Category: travels

Just when you think that you might have dry land for a while there is another day at sea going from Madeira to Cadiz, Spain.  So not much happening today.

We start the day by having room service knock on the door at what seems like an hour earlier than we expect. John is still sleeping so I stumble out of the bedroom looking, I imagine, rather disheveled to answer the door. I say I thought I asked for breakfast at 8:45 AM. He says it is 8:45. Did you remember to turn clocks ahead an hour last night. Abashedly I had not. So kind of an embarrassing start to the day

We go down to play Trivia before lunch and resume our old position of second. We assign areas of expertise to study up on before the final Trivia on Tuesday. John is looking into world capitals and I am still the NASCAR expert.

We have lunch. I am so sick of luncheon boat food. John tries the porchetta since he tried making one at Christmas with so-so results. The one onboard is much prettier and John says it tastes good too. I am still not feeling particularily like eating due to my stomach distress of yesterday.

We take a nap and go down for the Port Talk late in the afternoon. Our next stop is Cadiz tomorrow morning. There are excursions to Seville and Jerez but we have been to those places before and have had excellent times there so we opt for a walk around Cadiz.

Dinner is at Manfredi’s and works out pretty well. We abandon our beloved octopus carpaccio for antipasti for two followed by a first course of tortelli with truffles for me and a risotto for John. We split a Fiorentina (giant steak from Florence) and still cannot eat it all. No dessert.

After a reasonable night’s sleep we are ready to explore the beautiful island of Madeira, Portugal. What a change from St. Martin. Our ship pulls in at about noon and we are scheduled to take a tour at 1:15PM. I am feeling much better today and we are so happy to get on land.

After a delightful ride through the city of Funchal and the countryside with its terraced farming gardens we arrive at the Cabo Girão Skywalk. The skywalk is partially a see-through section down the cliff and spectacular views of the island abound.

Later we travel down to the fishing village of Camara de Lobos where we are treated to the local drink, poncha, a combination of rum, lemon juice, and honey. We have a brief time to walk around as well.

Finally we end up in their biggest city, Funchal. It is clean and lovely. There are flowering trees and shrubs everywhere. We had hoped to see their early 16th century cathedral but it was closed by the time we get there. Unfortunately we get to this last site late and only had 20 minutes to explore. Otherwise this is one of the better included tours we have been on from the Viking Ocean trips.

Later we have dinner at The Restaurant. The food is seeming repetitive at this point. Everything comes with a garnish of watercress. They must be out of everything else.

This is the worst day of our trip, mostly because I cannot imagine a worse one for me. After a night of almost no sleep due to, once again, a lot of pitching and yawing, and shuddering of the ship. We get up bleary-eyed to have breakfast.

I have decided to have corn flakes because I have been having a lot of eggs. Now I know that I am somewhat lactose intolerant but I figure that the amount of milk that I will put in the cereal will not be a big deal. I was so wrong. By the time I am only part way through breakfast I tell John that I am not feeling well and need to lie down. I am having severe pains in my stomach which ultimately leads to a breakfast explosion. This was followed later in the day by a good deal of intestinal distress. Like I said this has to be the worst day of our trip.

(Aren’t you glad there are no pictures of this part!)

Needless to say I miss the 10 AM lecture and the Trivia contest where my team takes uncontested first place by answering 15 out of 15  questions correctly. Go team!

At 4:30 PM I pull myself out of bed to go to our special invitation-only tour of the kitchens. We see everything that the culinary team does and the Head Chef is our tour guide. But by the end of the tour I am having a hard time paying attention since the lower half of me is now experiencing lactose intolerance big time. I manage to get to the bathroom in time but just.

After napping again I feel better and we go to dinner at the Chef’s Table where the menu is Mexico. It pretty much is not Mexico at all but is tasty nonetheless.

I am hoping tonight we will sleep. Since I am writing this the next day I know the answer to this hope is no hope. The seas are really rolling and even our furniture is moving around.

Our hopes for a better night’s sleep are completely dashed by the roughest seas so far. We sleep about one hour at the beginning of the night and then wake up at 1:30 AM. There is a loud noise and a big shuddering of the ship. We lie in our bed frozen wondering what will happen next but it is just more of the same all night long. Around 6 AM we fall back to sleep exhausted for a couple of hours.

Normally we would be having room service for breakfast but since our cabin is in the extremely rocky part of the boat, we opt to eat down in The Restaurant. It’s fine but not as comfy as sitting in our pjs having breakfast in our room.

At noon we go down for Trivia where we are back in our usual position of second. Once again there are no NASCAR questions so my extensive knowledge goes without use.

During the Captain’s announcement he addresses the big bang and shuddering of the ship the night before. He says we hit a water mountain and it was just the ocean’s way of reminding us who is boss out here. The other guests were as discomfited as we were and it ends up with a very quiet day aboard ship as people try to catch up on lost sleep and improve their queasy stomachs.

Mid-afternoon we have a special tour of the bridge. There are two second officers, a third officer, and a lookout taking care of the running of the ship. Somehow I imagined a large crew bustling about taking measurements, logging events, and watching  screens and the sea. Certainly I expected the Captain or the First Officer. Apparently they are only called when it seems like there could be some sort of trouble.

Dinner tonight is at Manfredi’s. They have an excellent assortment of breads and a couple of specials as well as their usual menu. We like the sound of their specials until tomato sauce or some other “American” ingredient is added which really does not fit at all. We cobble out what we want from the existing menu. Our dessert (not shown) is the remnants of our basket of bread, some parmesan cheese, honey, and a glass of grappa.

Finally, advancing our clocks one more hour forward so that we are up to seven from Pacific Time, we head for bed really hoping that the seas will let us sleep tonight.

So, we are still crossing the Atlantic Ocean which is really big.  It is Wednesday and we do not get to Madeira until Saturday. The waves and wind have picked up and now the waves are 3 to 4 meters. You really have to pay atttention when you are walking around or you will bump in to someone or something. Today, instead of eating in our favorite places, favorite seats, we are opting for dining in the lower decks of the ship near to the middle where the motion is not as extreme. The boat makes a lot of creaking noises and every once in a while there will be a slamming into the side of the ship. Bad for sleeping.

The highlight of the day is that we tied for winning the Trivia contest! Go our team. The questions were easier than the days before. But we get a bottle of champagne and our team captain, Steve, says we will all share it at 4PM on Deck 1. We go but no one else shows up. Hmpf!

Since we did not sleep much last night we spend the day fitting in little naps. Hopefully tonight the pitching of the ship will not be so bad.

We eat at The Restaurant tonight which John has taken to just calling The. Both at lunch and dinner it is getting a little harder to find something that we really want to eat.

Our Captain who comes over the intercom every day at noon with a jolly “Good afternoon, good afternoon, good afternoon!”, tells us that the seas are a little higher today at 3 meters but that everything is great, the weather is beautiful, and the ship is performing beautifully. Plus it is the friendliest and happiest ship on the sea. Our room, however, being on Deck 5 all the way aft is rocking and rolling a little more intensely today.

We make our way down to the Star Theater for the cooking demonstration at 10 AM and especially enjoy the head chef’s explanation about what they do with waste. They have two refrigerators one that is a longer term refrigerator and the other which is a 4 hour refrigerator. Any food moved into the 4 hour refrigerator must be used within that time period or thrown out. They do their best to estimate how much the passengers will eat and move that amount into the timed refrigerator, after that, any of the food at the buffet or one of the restaurants along with whatever is left in the 4 hour refrigerator has to be ground up and ultimately dumped at sea. It seems wasteful but these are U.S. health regulations.

At noon we are back to try our hand at trivia again. Once again we get 10 out of 15 correct. Our goal for tomorrow is to get 12 out of 15. I have been studying up memorizing dates of historic happenings and NASCAR winners in case there are any questions along those lines.

Since it is too rocky up on deck 7 for me to eat the lunch buffet, we decide to have lunch in The Restaurant which is centrally located on deck 2. It is disappointing. I order gnocchi prima vera but it is definitely gnot gnocchi but a shaped pasta. There are a lot of peas in it. Not my fav. John has a Reuben on incredibly thick bread so he has to deconstruct it to eat it.

Before heading back to our room we make a detour to look over the Viking exhibit. There are various Viking artifacts and a video about the Bayeux Tapestry. The Tapestry depicts William the Conqueror’s invasion and conquest of England. William who was a Viking became King of England. We have seen the Bayeux Tapestry in France where you stand on a moving walkway and zip by. Having a slower explanation makes the Tapestry really come to life.

We spend the afternoon reading and napping. We have dinner at Chef’s Table at 8 PM. Tonight’s offering is Asian Panorama. It’s pretty good and we have a table by the window so I can look out at the horizon.

Sleeping tonight does not bode well. Our end of the ship is shuddering and pitching. It is noisy with the hangars in the closet banging around and the bedroom making creaky noises. I imagine I will be tired tomorrow.

Today, as you can see from the picture, the seas are a little higher with some whitecaps. I start feeling sick right after breakfast and spend most of the day in bed. I need the extra sleep though because I am thoroughly boat lagged and only had about 3 hours of sleep last night.

Here is our position in the Atlantic Ocean. #2 is St. Martin and #3 is our next port of call in Funchal, Madeira on Saturday. Boats do not go very fast.

I encourage John to leave me alone and go down to play Trivia where without my stellar help they do worse than yesterday. He also braves lunch alone and brings me back a roll and a cookie. Later he goes to a talk about pirates. Yaarr….

I am feeling better at dinner time and discover that at our restaurant, Manfredi’s, which is on Deck One in the middle of the boat, that there is almost no movement at all. Maybe I need to spend more time down in that area!

Manfredi’s, the Italian restaurant, prepares our dishes to a good or very good standard. The service is better here too. When we leave at 9:45 PM there are still 7 other tables full in our room and no one is trying to shoo them out. Here is what we eat.

Later as I am lying in bed it seems like every little movement of the boat is amplified. Maybe that it is because I am experiencing it over the length of my body rather than just through my feet. It would be hard, though, to sleep standing up.

Unless I can figure out something other than water and food to take pictures of, my blog is going to be very repetitive and not so interesting until we get to Madeira on Saturday.

Here is the view out the back of the boat from our cabin.

We do a lot of lazing about today probably destroying any progress we have made with boat lag. After having breakfast in our cabin the first thing we do is play trivia with our Canadian pals and two random ladies who are looking for a team to be on. We come in second but it is fun and everyone agrees to meet tomorrow for another try.

Then it is lunchtime. The offerings today are not as good as yesterday and I opt for a slice of pizza after not eating my first plate so much. We split a cookie for dessert.

Nothing interesting going on this afternoon so we read books and nap.

For dinner we are eating at The Restaurant again. We go down at 8 PM. Although the food is good the service is quite rushed. It is like they don’t want you to linger over anything since the servers and the rest of the restaurant staff want to get out of the restaurant. When we don’t like our desserts and ask for a cheese plate instead, they are especially unhappy. They bring our cheese and continue setting up for breakfast around us.

On the way out I explain to the hostess that we would like slower service without your entree coming before you have finished the first course. She replies that most people complain that the service is too slow. Ah, well, we will try again another night to slow things down.

We go to bed around 10PM and I sleep until 2 AM and then I am awake for the rest of the night.

Today our destination is St. Martin. While we are having breakfast in our room we approach the island. It is not what I expected. I thought of lush tropical greenery but St. Martin is a volcanic and limestone island and does not support a lot of plant life naturally. Plus it is very tiny although divided between two countries. So I have to adjust my thinking to populated desert island. It is not very attractive. This is made worse by the devastation created by Hurricane Irma. So populated desert island with lots of previous buildings turned into scrap and still lying around.

Ours is not the only ship here. We watch as behemoth ships do a delicate dance getting a space at the barre. Then a lot of mostly white, mostly older people are disgorged from the ships. Much like when we went to the small towns of Alaska, there are too many tourists to be absorbed.

We are taking a bus trip around the island stopping here and there and getting a running commentary from Dahlia, our island tour guide. She says how appreciative they are of the tourists because it is their main industry. And they certainly need dollars since everything is imported to the island. There is no agriculture on St. Martin and it is really too mountainous and dry to raise animals.

Our first stop is on the French side at an air conditioned shopping center and a marina. This a much better kept area than anything we have seen along the way. We are offered what I think is a papaya drink and an opportunity to use the rest rooms for $1. I think the drink is awful but John gamely drinks his. We go outside where it is hot and humid and take a few pictures.

Next we stop at an old carousel where we are invited to take a ride. There is also a place to buy ice cream. After crossing back into the Dutch side our third stop is at a look out point where we are admonished not to climb up to the lookout point because we might fall on the way down.

We return to our ship after about three hours glad to be off the bus and in the air conditioning of the ship. We wait a while before going to lunch hoping to miss the crowds but are only slightly successful.

After lunch the boat departs and now we are on the ocean until next Saturday. We take advantage of a couple of talks. One is “Explorers—The Age of Discovery”and the other is “The Moorish Influence in Spain.” Both are interesting. Many of the places in Spain with Moorish architecture we have been to and it is fun to see them again.

We take the plunge and eat at The Restaurant tonight waiting until 8 PM to go down to dinner. It is still fairly crowded at that point but mostly everyone is at dessert and the place clears out while we are there. A loudish woman is sitting next to us decrying homeless people and sanctuary cities. Her dinner companions can barely get a word in edgewise. She finally stops when she sees that the woman across from her is falling asleep. They leave and we have the restaurant pretty much to ourselves and enjoy a really good dinner of foie gras and duck with a delicious potato dish completed by a tasty cheese plate.