March 25, 2015


Your favorite cruisers are taking the night off.  We are not going to BB King or the Love and Marriage Game.  Madeira was a full day and we are tired.  Plus I am going to rehearse for “Captain Kidd” – I’m up first tomorrow.

We started the day off with omelets in the Lido and then walked off ship and took a shuttle into town and wandered around for a while.  Beautiful city.  The whole place is built up the side of mountains – I have some good pictures, but I won’t try posting them until we get to Rome.

Anticipating that the weather would be kind of chilly, Bonnie crocheted a cap for herself.  I have photos.  I wore one of my Pirate hats and two different people asked, “Are you from Pittsburgh?”

We went into a 16th century Catholic Church.  It was incredible.  So beautiful.  Paintings, statutes, gold leaf.  One section where I did not take pictures was of the lighted candles.  Folks light them as a prayer.  Michael, Matthew, and I did that for Skinny Granny when we were in Russia one time (I think it was Vilekie Novgorod, but no matter).  The aroma of burning candles is a powerful.  The scent of them reminds you that as folks lit the candles they prayed for loved ones or for themselves.  You New Testament scholars remember Revelation 8:3 – “And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.”

After that we walked a half mile to a cable car that goes up to the top of one of the mountains.  The line was long when we got there, and based on how many folks were getting into the cable cars and going up, we didn’t figure we’d have a long time at the top to look around, since we had booked a tour and needed to be back at the ship by 12:50.  Plus it was 15 Euros each for the round trip (close to $35 total) and we decided that was too much for a short time and headed back to the Zuiderdam (we’ll plan differently the next time we are here).

We walked along the ocean coming back.  There was a big German ship docked beside of us “Mein Shippe.”  It is larger than ours.  We saw that ship, or one of its sisters when we were in Canada last October.

Our tour was a sight-seeing tour around the island.  One of us would have enjoyed it a lot more if it had not been up mountains and down mountains and up steeper mountains and down steeper mountains.  Here we are in this big bus with a road barely twice as wide as the bus and no guard rails.  And the roads are all two way.  The views were quite spectacular, but Bonnie didn’t enjoy getting there (in this case, it was not half the fun).

Our tour bus was either the last one or the next to the last one back in.  All aboard was 4:30 and we didn’t get on board until 4:35 and we did not sail until 5 o’clock.  But we were with a ship’s tour, so they waited for us.

Supper tonight was prime rib, and our table mates have all been to my talks, one couple said they’ve been to all of them.  That was pretty neat.

Well that’s it for tonight.  See y’uns tomorrow.
TTFN