April 11, 2025
DEVIL'S ISLAND, FRENCH GUIANA - Don't know that this port counts - we never got off the ship - just a sail by!
I feel like I saw this Island ! We watch the 2.5 hour movie Papillon from 1973 with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman the night before ( it was 2.5 hours I will never get back - not a real action thriller and ending fizzled out, like there budget got removed! It was a true story - so gave us good insight to prison there. Sadly the water was too choppy for our rented tenders to safely board passengers. They tried several times all morning, will no luck. So we had to simply sail by. A big disappointment for a lot of us who had watched the movie in anticipation.
There are actually 3 islands here called the Salvation Islands of French Guiana. Devil's Island is the one in the back behind the other two.
The Summer Palace is a vast ensemble of lakes, gardens and palaces from the Qing Dynasty. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
BeiJing, used to be Peking - so we had to have the famous Peking Duck!
We left the Great Wall and went to THE MING TOMBS - however we were disappointed to find there was nothing there except the grounds.