The Welcome Hotel

Well sometimes luck smiles upon you. Last Saturday the 3rd was one of those days....

Harbor Front in Villafrache-Sur-Mer

To start, Friday the 2nd was NOT one of those days. We were anchoring in the bay of Villafranche-Sur-Mer when I heard a weird sound come from the bow thruster. After anchoring, of course, the captain told me the bow thruster stopped working.  Down in the engine room I tracked down an electrical fault that led me to a safety cut out designed to shut down the system when there is no oil present in the reservoir. O' boy... where did six gallons of hydraulic oil go???
Turns out we blew a fitting on a 1 1/2" hydraulic line.  I found the oil in the engine room. Quite a bit in the bilge too. And this is where you find me on the morning of the 3rd.
I had been in the ER for hours that morning, soaking up oil with absorbent pads. I was covered in bilge water, oil, and sweat. It has been around 112 degrees in the ER lately. I came up for water and Arwyn says "you heard the news right?" "O great, what now?" I shoot back. It turned out that the boss' ex wife couldn't make it out for their son's birthday party. She was turned back at the airport for visa issues. The boss, Phil, decided to give Arwyn and I the hotel room he had booked for her so it didn't go unused. We are so tired these days, and so burnt out, that when I stood there covered in grease and grime and sweat, and heard Arwyn tell me what we were about to receive, I choked back tears of excitement.

Welcome Hotel-Our room is the second window down on the right.

The Welcome Hotel is situated directly on  the harbor front of Villafranche-Sur-Mer, which is one of the nicer, but quieter towns in the French Riviera. The welcome hotel is a 4 star establishment and Arwyn and I had a suite on corner of the 4th floor. We had two balconies, one overlooking the water and the other the town.

Arwyn and I watching the boats come and go
in the harbor.

The stay was nice. The hotel manager said bon jour Monsieur Kaiser every time I walked through the lobby. Arwyn and I spent the afternoon walking around the beautiful town, listened to street musicians, dressed up and had a nice dinner, used the fast internet, and I drank a beer on the balcony overlooking the harbor as the sunlight faded. Around midnight, a fireworks show started in the harbor and Arwyn and I watched them from bed, looking out the open balcony doors.









The next morning the tender came to retrieve us. Before I knew it I was back in the ER, covered in oil and sweat and grime, but I had to laugh at how crazy our life can be.