April 19,2011
Funchal,Madeira ,Portugal
This is our last port. Unfortunately, we had only until 3PM there. This seems to always be the case for this lovely place as it takes a long time to get to the mainland from here in either direction. We stopped here 3 years ago on our way to Africa. The island now is more tourist friendly with a new passenger terminal that is basically just a building so far and also there are hop on/hop off busses.
There are flowers everywhere in this temperate climate, the home of Madeira wine. After some heated discussion, Joe and I went on one of the busses. This island is of volcanic origin, so you can imagine the amazing views. I was hoping to get to the other side, but as I found out this time the Island is huge and it would take all day. The bus did take us to a high overlook and a cute fishing village called Camera de Lobos. We got off there for a short look around. We ended up back in the down town area had a not so good hurried lunch before it was time to catch the shuttle back to the ship.
I find it so frustrating to have just a little time in some of these wonderful places. You have to make a decision about what you want to do and without internet access a good part of the time, you rely on information from the ship. Holland gives out very poor maps, so you are looking shoreside for good ones which often times are not available.
Now, we head southwest to Ft Lauderdale for the next 6 days of which 5 of them will be 25 hr days since we crossed the international dateline more than 2 months ago.
Gina Wagg
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