Seven Days at Sea

Here are some pictures from our seven days at sea.  You will notice that most of them were taken at dinner with various dinner partners.  I got the names and contact information on some of them and then promptly lost it.  Oh well, we enjoyed their company anyway.

This is  the waiter that served us the majority of the time.  Since we were on “Any Time” dining we sat at several different tables with different groups of people.

  

Janet and Marjorie from England were typically at the same table.

Here are some more towel animals.  First a turtle

  

and then a swan.

    

We did sit out by the pool one day with Forest and Kim from San Antonio.  They were always with us  at the blackjack tables in the evenings.

 

This couple only joined us one evening.

 

Bernie and his wife sat with us several different evenings.

 

Here we are again

 

Here is our Cruise director announcing the evenings entertainment.

The entertainment that night was a concert violinist who had performed for us another night.  He was excellent.

 

Another towel creature.  This time it was a stingray.

   

I think this was the woman whose name was Nell and her husband.  My memory is so short.  They ate with us a few times too.

 

We had a production show this night.  It was the music of the 60’s and 70’s.

 

This was the metal sculpture in the atrium.

They had put together a choir from people on the cruise.  They serenaded us one afternoon.  They were pretty good for the short time they had to prepare.

    

This couple also ate with us several times.  They were former New Yorkers now from Florida.

  

The wait staff also serenaded us one evening.

  

And there was a parade of nations with the flags of the different nations that the crew represented.

 

Towards the end all of the crew were represented in the theatre.

   

Our towel that night was a frog.

  

Along about Wednesday my throat started getting sore.  I attributed it to the dry air on the ship.  By Thursday it was even sorer and by the time we got on the airplane in Fort Lauderdale on Friday  it was very sore. 

I spent a miserable night in Austin at Nola’s and then we took Trouble and headed back to Aransas Pass.  I continued to get sicker until I went to the doctor on Monday.  I spent the next week and a half getting well.  My excuse for not posting these sooner. :-)

Azores

Yesterday was a day at sea and a day to relax.  Last night when we got to the room we had an elephant on our bed.

Today, September 27th we arrived in Ponta Delgada on the island of Sao Miguel which is the largest island of the Azores.

We had scheduled a tour so we met in the theater to wait for our tour.

Here is our ship from our tour bus.

The wall is part of the protective embankment around the island.

This fountain represents all of the islands in the Azores.

This is an old windmill that was still standing on a high hill.

San Miguel is also known as the green island and these pink flowers are known as “girls going to school”

They are a lily type flower.

Our tour is taking us to Sete Cidades which is an extinct volcano crater.  The views are beautiful.

This is a little resort town.

We had to wait for these cows to move from one pasture to another.

One of the main trees on the island is the Norfolk Island Pine which we used to have in our front yard when we lived on North Padre Island.

The fields are divided by bushes like this. 

   

There were still blue flowers left on some of the bushes.

 

We finally arrived at the village of Sete Cidades.  This is the church there.

This is the bandstand like all of the villages have.

This is the city’s crest.

After a short visit to the village we traveled across the bridge where the water is deep blue, reflecting the sky, on one side and bright green, reflecting the lush crater walls.  We couldn’t see much difference in the colors but the lakes were beautiful.

 

On the drive back we went to the tope of the crater and we could see the village and both lakes from this viewpoint.

   

We also caught a glimpse of another crater lake.

This is what was left of an old aqueduct from the 15th century.

From this viewpoint we were able to see both sides of the island which is only 373 square miles.

 

When we arrived back in town we went to the Hotel Azores Atlántico across from the cruise ship for a wine and cheese tasting.  We were able to taste lots of red and wines and a large variety of cheeses.

We chose to walk back to the ship.  This is a view of the port from the walkway with the lighthouse on the jetty.  

When we got back to the port we found America.  They had a Burger King!!  This may be a concession to the USAF base located on this island.

What a nice day ashore.