November 4, 2011
Our last port was at Punta
Delgado, San Miguel island, the Azores.
It was Sunday so most things were closed up. They have beautiful and unusual
sidewalks. Again, they are very narrow
barely allowing 2 people to walk abreast.
But the area downtown has different patterns on each street made up of
black and white stones. It’s an amazing
amount of work, but it was helpful since the street names are very hard to
find. So you just go down 2 blocks on
the diamond pattern then turn left onto the circle with the cross in the middle
pattern and you’re there.
Today’s our 5th
day at sea. One more then we arrive in
Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday morning. I have
enjoyed these days as much as the port days.
The British ship historian and the naturalist have given talks every day
which have been thoroughly enjoyable.
Today a passenger who was in interpreter for the White house for all the
presidents from Johnson through Clinton spoke about some of his experiences and
an air force vet gave a presentation on the story of Charley Brown, the famous
B17 pilot from WWII. Both very
interesting as well. I entered the slot
tournament - made it to the final round (aren‘t you proud of me Mary Ellen?),
but alas the $1,000 prize was not to be mine.
I got a lovely T shirt instead.
Michael has been going to the gym nearly every day and I’ve been
cheering him on from my chair on the promenade deck where I read and watch the
sea. A nice staff member comes along and
offers tea from a tray - very civilized.
The weather has been delightful so sitting outside is a pleasure. And the seas have been pretty calm, or if
not, then the stabilizers do their job so we’ve had no discomfort at all. Speaking of watching the sea, one morning I
was up on deck 15 having breakfast near the edge and happened to look down just
in time to see a shark. At first I
thought is was a fish, but from that height I realized it was too large to be a
fish. And it definitely was not a
dolphin. Very exciting.
Yesterday the naturalist
spoke about the constellations on a very cloudy day. During the night I got up to use the bathroom
and noticed that the sky had cleared so I stepped out onto our balcony to see
the stars and put to use my new knowledge.
It was so calm and quiet and just then a shooting star went by. Magical.
We have 3 formal nights
scattered throughout this cruise and every day the ship’s newsletter tells us
what the dress code for the day is - either smart casual or formal. For 3 nights running out table mates Robert
and Sherry came for dinner in formal wear. They finally got it right last
night. We teased them that they were
just trying to class up the joint. We
had lunch the other day with a couple from Marin County named Michael and
Carolyn. That was a first. And he had actually lived in Bend for a few
years when his kids were young.
We’ve played trivia a few
times and always stink at it. Our best
score was 13 out of 20 and that was playing with 3 other people. Last night we played by ourselves and got 3
out of 20! But in fairness, the
questions were awful and the best score was only 8 right. We could have had 4 but I talked myself out
of the right answer. What did Lizzie
Borden, Napoleon Bonaparte and Titian have in common? My first thought was they were red-heads but
I have no idea where that came from and thinking of the pictures of Napoleon
and his dark hair I changed it to they were all under 5’3”. They were all red heads. Sigh…
And did you know that Edgar Bergen paid $26 in 1929 for the first “Charlie
McCarthy” head? Neither did we.
Our captain is a
character. He’s British and, like the
lecturer, has that British humor. “Good
morning passengers. Well, we found the
island of San Miguel this morning and so we’ll be berthing very soon.” “Good afternoon passengers. As soon as we get all of the rubber bands
wound tight, we’ll be letting go the lines and heading out to sea.” And yesterday he was giving an update when
some alarm went off in the background.
Silence. Then, “I’m back. Nothing to worry about - just a noise. Where was I?”
Since we’ll be spending
Sunday night in Ft. Lauderdale and can’t check into our hotel until 3:00 pm we’ve
signed up for one last tour. We’ll do
the everglades by hydrofoil and then go to a flamingo garden. What else does one do in Ft. Lauderdale?
This will be my last
postcard. It’s been fun and thanks for
wading through all these. Jacob, Reagan
and Torrin, get ready for hugs and kisses from Grandma and Grandpa. We’ve got lots saved up!
Cheers,
Caroline
