Our first port of call,
and after three days of pretty rough weather I think a lot of the
passengers were glad to reach land. We'd been told that nothing
much would be open in Madeira as it's a public holiday, so Dave and I
waited until after lunch to go for a walk round the town. Weather
has been typical for Madeira, mostly warm and sunny, but clouds
threatening showers at any time. Took the shuttle bus into town, had
a stroll round the very quiet streets, saw one dodgy balloon selling
Santa (see previous blogs!) and one folk dancing troupe. There were
a few stalls selling plastic toys, rubbish jewellery, handbags,
carved giraffes and elephants (!!!) and scarves, but nothing to even
vaguely tempt me to part with a few euros. So we wandered back to
the ship and have spent the remainder of the afternoon on our perfect
balcony.
The onboard
entertainment so far has been excellent. The Balmoral Show Company's
troupe are exceptionally good – five girls and five boys, all of
whom can sing and dance. The comedian made us chuckle last night,
even though he is about 75 and we'd never heard of him, and the male
crooner has a good voice (though we only saw him in the 'highlights'
show, as Rat Pack type songs aren't our thing). There are two
speakers on the ship... one really bad, one really good, and I've
looked in on the craft class but so far the projects have been a bit
old-fashioned so I've not attended.
Food of course is
excellent. Our cabin is midships on Deck 10, and our restaurant(one
of the small ones on this ship) is at the stern of Deck 10, so we
only have a few yards to stagger to be fed at very regular intervals.
On Deck 11, at the pointy end, is one of the bars which serves
morning coffee and afternoon tea, so we've been using that too each
day, meaning I've not even had to brew up in the cabin yet.
All for now, hope all
our friends and family who may be looking in on the blog have had a
wonderful Christmas.
Love, Janet
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