Around the World in 365 Days: At sea with a stop in Madeira

Day 85, Jan. 10^th: Better weather, as predicted. We even woke with some sunlight! A quick trip to the gym, trying to make sure I continue with good habits. A frustrating part of travel is bureaucracy. We mailed copies of our passports and visas before we left. We provided another copy of our New Zealand visa after coming aboard, now we have to turn our passports in to the staff along with another set of copies of the New Zealand and India visas. If they had stated on the checklist: bring 5 copies of passport and 3 copies of each of the following, we would have done that. It seems queuing up is a British passtime, I think it may even be a sport. Besides that, things are going well. No problems at breakfast, the 14^th floor re-opened so I could get together with my fellow guitar players, along with a ukulele player and a flute player. The flute player, Jeanette, can play anything by ear, and is very talented. After guitar I tried to blog downstairs, but am having problems with technology – we can only connect one device at a time, and I need both the phone and the laptop connected to relatively smoothly load my blog. I load my pictures with the phone, but on the media part of the site it shows me the photo numbers but not the pictures, so I need to click on the picture to get the number then load the box with that number. The other issue is that many of my new friends find me and like to chat.  

Day 86, Jan. 11^th: Weather continues to improve. We had some drama in the guitar group today – the ukulele player got mad at Jon, one of the guitar players when he was trying to help her transpose some music and she stormed out. Then Jon almost left, but I talked him down, and the rest of the session went smoothly. Somedays we’re making music, other days not so much. I had some luck in the casino for once, so that improved the day. Choir completed going through “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and we have been promised new music on Monday. We had our first formal night, followed by a “pantomime show”. It was not what we expected. To me, a pantomime is like an elaborate game of charades, with everyone acting out without talking, but to the English, it’s a farce with a familiar theme. Tonight’s was “The Wizard of Oz” with an over-the-top cross-dressing Glenda, the Wicked Witch wanted to be “Booed”, several familiar songs, and a lot of slapstick comedy. At the end, the cast and the audience all sang “500 Miles” – which is one of my favorite songs, so I could easily join in.

Day 87, Jan 12^th: The Island of Madeira is a place of gardens – and hills. According to my I-phone health tracker I walked 19,000 steps and 45 flights. The sunshine quickly warmed us, and it didn’t take long to ditch the jackets later in the morning. John and I took the shuttle bus from the boat to town, then walked to the base of the cable cars to ride to the top. For 32 euros each we got round trip cable car rides to “Monte” and back and a second ride to the Botanical Gardens, with included entry fee. John didn’t find the gardens too interesting, and for any slope down, we had to walk back up. I meandered through the Botanical Garden for about two hours,

resting for a latte with a view.

I cable-carred back to “Monte” – the palace with Asian-inspired gardens at the top of Madeira. For 12.5 euro a person can wander Monte’s gardens, which is a ‘way leads on to way’ kind of place- the paths and stairs interconnect so that no two visitor’s experience would be the same. There were a few signs to make sure you could find the Madeira wine tasting included in the ticket.

They displayed African art, crystals and gems in the museum sections scattered across the grounds.

After another ninety minutes or so I left Monte and I considered trying to walk all the way up to the top of the mountain, but it would be an almost straight up 400 foot ascent, so decided I had already done well, especially since I still wanted to check out the bright mustard colored fort at the seaside

and get some shopping done (both John and I had lost our light weight jackets at Uncle Gene’s). I was worried the cable car would have a long wait, but only a ten-minute line and the fifteen-minute ride back down the mountain. There were fishermen at the base of the fort – one had a clear bucket, in which was a fish with bright, neon-blue lines crossing its body. It looked more like a fish for an aquarium than one to eat, and made a seaside addition to match the plants and flowers that covered the island.

I met up with Alan from guitar group, having a beer by the water. He and his wife, Jane, also loved their day on the island, and had been enjoying watching the fishermen for awhile. With errands still to run, I left my friends at the café, and found myself walking along the avenue surrounded by restaurants and only the occasional shop. I did find lotion, conditioner and lightweight windbreaker type jackets (as a note – don’t use the term “windbreaker” around the Brits – it means someone passing gas). One thing I found over and over on Madeira – they are not that fond of credit cards – everyone preferred cash, and where I purchased the jackets I was offered a 10% discount for paying cash. Another great part of Madeira – free wifi throughout Funchal, not that I had enough time to just and sit and play on my phone, though I did use it to help load some photos to the blog site. I had been too busy walking and shopping to eat, except for a little pack of peanuts with my Madeira wine sample, so when I finally got back to the boat I was very hungry – forgoing one of the few trivia contests I was likely to be good at (Human Biology) in favor of High Tea. I will say, the clotted cream is to die for, a vanilla sugar scone, some little cheese sandwiches and enough of the clotted cream to make me still feel full when I sat down to dinner at 8:15.

Day 88, Jan. 13^th: Today starts a full week at sea. Our next stop will be Willemsted on Curacao. I will condense my writing since a lot of my day is routine. Exercise in the morning, alternating weights and running, guitar group at 11, choir at 1:30, trivia at 3:30, sometimes gambling at 4. So, barring excitement, I will only report on interesting highlights. I went to a lecture at 2, just after choir, and learned that different blow hole spray patterns help identify the species of whale, and that the interesting bird I saw flying along the boat on the cruise out of Miami was a brown boobie. Another bit of excitement was this afternoon, after playing back some winnings in the casino from last week, I saw Alan and his wife get off an elevator with all of their luggage. I asked if he was changing rooms, and he said “No, we’re being kicked off the ship”. The Columbus is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, so that might be a bit difficult, he was probably joking. He has a very dry humor that can be difficult to tell when he’s pulling your leg.

Day 89, Jan. 14^th: Alan was officially “pulling my leg”. The unhappy couple that disembarked in Madeira had a porthole room. Alan and his wife were going “a bit nuts” not having natural light in their room and moved to now vacated cabin. We were part of some good trivia teams today – coming in 2^nd or 3^rd. In the first we missed the “American” question – misidentifying Ohio as the Hawkeye state (which is Iowa, Ohio is buckeyes). But I did redeem myself knowing that the opera ‘Tosca’ had the character Scarpia and Daddy Warbucks was from the musical ‘Annie’. Unfortunately, I did not know that Snoopy’s brothers were named Spike, Olaf and Marbles, or that Thomas Keating was known for creating forgeries. I can still fit into all of my dresses, not sure how much longer, but will keep working out daily. Formal night was nice, Doreen and Archie, the Scottish couple, had been invited to eat at the Captain’s Table. I also found out that it can cause a bit of a curfuffle when eating a scone if you put the jam on last instead of 1^st. It’s a regional thing – apparently, I do it the Devon way – with jam on last, and appalled all the English around when I said I did not put butter on my scone. I’ve been eating scones wrong all these years.