He Said . . .

Well Ami’s in trouble but more on that in a bit…

Yesterday, after 4 beautiful days on the sea, we found a gem of an island called Cape Verde.  It’s about 200 miles from Dakar off the African coast, close to Teneriffe (where the world’s deadliest airplane accident occurred) which should give you an idea of where it is, I did not before getting on this boat.  Any how, I had no expectations of what was there and what there was to do but so in that regard it certainly exceeded all of my expectations. It’s quite arid, mainly due to all of the wind not allowing seeds to germenate and take root.  It looks a lot like Teneriffe in that regard as well; that’s where they shot James Bond in Moonraker if you need a visual, yea, barren!! But it’s beautiful nonetheless and the beach just around the corner from the ship was unbelievable, gorgeous.  They have some sort of building out on an outcropping island in the bay that I must research when I get home, I suspect some sort of research facility, what a place to call work. We walked all over town looking for a wifi connection so I could call Brandon and have him move the money for the final log home payment when we get back; it seems to take electrons longer to move money into and out of Bank of America longer than any other place in the cosmos!!!  Well we did finally come across a place to use and we sat down and ordered a coffee and water. Now mind you the exchange rate for Cape Verde is 97.6 whatever they ares to 1 dollar. So you can imagine my shock when I got the bill (la contra) for 140,000 CVE’s, yea $14 for a coffee and a 50 ml water, what in the world, they must have had Juan Valdez row a boat from South America with us to deliver this outlandishly priced coffee; wow!!! But I digress, we walked 6.5 miles up and down and all over the city, I felt like we learned it intimately and fell in love with it.  It didn’t make it to the return trip locations on my bucket list but I would definitely come back if the opportunity presented itself again. Hopefully AJ will upload some beautiful pics of the place, I really loved it!!

Now as for Ami getting in trouble, about 3 days ago they asked for our guest comment cards, they say they like to get them early so that if there is anything they can fix during and not after your cruise they’d like the opportunity.  Well, she filled it out dutifully and was honest, very different than what they would have received from me which was nothing and then if forced to an “everything is fine”, even if I was never going to return to Azamara again as long as I lived.  Chalk that difference up to Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus; anyway, she told them that where they dropped us off in Recife was horrible, and it was, a “Cultural Center” that was really a run down indoor shanty town that was horrible. We walked around it to find homeless folks cooking on the corner as we passed by and we felt so unsafe that we walked a block and returned to catch the bus to get back to the cruise ship; the irony is that on the return trip we PASSED the historical area of the city.  By then we were done and called it a day!! Well, last night they left her a message on the voice mail about it and that they were sorry, today as I’m in the room the phone starts ringing and I grab it. It’s the head of the Excursions department wanting to talk to Ami, I tell her she’s not there and she asks me if I would like to discuss it or can I get her in touch with Ami. I tell her that I have no idea what Ami wrote and I would ask AJ to swing by and see her to discuss it with her; I suspect she should probably let it go at this point before she finds out what “honest Ami” thinks, but I fear she won’t know that she should let it go and it will all unravel very badly.  I came out on the deck, say Ami, and said, “OH, YOU’RE IN TROUBLE NOW!!!”, and told her what’s up, she looks at me and says, “whatever.” I hope the poor excursions woman lets it go before she “attempts” to fix it and Ami unleashes her wrath on this poor unsuspecting soul, she was very nice but I probably should have told her to just let it go now. We’ll see where this goes, should be fun to hide and watch…

Otherwise, other than already getting our debarkation info life is grand on the high seas.  I can’t wait to see Morocco, I have been looking forward to this since booking the trip but it’s going to be really tough to beat out Rio as my favorite stop on this trip.  Can’t wait to get there, more later…

She Said . . .

Another Day at Sea

It is about 9:30 on Sunday, March 31, 2019, the last day of my birthday month.

It is a bit chillier this morning than we have experienced since being on the boat.  The high today is purported to be 68. I had to encourage Blaise to try the deck on 5 today.  He walked out on our balcony earlier and announced it was too cold to be on deck. While it is cooler than it has been, I do not find it to be unbearable.  But with Blaise’s weight loss, he gets colder much easier than I do. But he has jeans and a jacket on so I think he will be OK. We were out on 5 yesterday afternoon in shorts and short sleeves and it was much cooler than now.

Cape Verde

Yesterday we had a stop on an island off the coast of Africa called Cape Verde, or as the locals call it, Cabo Verde.  Cabo Verde is an island nation once owned by Portugal. If I remember correctly, it was given it’s independence sometime in the mid 20th century.  The 60’s maybe?

Cape Verde is interesting.  The terrain, other than the town, is post apocolyptic - mountains with absolutely no vegetation.  I am wondering if this type of terrain is what makes the place so very windy.

As with Recife, we did not expect much since we had never heard of it until we booked this cruise.  We were pleasantly surprised. What helped was stopping by, before we left the boat, a table set up by guest relations with a local who had maps and who answered all the questions you had about the island.

With this stop we not only got a copy of a map, we learned about a beautiful beach not too far from the boat, that we could easily walk to town instead of taking the shuttle buses provided by Azamara, and where we could get free wi-fi (something Blaise was preoccupied with since we needed to move some money so we could make our final payment to the log home people before they deliver the logs on April 10ish).

While we were met with the usual barage of people wanting to give us tours of the island or be our taxi driver as we left the pier, what was interesting was as soon as we said no thank you, they were polite and welcomed us to their home or told us to have a good day.  All except one guy, who followed us as we walked to the beach, trying to talk to us. I certainly do not like to be rude, but I also don’t want to be a mark for some scam. After answering his first few questions - “Are you from England?” “Are you from Australia?” (really?) - we began ignoring the questions while we walked.  Eventually, he said “have a nice day,” walked on, and disappeared.

Our first stop was the beach, a very short walk from the ship.  It was beautiful. The water was a mesmerizing aqua color. There were very few people on the beach as it was probably around 9 AM.  The water was a bit chilled. We didn’t have our swimsuits on, something I still regret. They had exercise equipment set up along the beach and people were taking advantage of it.

The town seemed like a relatively safe place.  Children wandering around, some with parents, some on their own.  They seemed happy and having fun. The population was a mix of black Africans those of Portuguese dissent, and a few white folk lightly peppered in.

After strolling the beach, we walked passed the pier, into the town of Mindelo.  Mindelo is a charming town with pastel-colored buildings and a bright blue building thrown in for good measure.  We walked passed the very active fish market, a farmer’s market, and an outdoor market selling local crafts and clothing.

While the free wi-fi location pointed out to us by the guy on the boat was a big bust, we found a local restaurant with free wi-fi.  We stopped and had a coffee and water, while Blaise called Brandon to move the money and I uploaded pictures to Facebook and caught up on my texts.

Back on the Boat

By the time we got back on the boat, we had walked 6 ½ miles.  After a quick lunch on the boat (after the very expensive coffee and water on the island, we decided to forego a local meal), we grabbed our bag from our room and spent a relaxing afternoon lounging on deck 5.  We both read some, napped some, and watched the boats navigate in and out of the bay. At one point, Blaise asked for the puzzle magazine and we did a puzzle together. I was quite surprized at this. He had been helping me with a few puzzles here and there, but I didn’t realize he actually enjoyed them.  I thought he was doing them to appease me.

After watching us shove off from the pier at 6 PM, we headed up to our room to get ready for dinner.

Now THIS was the white night we mistook the deck buffet for earlier in the cruise.  But having seen the great menu for the main dining room for the evening, we decided to forego the buffet.  I’m not sure why but the main dining room menu was particularly good!

Dinner

I had a hard time landing on an entree’ since there were so many great choices.  In the end, I decided to forgo the venison (which was really calling my name) and the pork dumplings in favor of the filet mignon, half a lobster tail, and roasted potatoes.  The medium rare filet mignon was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. It had a light drizzled ribbon of hollandaise sauce. While the lobster tail was lovely, the filet was the star of the dish.  I don’t often have steak. Usually if I have beef, it is a burger. But the last night reminded me how very much I love a nicely prepared steak. For an appetizer, I had a very small but tasty baked brie with poached pear and some sort of specially prepared walnut, which MADE the dish.  The thing I don’t like about their meals is their soup and salad course is always heavy on the soups. They always have 2-3 soups and maybe one salad. However, on their items they offer every night, they have a yummy ceasar salad. I am not a big soup gal, so I often opt for the ceasar salad.  Tonight was one of those nights. I did not like their dessert choices so I just got the vanilla gellato with chocolate sauce. Yes, I completely negated the 6 ½ miles we walked during the day. I ate too much and drank too much wine.

Blaise had his typical French onion soup and the roasted chicken stuffed with leaks and ricotta cheese.  He said it was delicious and offered me a bite but I was too full to give it a try. He was so full, he did not order his typical cheese and cracker plate for dessert.

Dopplegangers

There are two dopplegangers on the ship.  Maybe not true dopplegangers, but close. One guy, who was on our tour in Salvador, looks like an older, less fit, Harry Bosch from the Amazon Prime series.  He has a similar voice and mannerisms. We do call him “Bosch.” Not to his face or anything, but when we see him. And because of seeing him every day, I am ready for the new season to come out.

The other one reminds me, and very well may be, my CivPro professor at OU law.  I am not convinced it isn’t Professor Penrose. I happened to wear an OU Law shirt to work out the other day.  She was in the fitness center, saw it, smiled and nodded at me. Today at breakfast she had a fighting Irish shirt on and, if I remember correctly, she got her LLM at Notre Dame.  It might be her although it makes no sense - It’s the middle of the semester and I believe she now teaches at Texas A&M School of Law (cooincidentally in Fort Worth). However, I am not going to ask.

Laundry on the Ship

Azamara is different from Celebrity in a few ways, as Blaise and I have mentioned before.  One of those is they provide a free self-serve laundry room. While we each get one free bag of laundry (that they do for us), there is still reason to do some of our own laundry.  Since we were going to be gone for 3 weeks and because we were going to have potential weight issues with our luggage, I did not want to pack 21 days of clean underwear. Thus, last week, I took advantage of the free laundry room, which incidentally is right down the hall from us.

There are about 6-8 stackable washers and dryers and two iron/ironing board sets.  When I went in there, there was one washer available. I put our scivies in the washer and went back to the room.  The sign says, depending on the cycle you choose, the washers take anywhere from 30 to 50 minutes. That’s quite a window.  Not wanting our underwear to sit in a washer and have someone take them out because they needed a washer, I got there well before the washer finished.  Unfortunately, there was no dryer available when my washer was done so I had to sit there and wait. I was in there about 20 minutes and noticed a couple of things.

First, some lady actually ironed two pairs of yoga pants.  Someone actually IRONS yoga pants? Are you kidding me? Isn’t that one of the beautiful things about yoga pants?  You put them on and even if they are wrinkled, you are not going to see it because those wrinkles stretch right out.  Maybe she couldn’t do what I have been known to do since all the dryers were in use - put the clothing in the dryer with a wet cloth to get out the most offensive wrinkles.

Then, there was this pleasant looking older couple - one of those couples who had started looking like each other long ago - doing their laundry together.  Very sweet. However, they really wanted their laundry out of the dryer but every time they openend the dryer, it kept turning. It didn’t stop when you opened the door.  Rather than tinkering with the dial to see what they could do to make it stop, their solution was to wait until the dryer stopped. It was commical in that they tried once to pull the clothes out of the dry.  Then when it would stop upon opening the door, they sat down and waited a few more minutes. Then they got up and tried the exact same exericise again. It was futile. Eventually the dryer stopped, they took out their clothes and I put mine in their dryer.

The Last Days on the Ship

As our vacation comes to an end, we comment daily on having to go back to the real world soon.  Blaise, my little retiree, however, does not have to go back to work.

Two days ago, we received a letter from the ship about our travel plans on the day we disembark.  Ugh. The person who wrote the letter, got it though - it read something to the effect “Whilst we know you don’t want to think about our voyage together coming to an end . . .”  Yep, we don’t.

This is our longest cruise yet - 17 days.  Once you factor in our travel days and time in Rio, it is a full 3 week vacation.  It seems the longer our vacations, the longer I want the next one to last.

We have today and then 2 more days at sea.  Then 2 days in Morocco, arriving in Lisbon on Friday evening.  While I wish we had some days in Lisbon, I know taking our vacation beyond 3 weeks would have been pushing it.  I suspect we will get back to Lisbon at some point and spend the time there, it deserves.

Our next vacation is already booked.  It was actually booked before we booked this one.  In September we are taking a 10-night Celebrity cruise from Vancouver to Hawaii.  We will spend some time on the front end, likely on Vancouver Island, where we honeymooned, and then in Hawaii on the back end.

I hope all is well in the land of reality.  We will be there soon.