November 3, 2019
If you’ve been watching our itinerary, and you are a fan of the WWE, you knew I was going to say that. Eventually.
Happy birthday to Carey! And many more!
And Skinny Granny would have been 95 today. A moment of silence. Moment’s over.
Back to the Rock. When we sailed away from Malaga, the Captain came on and told us we would be passing Gibraltar about 8:00 tonight. When Mom and I left the 7 o’clock show, “Equilibrium with Jaz Danion,” it was a few minutes before 8, so we headed for the promenade deck to watch. But there are high winds this evening, so the doors are closed. Our stateroom, however, is on the starboard side – the same as our passage of Gibraltar – and since we have a large window, we hurried down to watch as the Koningsdam sailed passed.
We could see the lights along the coast of Spain, but nothing recognizable as the Rock. Eventually we spotted a straight line of lights and realized we were seeing the Gibraltar Airport. When planes land, automobile traffic is stopped because the road crosses the runway. Anyway, we saw those lights and knew we were near. It took us about 20 minutes before we could see the mountain rise up from the water and airplane warning lights appear on the top. We’ve woken up docked beside of the Rock, and we’ve sailed past it at midnight, but this is the first time we could actually trace our passage. I snapped a couple of pictures, and the Rock appears as a dark outline interrupting the lights of the city. Neat.
Jaz Danion, tonight’s entertainer, is a Frenchman who learned the art of juggling from his father and grandfather. We’ve seen him before, and he puts on a great show. One of the highlights is a balancing act. He places four wine glasses on the corners of a clear plastic tray, puts a tray on top, and four more wine glasses, until he had a layer of five. There is one more tray which holds a champagne bucket. Then he picks them up and balances them, moving around the stage and out into the audience. Next he sets those on a 2 layer stack and balances them. Finally he adds four more layers, and, well, it is incredible. Some of his acts are reminiscent of the old-time circus acts that his Pere and Grand Pere performed.
Last night we asked for a table for two at dinner so we could get out early and grab good seats for the performance of the ship’s dance company. We enjoyed the waiter and have put in a reservation for Table 334 for the rest of the cruise. We are seated at 5:15 and leave by 6:30 at the latest, plenty of time to get on the front row of the first risers where short people can see over the heads of tall people. I wish you could see the theater with its state of the art digital effects. I’d record some of it, but we are asked not to – some people don’t listen, but we are good do-bees, and don’t. Come with us next time and see for yourselves.
Well, Bonnie has much with which to regail you, so I will turn the keyboard over to her.
TTFN
Well, first I shall start with supper tonight. I started with a cheese tortellini soup which had small pieces of celery, carrot etc in a nice broth. BUT they were stuffed with spinach and cheese and I did not like the spinach. So I cut the pasta apart and pushed out the cheese with my spoon and ate the pastas with the broth and they were very good. Then my entree was roast turkey, dressing, carrots, Brussel sprouts and two slivers which appeared to be a potato. There was exactly a teaspoon full of dressing, one brussels sprout cut in half, 2 one inch long pieces of carrot and way to much turkey both light and dark meat. There was a smearing of gravy and a tablespoon of cranberry sauce which I do like! I would have loved more vegetables and half the meat. Then, came dessert a chocolate and whiskey torte (that is a chocolate cake made with dark chocolate). This was to be accompanied by a vanilla sauce and raspberries. There was a smear of vanilla sauce on the plate and a smear of raspberry. And I do mean smear like you had dipped your finger into it and smeared a tiny bit on the plate.
Well, back to the beginning of the day. We woke and it was pitch black outside and we were entering the port. David asked what time and then he looked at the computer and it had turned the time back an hour. OOPS! We finally got up and began getting ready when a large vessel pulled up alongside our ship. Our window was facing the port and not the dock. It was the refueling vessel. I have seen them before but never this close. They were literally right under our window. We watched as a small ship grabbed onto their bow lines of the refueling ship and pulled them to shore so it could be tied up before they hooked up the fuel lines and started refueling our ship. They were still working at this when we returned to our cabin at about 2:30. I sat turtle in the window so he could watch for the day and not be bored.
We went to breakfast in the Lido and checked the temperature outside. It was beautiful. We had purchased tickets for the hop on hop off bus (this time for the correct country) and were going to take a tour. It is Sunday and virtually everything is closed. By the way there are 4 other ships in port. That is probable about 15,000 people. One of the ships was actually disembarking its passengers and taking on new passengers. They were using the same terminal that we were using. It was crazy.
Well, there was a hop on booth inside the terminal and we showed them our tickets and they said all we had to do was go outside and get on the bus. HAHA!! While having breakfast we had seen where the buses were coming and loading so we knew where to go. The line was about 200 feet long. We got in line. There was supposed to be a bus every 20 minutes. It took us about 30 minutes and 3 busses later to get on. They were running them faster because there were sooooo many people. We could have actually got one bus earlier but there were no top seats and we wanted on top so we held back and got on the third bus. By the time we were getting on the bus the line was twice as long as when we had gotten in line. Whoa!! We started the ride in the third set of seats from the front. But after about 3 stops the people in one of the front seats got off and we jumped up and took their seats and rode the rest of the trip in the front row where you had a wonderful view. The ride took about 1 and a half or 2 hours. There was very little traffic and everything was closed along the streets so it wasn’t a bad ride. But the streets are 2 way and most of them are very narrow. We did go down some of there famous wide avenues. Great ride. We recognized the place where we had ridden the shuttle from the ship up to the town on previous visits and a church we had visited.
Then, we were back at the ship and the bus line was gone, but the line of people waiting to embark the other cruise line was enormous and in the same terminal where we had to get back on our ship. But they were separated from us so we could visit the shops in the terminal. I found some Arrowwords puzzle books!! I bought 2. They were supposed to cost 2.90 euros but they were charging 4 euros. He bought a new book. It was an Inspector Morse book, from a series we watch from Britain.
Well, finally back on the ship we decided to head to the café and have lunch. He had pea soup and I had a ham and cheese sandwich with curry ketchup on the side, and a chocolate covered roll filled with cream. He went up to the Lido deck and got a decaf coffee and I had water. We played a game of dominos and I lost!! No luck this cruise. Then, we headed back to the room where we napped about 30 minutes. By then, it was time to dress and go to supper.
The show was good but we have seen him before. He was actually the other guy who rode in the shuttle with us from the Rome hotel. Well, it was really cool getting to see Gibralter. The captain said we are to have some nasty weather tonight. He is trying to speed along so he can hopefully miss it. The winds have picked up and you can see lots of white caps on the waves. I suspect it will be colder and rougher once we leave Madeira.
Well, we will turn our clocks back an hour tonight at 2 am, so we are still the same time difference from you all because we fell back in Venice.
Love you all Mom, Granny and Bonnie
No comments:
Post a Comment