Saturday, October 28 – Pont Delgada Today, we are in Ponta Delgada, another port on another of the Azores. On the map, we are less than two inches from Horta, but the captain managed to kill more than 12 hours getting here. Apparently, he “circled the airport” all night. Although larger than Horta’s island, this one is still a volcanic rock in the middle of the Atlantic. These islands are, in fact, simply the tops of undersea mountains. We can see low hills surrounding the port but no jagged peaks. Exposed as they are on all sides, they have been worn down by eons of rain and wind. This does not mean the hills fronting the harbor are not steep – there are stairs instead of sidewalks connecting the streets which parallel the harbor. Even with the stairs, the climb can be very tiring. Pont Delgada is Horta all grown up. It is more of a real city albeit small. Horta feels more like a village that is still growing. Most of the buildings exhibit the old local archite
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Sunday, October 29 – Wasted Efforts Another sea day started in fog, according to the captain, but the sky was only a bit cloudy and the sun was bright enough that the MDR curtains were still drawn on our side of the ship when we went for breakfast. The Atlantic was so smooth that the only motion we could detect was the Veendam’s wake. It was as if we were standing still. When we returned to the cabin after breakfast, we found that the stewards had not cleaned it for the day, so we took our tablets and the NYT puzzle in search of a place to work. After several false starts, we ended up in the Explorer’s Lounge, a space frequently used for concerts by a piano-violin duo. This morning, it was empty when we got there but became busier when a group traveling with Cruise Specialists used it for a meet-and-mingle. MA didn’t even notice their presence, and we worked on our respective copies of the puzzle until we were bleary-eyed. Once again, the room had not been made up when w
Bon voyage!
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ReplyDeleteMy sister just disembarked from the Veendam last week in NYC. Also we transited the Panama Canal on her last November. Looks like you will be back in Madeira on 11/29 ... so close ... we fly in on December 1st, staying a week, then a few days in Ponta Delgada.
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