After three days at sea we are
happy to see land. We are up early and
showered and dressed early and we go to the dining room for breakfast. We are told there are no tables for two when
we enter. But when I look in I can see
at least a dozen tables for two. I
really dislike sitting at large tables for breakfast cause it can take so much
longer to be served and we are on limited time this morning. I inform the hostess politely that we can
wait – and low and behold a minute later a table appears. I am sure she is told to discourage tables of
two – which I bet she hates doing cause she knows the truth.
Caesar is serving us, and his
assistant Julia – great naming pair.
I ordered eggs and sausage and
hashbrowns and Bernie got pancakes. Now
many of you may remember the issue with pancakes and Bernie, they are never hot
when he gets them, in fact they are not even warm enough to partial melt the
butter. But this time they are piping
hot and my eggs are cooked perfectly. It
was a great breakfast and again the Island Princess’ food is top notch.
Today we have a tour with friends
(8 in total) with FestiTour and Antonio.
Antonio started this business a few years back and he was waiting for us
just where he said, past the sliding doors.
A short walk to his van and we all pile in.
We were to be 8 but one husband has that
dreaded cough/cold that is going around and has stayed on board.
The van is very comfortable, but we are 7 and
I don’t really know where we would of comfortably put the 8th
person.
Sadly the weather is cloudy with
fog in upper areas Antonio informs us and visiting the craters/lakes formed
from the volcano would be fruitless because we won’t see a thing.
We trust him to take us where he wishes, but
he does promise to see later on if it improves.
Our first stop is a pineapple
plantation – who knew that they grew pineapples here but they do. These are the smaller sweeter pineapples
which we often find in the Caribbean.
Antonio discusses the island and
the areas as he drives; however he is quite soft spoken and I can barely hear
him and I am right behind him. I know
those in the third row only heard about half of what he said. So my only advice for him and the tour is get
a mic/speaker system for the van so everyone can hear.
We are now on the North Side of
the island and we stop at a beach. Black
sand beaches are the norm because of all the volcanos. Today it is quite windy and there are two
surfers out there.
 |
| that large crowd is a Princess excursion. |
The second largest town on the
island is Ribeira Grand City and their town square. Here we encounter two Princess shuttles (or I
am hoping two groups because they were huge).
We make a few more stops and
especially enjoyed the waterfall stop.
We start making our way towards
one of the craters but we encounter fog along the roadway and Antonio checks
in with us and we agree that this would be useless. We can’t see anything in front of us on the
road, we certainly won’t see anything up on the edge of the crater. We just have to come back I say.
Back down and Antonio finds a
nice little picnic area and he sets up his picnic basket. Table cloth, wine glasses, wine (red, green
and white), cheese sandwiches, biscuits, and more.
This is perfect! We start enjoying the food and drink while
Antonio works as a gracious host making sure we all get something of
everything, especially the wine. Make
sure to try the green wine that is unique to Portugal and very fresh and
fruity. This is the wine that our friend
– also named Antonio shared with us one dinner.
After about an hour stop we are
back on the road heading back to Ponta Delgada.
He drives around a bit showing us the different sites in town. This is quite a large city with everything
you could want and is very busy during the summer months with tourists from all
over but especially the mainland.
Antonio drops us off right at the
port gate at 3:15 (all aboard is 3:30).
So in all we have been with him for six hours and we really enjoyed the
day. Sure it didn’t go exactly as
planned because of the fog but sometimes you have to throw out your plans and
go with the flow.
I can highly recommend Antonio
and FestiTour to take care of you when you visit the Azores.
We notice another person is
medically getting off – oh rough place to be getting off. I am sure their medical services are great
here but you are quite a distance away from Europe or North America.
Once on board we sit out on the
balcony reading, enjoying wine and reminiscing about the ports we have
visited. It is hard to believe our next
stop will be Fort Lauderdale in a week.
Everyone is all aboard and we actually drop the lines and we are heading
out about ten minutes early.
This afternoon we watch the movie
Mr. Holmes in the cabin and enjoy a short nap.
Around 7;30 we shower and head to the Anytime Dining room for dinner.
This is only our fifth time
dining in the dining room this entire voyage.
And really I haven’t missed it mainly because the Horizon court is so
darn good. But it is nice to be back and
we are sat at a table for two right near the entrance to the galley. A bit noisy in there – I can hear singing and
plates but it can always be worse – I could be the one cleaning those plates.
I start with a Moroccan Chicken
Soup (very good and lots of flavour), a salad of greens and beets, and my
entrée is a Falafel with humus and pitas.
LOVE IT – I love that there are more unique meals offered. You can only eat steak and chicken so much on
board.
For dessert I had the Vodka Lime
sorbet and again very flavourful and refreshing.
We don’t take too long to dine
and we enjoyed seeing everyone in the dining room again. Maitre D’ Jacques is a consummate host. You see him all over the dining rooms
checking things and even seating passengers at times. He is a real hands on Maitre D’ and it is
nice seeing him out and about. He comes
over and says hi and we both discuss our day in Portugal. Upon leaving we finally run into Moises the
head waiter that is married to Janice.
He just got on in Barcelona and we introduce ourselves.
After dinner the ship seems very
quiet – it is just before 10 pm and we wander around a bit and then end up
seeing a bit of the game show “are you smarter than a crew member”. We decide to check out the comedian Scott
Wyler in the Princess Theater. I know we
have seen him before but we still laugh at his jokes. He is quite funny. I especially liked his joke “I was told I
would have a suite when I got on the ship, when I got to my cabin I commented
where is my suite? The cabin steward
pointed to the chocolate on the pillow – there is your sweet sir.”
Tonight it is quite windy, the
seas are moderate but the wind is causing the ship to bounce and sway and there
is definite movement. I am sure this
could be an issue for some. So far we
are good and we are managing quite fine.
I will also add that we did get a
health advisory notice in our cabin today.
There are a lot of people with colds and coughing on board. The form advises you to seek medical
attention if you are suffering with symptoms especially if you are older. It also advises you to sneeze into a Kleenex
or arm and then to dispose of it and to wash your hands.
Key here is wash your hands. But all of this is normal when you confine
people to a ship for such a long time.
No different that kids at school spreading their colds.
Again the clocks go back an hour
tonight. It is enjoyable having that extra hour many nights in a row and they
are spreading it out nicely.
Now we have six sea days in a
row! The longest we have ever had was
five but I am sure we will enjoy each and every one of them. Lots of activities are planned.
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