11/14–On the way to Sanibel

We can’t sleep – and are up at the ungodly hour of 4:30am. Well, Ed is, I manage to stay in the bed until 5:30 – but then we’re done.  Everything is really early today anyway, because it is the first time into a US port, the ship has to undergo all the inspections and CBP have to come aboard to process guests who aren’t US citizens.  It’s going to be a day – that’s for sure!

So, we’re up, we shower, we go to our Suite breakfast in Giovanni’s which opens at 6. As we walk down the hall, the line for non-US immigration already wraps down the hall and into the Centrum, and it doesn’t start until 6:15.  Oh, this will be ugly.  We have our coffee and hot water (Carrefour instant coffee, made it to the last day!) and are pleasantly surprised that there are scrambled eggs and bacon on the buffet. We thought for certain it would only be continental. 

Done with breakfast, we scout out where we think we will be getting off on the 5th floor. There are a few folks standing around the elevator, but not many. So we decide to get our stuff now and make our way down, instead of hanging out in the room.  We want to make sure we can get an elevator.

And, we do, so that all works well.  However, the gal at the door says we should go down the hall to the theater. Huh?  We thought we could walk right out.  On the way we see Jose (cruise staff – awesome guy!) and ask him if we are doing the right thing.  It’s now about 7:00, and allegedly walk off was to begin at 6:15.  Of course we knew that would never happen – but…we expected a line around the decks to leave, not the theater. 

Jose walks us in, checks we’re supposed to be there, and positions us just right (by chance) because all of a sudden, they say we’re ready to go. Yes! Worked well! We manage to get in line pretty close to the front.  We still have to stand outside for another 10 or 15 minutes waiting for everything and everyone to line up correctly – but finally we are off (with only minor grumbling from grumpy passengers – and no fist fights that we saw!  LOL).

The cab line isn’t too hateful – although it is odd and not managed at all, but we get a cab pretty quickly and he charges us $20 off the meter to get to the hotel and our car.  Sweet.  We’re on the road by 8:30 – a full 15 minutes before our scheduled disembarkation time. 

As it turns out, we did the smart thing walking off.  The whole immigration, ship clearing thing was totally delayed (as we feared it would be).  The schedule was at least an hour behind, so we wouldn’t have been off until 9:45, and there were some other little bumps in the process that made it a little more irritating for those still aboard.  We were fortunate we could carry off and hop in a cab and go.  Phew!

So – we hit Ft. Myers, did our shopping, had lunch and were able to check into Spanish Cay a couple hours early to boot!  All’s well and we’re now hanging out on the Gulf of Mexico for a while!  That’s all for this blog journey.  Stay tuned for SE Asia coming your way soon.

11/13–Last Sea Day

Not much to report today.  Although it is a busy day for us!  LOL.  10am lecturer, 11am chat with the Captain, 12pm meet the entertainers, then it is time to pack.  Full day!  Ha ha.

We actually do manage to make it a full day – although packing is a tad more challenging on this end because we are trying to fit all the food we purchased into already stuffed luggage. But we succeed, and then decide to do express walk off instead of waiting until our allotted time of 8:30 to disembark (which turns out to be a VERY smart move…but more on that later).

We get a treat from the chef today (our first treat – so we wonder if we missed things being the only suite on the 7th floor?? who knows!  We do know that Patricia, our concierge calls us her easiest guests – and so does our room attendant – he told her that!).  But regardless, this is a gorgeous chocolately thing that is entirely appropriate for our last day….and does not last long….

After gorging on our last treat, we continue on our normal routine, the gym, our drink run to the pool bar – and then I return the weight I appropriated from the gym to use in the stateroom (because the darn gym is so small and always so crowded, I could never get to the exercise floor – figured the suite was huge and plenty of space down there to stretch and lift, so I borrowed it for the cruise). 

Later, after drinks, farewells to Christopher, our wonder Diamond Lounge server, and V – who btw – won the Leave Your Mark At Sea contest – we eat our last meal in the dining room and go to watch the flag parade in the Centrum (with V accepting his award – bad pictures, I know, the iPhone isn’t the best in this light!).

Then its off to see the comedian, who is actually quite funny, and then to bed to prepare for early morning arrival in Tampa.

11/12–Nassau

Land! Terra Firma!  Everybody off!  Actually, today we are trying to take it slow.  We want to go to Arawak Cay and Fish Fry so we can partake in the traditional Bahamian fish fry restaurants there. Last time in Nassau, we were way too early – and had no patience to wait until they opened. This trip we are trying to take it easier so we can get there for lunch. Ha!  We have no patience!

Even though we lollygag (as much as possible for us) we are still off the ship around 9:30.  It’s an almost 2 mile walk, so we are taking it slow, but the places still don’t open until 10 (supposedly) and we don’t really want fried fish at 10 in the morning.  So….we stroll slowly through town, walk down the sea front and end up sitting on a bench on the waterfront (in the shade!!! It’s HOT) to waste some time.

We were the first ship in, and the NCL Breakaway and Escape are in port as well. As we are sitting watching the waves roll in, the Carnival Pride joins us.  Ugh…town will be a zoo with all these 16,000 visitors pouring off the ships.

After biding our time, we head toward Arawak. On the way we stop and talk to a guy lounging on one of the benches who is selling conch shells for $3.  It’s a steal, they are huge, but we can’t take them back – we don’t have enough luggage room now!  He is a charming man – originally from Jamaica, has lived all over the world. Fell in love with a Swiss woman, moved to Germany, had a daughter with her who is now 28, couldn’t work there because of the permits, so he traveled all over Europe.  He’s back here now, with another wife and lots more kids.  He fishes by trade, and is going out next week for a month or so, but when he’s on land he sells the conch shells he collects – just as something to do.  We traded stories for a bit, talking about life in general, get his recommendations on restaurants then head down to the Fish Fry.

Even though we’ve tried to take it slow, we’re still really early. The place our shell friend recommended isn’t open yet (at least there are no signs of life), so we saunter down the long row of restaurant store fronts. As we are nearing the end, a “hawker” approaches us and tells us his restaurant is open, we’ll get a free Bahama Mama (or something) if we order an entrée, and he has high speed wifi and private toilets (private toilets are a big deal in this area!) etc., etc.  He’s engaging and nice, asks where we are from and then goes on to tell us he owns a restaurant in Atlanta called Asante.  5 star.  Near Ruth Chris.  Really?  Well, what the heck, and head into Curly’s.

It’s a laid back little place, with a couple of other folks already there. Kitchen is slow, which is fine by us coz it’s barely 11am!

We have a couple beers – Sands, a local brew we’ve not had before – and then we order a combo appetizer (coz the beer is going to our heads by now). 

Wow – now that’s a sampler!  Chicken wings, fried Conch and Grouper fingers. We were figuring on starting with this then ordering a main – but no way. We are stuffed. I’m so stuffed, I actually can’t even finish my half – so Ed gets the lion’s share.  Too much food.  I’m so done (I’ve been so stuffed I’ve been stealing Peanut Butter from the breakfast buffet and saving it for lunch to have with an apple – and that’s been it for my food during the day!).

After an enjoyable hour or so, we make our way out of Curly’s, and head back into town looking for more wifi. Turns out we should have stayed at Curly’s for wifi!  I’m trying to download books on my Kindle, and the first place we go, Sharkeez (where we’ve been before) is so packed the wifi won’t even connect. We drink expensive small beers here (Curly’s was by far the better deal) and move on.

The ship recommended (and we NEVER do this…but you’ll see why….) Pirate Republic Brewing Company. As I said, we NEVER follow their recommendations, but it is a brewery – and you know we won’t pass that up.  We are looking to go on their 2 pm tour. So, we pay for our tour ($10 each), get our “free” beer, and Ed heads to a table to wait while I wait for the bartender to ask her where to meet for the tour.  She’s on the phone talking to someone and looking at me, hmmm….Finally she hangs up, and it turns out that there is no tour today, they’ve just installed new equipment and they don’t want to do tours until everything is up and running. So, she gives us our beers for free and apologizes. Hey, that works! 

Unfortunately the Wifi doesn’t work much better here than at Sharkeez. We get connected after a while, but it is still brutally slow. So I’ll just wait on my books – it is only one day more and I’ve got tons of back up stuff to read.

Back to the ship we go, to get ready for our last 2 nights aboard our ride home.

11/11–7 days at sea

What did we do? The same as always – we don’t know!  There was at least one good enrichment lecturer who was a geography professor for University of Hawaii, and he kept us entertained for at least an hour a day.  Another lecturer talked about health and diets, so he was good for a couple of days.

There were special events going on in the Centrum – so that helped a couple days.  We had the official crossing of the equator party.  Of course, we didn’t really cross the equator – just the halfway point of the Atlantic, but I guess it was cause for a celebration anyway.  So that was fun to watch the Captain as King Neptune and a few of the officers being forced to kiss the fish, have whipped cream pie in the face or spaghetti noodles with sauce on their head.  Just the normal silliness of the crossing ceremony. Although we joked about “kiss the fish” from Oceania – which was a MUCH bigger fish – it was still entertaining.

Then another day there was leave your mark on the seas.  They had a huge banner (previously hung on in the Centrum) that we all got to sign with a member of the staff who made our trip special.  They ran a contest and would recognize the staff who got the most votes.  Really impressive because there were thousands of signatures that someone had to count! Those of us who signed were rewarded with a slice of cake and champagne.

Note:  They make the biggest desserts we’ve ever seen! You can’t tell it from this picture but the cake was probably 6 feet long. One day in the buffet they had the biggest apple pie we’d ever seen in our lives.  Made in a huge kettle/wok, it too had a diameter somewhere close to 5 or 6 feet. 

Other than a couple of game show type things, we hung out in the cabin, on the balcony, and tried to watch whatever movie we could on the tv (not a very wide selection of decent movies, for sure). But – that was our choice.  There were tons of things going on – the usual, and the weather was beautiful so everyone was up on the pool deck.

Night times consisted of shows in the Centrum. Sanjay (hotel director) and staff had put together a series of shows put on by the crew at 7:30 each night. They promoted them all over the ship with great flyers (in your cabin each night and posted around the ship) that were professionally done and printed out in the photo gallery. 

Fantastic – promotion and shows! With costumes and traditional dances:  Filipino, Indonesian, Turkish belly dancing (that the entire customer service staff did) and the grand finale, Bollywood that included Patricia,our concierge, and Vojtech, our Diamond Lounge host.  Amazing!

Click here for the Bollywood Video.

The last day there was an afternoon concert by the deck and maintenance guys. The ones you never see above decks!  Really incredibly talented, everyone, and a great way to spend our sea days.

Other ship notes:

The Captain – Captain Marek is great.  He has a very welcoming personality and a wonderful sense of humor.  He calls us his family – “good morning Vision family” and is always wry and funny during his noon announcements.  But you don’t want to be late for the ship, that’s for certain.  He calls you out by name when you are late for all aboard, then, the next day, he’ll mention you again in the morning – “hope Christian and Fernando make it on time today”.  As a matter of fact, Christian and Fernando (who were Spanish) were really late getting aboard in Madeira – all aboard was 4:30, sail away was 5:00 and they didn’t get aboard until 5:00.  Of course Captain Marek announced this and said he would find them later.  Then 7 days later, in Nassau, he announced we were here, and the ship was cleared and all aboard was 4:30.  Then he said – and for Christian and Fernando I’m giving them the all aboard in Spanish – and he proceeded to speak Spanish.  Too funny!

He also is the “rockin’” captain.  He used to be in a rock band, so he sings.  In the Centrum we had Rockin’ with the Vision crew where Captain Marek sang “It’s My Life” and “Mustang Sally”, and other crew members sang songs like “Lady in Red” and other popular songs.

Staff/Ship atmosphere:  By far one of the happiest ships we have ever sailed.  With one exception (the one we call the sticker lady), there wasn’t a sour face or attitude in the lot.  Didn’t matter who you saw, passed in the hall, talked to – everyone was happy and friendly.     

Passenger altercations – Day 5 at sea Captain Marek, during his noon announcement, mentioned that there had been some guest altercations aboard, and we should come to staff if anything happened, not try to take care of it ourselves.  He made a point of saying that he wouldn’t put up with this – “not on my ship.”  Turns out there was a “fight” in the Diamond lounge between 2 ladies. We’ve only heard rumors, but 2 women got into it, then their husbands joined in.  We also heard a rumor the ship was debating putting them off in Nassau.  Never did get confirmation on that – but honestly! We also heard that people were fighting on the pool deck – hitting each other with their towels. That was probably over the chair hogs – and there are LOTS of them here!  Rich (CD) and Daniel (Asst CD) even mentioned this on their morning show – asking people to please not try to reserve deck chairs.  Sigh…..

Food – Pretty good.  The red meat is right on – good cuts and perfectly cut.  The white meat – eh – not so much.  They cook the chicken and pork to death – but otherwise, the menus are creative (if not sometimes bordering on the odd) and if we listen to Warren’s (our waiter) recommendations, we’re always good!

Cookies – this is the cookieless-ist ship on the seas!  They hide the cookies.  Seriously.  You have to ask for them at the dessert buffet at lunch.  We can sort of understand, because people tend to take way more than they can (or should) eat!  But still, it was funny!  Also there are a couple varieties that are just bad.  The chocolate cookies were the worst cookie I’ve ever tasted – I wouldn’t even categorize it as a cookie!  The oatmeal raisin though, were the absolute best. Go figure.

Overall – excellent.  Great cruise, fun ports, good crossing and a fantastic staff always there with a smile.

11/4–Funchal, Madeira

Docked right on time, and then some issue with gangways, but we’re off the ship and headed into town by 8:20.  We have a car booked and our plans are to drive at least halfway around the island to seaside town of Sao Vincente on the Northern side of the island. Ed has found a restaurant there for lunch, so we will leisurely make our way there along the coast. 

Finding the car is easy – it’s closer than the city center, up the large hill that faces the pier. And we luck out and get the closest pier to town – so that saves at least 10 minutes in walking.

The car is ready, but we actually upgrade to a better car for 9 euros – and end up with a Volvo reminiscent of the one we had in Oregon and Washington.  It’s a diesel, so its better on mileage, and it’s an automatic (which we didn’t have booked before).  It’s cool too, because it shuts itself off instead of idling, then turns itself back on when you hit the gas.  Neat.

We head out to the west of the island, setting our sites on the view point above Camara de Lobos.  Just something I read about, and something to waste some time on the way to lunch.  It’s a nice diversion with good views, up on the hills over the fishing village of Camara de Lobos. 

We manage to make our way out of the viewpoint (these roads are tricky!) and back up onto the highway before turning off on local roads along the seacoast for our tour of Madeira.  The scenery is fantastic.  Craggy cliffs and mountains, lots of terracing cut into the hillsides.

We drive down to the beach area and around round-abouts and little villages, stopping occasionally to snap some shots.

We have to keep changing the destination for Alice so we can get all the way around the island without her usual tricks.  We head to Ponta do Pargo to avoid going inland through the Nature Parque and somehow make it there with only one wrong turn.  We’re at the westernmost point of the island, where a small little lighthouse stands guard over some spectacular coastal scenery.

Turning Northward, we start to climb up switchback little roads, through teeny villages and into a forest that reminds us of Asheville.  Tall trees, winding roads, we could be on Town Mountain road if we didn’t know better.  There are cows on the side of the road…

…and the feeling that you’re miles away from anyone and anything.  It’s cooler up here too, and it’s been raining, which gives a really fall feeling to the air. We stop at a little picnic area for a break – too bad we don’t have picnic food, this would be the perfect place.  It’s so quiet here, no one around, just us and the trees and the running water.

As we crest the end of the island and move toward the East, the trees disappear and we are rewarded with wonderful views of towns nestled down by the shoreline.  It’s a beautiful day and the towns and villages look so lovely.  In particular Porto Moniz, situated way down at sea level.

Turns out, that’s where we’re heading.  We’re up so high in the hills, but the road winds its way down to the shore, and we drive through the little resort community and into the tunnels. We are now calling this the island of tunnels.  They are everywhere.  All throughout the island – obviously a better way to get around the mountains and hills are to go inside them – but really, there must be hundreds if not thousands of tunnels on this island.  From Porto Moniz to Sao Vicente alone there are at least 20. 

Ed successfully navigates through them all, as we stop along the way to take pictures of natural waterfalls along the side of the road and wonderful coastal scenes.

We arrive in Sao Vincente with the barest of directions.  We make a couple of wrong turns but end up where we need to be for Taberna Sao Vicente – a popular restaurant that got good TripAdvisor reviews.  There is parking right across the street, but as we walk up to the doors, we realize it is closed. And not just closed today, but shuttered up and closed and gone.  Bummer! The For sale sign (Aluga se) should have been our first clue.

Luckily enough, the restaurant is located near the seaside promenade with other eating choices.  It’s a short walk to the waterfront where we peruse a couple of menus and choose Vila Vicente Restaurant because the guy outside tells us the plates are big – not small, big!  Ok!  They have a lovely balcony overlooking the water, so how can we go wrong?

And we don’t! Ed gets the seafood soup as a starter – and yes it is BIG! – and then he gets the grilled espada (that ugly fish that tastes so good!) and I have the espada with banana (weird, but hey, banana!).

It is all totally yummy! And really quite inexpensive for being right here on the water.  After lunch we walk around this little park by the car – great views.

Then back we head to Funchal. This time we take the inland route, through more tunnels and with lots of mountain scenery.

The whole place reminds us of Hawaii.  The roads like the Road to Hana, the mountains like the big island, the tunnels and roads through the mountains like the Pali highway on Oahu.  It’s very beautiful and very familiar somehow.

We zig zag our way through town, get turned around because we can’t take a left into the street where we need to drop the car, but finally figure out our way back and deposit the car safely. Then onto a pub for afternoon beverages and wifi – and back to the ship to begin our long stretch of 7 sea days!