterday.   Overhead we saw a hovering helicopter, and noticed an increasingly large police presence that became lots of police in full riot gear.  A local told Cheryl that a day of protests was about to occur, and likely fights and violence, and to leave immediately!

Even the French were crabby today, protesting what they
see as government overreach toward Muslims.

And across the bridge they came right toward us, a long column of people waving flags, banners, and chanting slogans.  Turns out that about 2,000 persons were, in fact, protesting a French government "temporary" rule that gives the police and military carte blanche powers over people (Muslims) felt to be potential criminals and terrorists.   At least these folks felt like a Trump-like gesture in France was, well, unFrench.  Nonetheless, we decided to end our downtown visit before we became embroiled in anything we didn't want, and headed back to the boat.

Enough excitement for today, so we'll join Ray and Mary Lee for dinner in a couple hours and then more catching up on sleep.