If it's Wednesday, we must be in Bermuda

We are at our last port, Bermuda, before our cruise comes to an end in Florida this weekend. Bermuda is located approximately 600 miles east of North Carolina. It consists of about 181 small islandsThe 4 days went surprisingly fast and the seas were slight for the most part. It was a good trip across the Atlantic.

Just for a little trivia….In June, 1609, moving quickly to save their failing Virginian investment in the New World, company investors in England dispatched Admiral Sir George Somes as commander of a nine ship rescue fleet. Just seven days from their destination, a dreadful storm blew in and shipwrecked Somers flagship into what is now known as Bermuda. Somers promptly claimed the land for England, thus beginning Bermuda’s history of permanent British settlement.

Walls around theRoyal Navy Dockyard

We had no tour plans for this port, figuring we would be tiring of the typical coastal drive or history tour. It’s warm here…in the high 70’s so beach time would have been a option, but we decided to go for a walk outside the dockyard and try to find the ‘sea glass beach’. This is a beach on the West End that one will find thousands of pieces of colored sea glass washed up on shore. The color of sea glass is determined by its original source. Most sea glass comes from bottles, and the broken pieces are smoothed over time by the action of the sea. Red and cobalt blue are the rarest colors. Most common are Kelly green, brown, and clear.

With downloaded directions and map in hand, we headed past the Royal Naval Dockyard clocktower and headed on the coastal road in search of this beach. The Royal Naval Dockyard is where the cruise ships now dock and what was once the Navy dockyard is now a village of shops, and restaurants. As we left the dockyard, we walked past walls and buildings and found paintings on the walls. When this was a Navy base, the ships used to paint their insignia on the walls and buildings—lots of them.

Clocktower, which is now a shopping mall

Ship's insignias on walls along the wharf

Along the coastline we took in some beautiful views. We found the little stairway that led down to the beach and spent a few minutes gathering up some sea glass to add to our hurricane vases at home that have beach sand and shells from our travels.

They like colorful houses on this island

Sampling of the sea glass; there were thousands of pieces

Coast line view

Walking back the same route, we stopped by the Clocktower Mall, to enjoy the airconditioning! We browsed a bit and then headed back to the ship stopping by the “Moongate”. Legends say couples who kiss under the moongates (the wedding band shaped arches found throughout the island) will be assured a long and happy life together. So, we did!

The Moongate

Next 2 days will be at sea and we will sail through the “Bermuda Triangle”. The captain says he hasn’t lost a ship yet so we should be good!

A round of applause....

It's another sea day today.  For the most part the seas have been pretty smooth...sometimes we get to rocking a bit in moderate seas but the main atrium area and also our stateroom is mid-ship and that's the best place to be when the seas seem a bit bouncey.

Yesterday we went to another one of Jim Kennedy's lectures on NASA and the space program.  He is a retired director of the Kennedy Space Center and relates stories about the NASA program and especially the space shuttle era.  His lectures have been very interesting and right up Terry's alley with all the information about the space shuttle program. 

Terry was doing laps around the ship one morning getting some exercise and stopped to chat with Jim Kennedy for a bit.  Terry relayed the story about how our Florida daughter got us tickets to the final space shuttle launch last June and encouraged us risk the last-minute trip to Florida to fulfill this item on our 'bucket list'.

Well, he was so impressed with what Terry told him that it became one of his 'stories' during the lecture.  All of a sudden he was mentioned Terry Angell and his daughter Jennifer who helped her parents fulfill a wish.  Jim gave Terry a NASA pin, and emblem signed by him with a note to be given to Jen.

That was very neat!!  You'll get your pin in just a few days, Jen!!

Day 22 - The Azores

The Portuguese Azores are in the Atlantic Ocean 950 miles west of Lisbon and 2400 east of the US. All nine major islands are of volcanic origin. San Miguel is the largest island and that is where the capital city of the Azores is located, Ponta Delgada and is the port for our day in the Azores.

Our tour today is with 6 other Cruise Critic Rollcall members in a minivan with Gary, our guide from Azorean Tours. We leave the ship in rain to meet him on the dock. Since we knew that the Azores is often rainy, we left the itinerary of our tour up to Gary. He indicated that there was no sense in going Sete Cidades, a beautiful caldera that now contains a graceful lake, which appears to have both green and blue waters. Although, it’s rare that this can be seen as weather conditions have to be absolutely perfect when the sun shines directly on it. Not going to happen today so off we went to the other end of the island to see what we could between raindrops.

Coastline view

Beautiful rolling hills of green

Our first stop was at the Gorreana Tea Factory, which produces close to 40 tons of tea annually. It’s tea is in high demand as it is not treated with any pesticides or fungicides due to the inexistence of any pest or disease in the region. We toured the facilities and stopped by the room where several women were packaging the tea bags for sale and we got to sample the tea.

Tea plants--same plant for all kinds of tea...variations in processing make the different varieties of tea flavors

The women busy packing up the tea bags for sale

Next we headed to Furnas Lake for an overview and then to the village where there are hot springs and small geysers. There is a system of faucets where the townspeople can retrieve hot water in varying degrees for use in their homes. They also utilize the hotsprings to cook food, like having a big slow cooker in the middle of the village.

Furnas Lake

The hot springs in the village

A drenched Gary explaining the various water faucets throughout the hotsprings area

At this village we had a lunch of sandwiches made with local bread, ham, and cheese, its name I can’t remember. Very good, though.

Lunch where we dry off and have a great meal

Gary tried his best to find places to stop for view of the coastline and green, rolling hillsides where it was not raining, but with limited success. He did a great job!  The beauty of this island is very apparent, even on a rainy day. We must return someday.

Flowers, flowers everywhere on the island

Sampling of the homes--all are white on this island

By the time we returned to the ship, the sun was trying to peek through so I took a picture of the sunset as we were about to sail east into the Atlantic.

Next we have 4 days at sea where we will do a lot of relaxing and reading books on our Kindles.

Day 20 - Lisbon, Portugal

Lisbon is a large port at the mouth of the Tagus River, and the capital of Portugal. It was from here that much of the great wave of exploration started in the 15th century.

The first site to greet us was the 25th of April Bridge, which spans the river at the port. It is named for the date in 1974 when a bloodless revolution restored democracy by overthrowing the regime of Antonio Salazar. It was built employing the same engineering principles used to build the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and looks like its twin. We were up on deck as the ship sailed under the bridge.

By this time in our travels, we have done some tours through the ship, some tours we booked online from the port cities we visit and some “just doing our own thing” when we got off the ship in the port. When researching the possibilities for the port of Lisbon, I discovered a local tour company called, “We Hate Tourism Tours” and thought they would have a fun and different approach to showing us the city of Lisbon. I made reservations for us and our Colorado neighbors and we were pleasantly surprised when several others making up the two 8 passenger minivans were people from our cruise critic rollcall. So we had familiar faces in our mini van of 8.

We had so much fun on this tour….we highly recommend this company. Our young local drivers took us on a journey to learn about Portuguese culture from their perspective. Yes, we saw sites that tourists go to but we also had the opportunity to taste local foods and go to places where tourist buses don’t go. It was an adventure just going up and down the narrow streets the locals use on the hills of Lisbon. They made our day fun, inspite of rain showers that followed us around for most of the day.

High in the hills above Lisbon

Sintra, where the rich go to escape from busy Lisbon

Quinta da Regaleira--a palace in Sintra for an aristocratic family

Yum - our morning treat

Our drivers made us a picnic lunch

A sampling of tile, which is all over Lisbon

Guardians Gate at the Quinta da Regaleira--the summer palace for aristocracy

Terry up in one of the towers on the palace property

Another overview of Lisbon

We now head east into the Atlantic Ocean with stops in the Azores and then across to Bermuda before arriving in Fort Lauderdale.

Back in Spain

Located just above the boundaries of northern Portugal, Vigo is a Spanish city originally settled by Celts in 600 BC, giving it a longstanding Celtic tradition that lives on today through legends and the music of bagpipes. Not what we would think of for Spain; in fact, our tour guide today was a local with blonde hair and blue eyes!

Vigo is an important fishing and commercial port. As we left on our tour for the day, we drove along the coast and saw mussel flats, each one owned by a local family. Ropes are hung from the flat to the bottom of the harbor where mussels attach themselves and grow to be harvested.

Mussel flats in harbor

Our choices for touring today were: Santiago de Compostela, with its cathedral which is considered the 3rd holiest place in Christianity behind Jerusalem and Rome. The Apostle St. James is said to be buried there and pilgrams from all of Christiandom flocked to the magnificent cathedral built between the 12th and 13th centuries. It also was featured in the book by Ken Follett, “Pillars of the Earth”.

But we didn’t go there. Instead we took a winery tour and wine-tasting since Vigo is in the heart of Galicia’s (this area of Spain) Albarino wine country for a little variety in our siteseeing and a chance to have a laid-back day. It was a fun day and there was no holding back on the wine—one could have as much as one wanted, along with an assortment of tapas to munch on, and the busload of cruisers seemed pretty happy. We enjoyed the company of another couple from our cruise critic rollcall group. We will be on the same small group tour with them when we are in the Azores a few days from now. It was nice to have a chance to get to know them. They did a 12-day tour in Egypt before coming on this cruise and had a wonderful time. We always enjoy hearing the experiences of travel in parts of the world we hope to travel to someday.

The Agro de Bazan Winery

The winery's vineyard

Typical courtyard

Architectural style of balconies

Wine, tapas, and good conversation

Next up is Lisbon, Portugal

Normandy and the D-Day Beaches

Our choice for the port of LeHavre, France was to either go to Paris or to the beaches and memorials of D-Day in Normandy. Being our first time here, we wanted to go to Normandy and pay tribute to those who fought so bravely in WWII.


The weather was as predicted today…..raining in LeHavre when we left on our tour. We left the rain but experienced cool weather and very strong winds coming off the Atlantic Ocean on the beaches of the landings where the Allied liberators started their massive invasion on June 6, 1944. So out came the gloves and headbands in this very typical Normandy weather which we learned is very much like that day in June, 1944.

Our first stop was at Omaha Beach, the site of the most difficult and bloody invasion. As we stood on the beach, we could visualize what happened through our memory of scenes from the movies, “The Longest Day” and “Saving Private Ryan”. We had an excellent guide, through Overlook Tours, who showed us photos taken in 1944 and recounted events at various sites as we stood at the same spot today. He told us how the hedgerows outlining the farms and roads in the area became an unforeseen problem as soldiers could not make their way through the tangled brush and could not tell if there was friend or foe on just the other side of the hedgerow.

Bunker on hillside at Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach

Overlooking Omaha Beach

Photo of church in 1944

Same church now rebuilt

Hedgerow

Next we visited Pointe du Hoc where American Rangers courageously scaled sheer cliffs on rope ladders while under constant fire to attack the German defense. Terry and our guide went down into one of the many holes around the Pointe to show how deep the explosions of artillery blasted out the area.

The cliffs the Rangers had to climb from the beach

Deep hole blasted out by artilliary

We had lunch overlooking the church in Saint Mere Eglise, where paratroopers dropped from the sky early in the morning ahead of the beach invasions. This church was where a paratrooper landed on the roof of the church, his parachute caught on the steeple. The fall knocked him out and when he awoke, he played dead until he could get himself untangled and off the roof. He was captured but escaped the Germans 2 days later. Our guide said that this paratrooper lived to be 96 years old. There is a parachute on the steeple to help the tourists visualize the event. We remember that this was also a scene in the movie, “The Longest Day”.

Church the paratrooper landed on.  Parachute on steeple marks the spot

Our final stop was at a 12th century church at Angoville au Plain, where two American paratrooper medics administered life saving aid to a mix of some 80 American and German soldiers wounded during the first day of the Normandy invasion. This village was overrun by troops of both sides several times during D-Day.

Memorial to paratroopers

Church used as a hospital for both American and German soldiers

This was definitely a day of reflection and gratitude to those who fought and gave their lives for freedom and we will never forget.

American cemetary with over 10,000 graves

Memorial pool at American cemetary