Island Hopping, Madeira and the Canary Islands

Oct 21-27

So I’m writing this in retrospect.  These days were a bit of a blur.  I was trying to get things settled and or fixed and trying to learn how to get from here to there and also trying to get off the ship as often as possible to see things.

Madeira, Portugal was our first stop and it was pretty fantastic.  We started in Southampton, England where the weather is about like Seattle in the fall.  Grey, drizzly and cool, bordering on chilly.  Madeira is a small island owned by Portugal and it was sunny and warm and had dazzling flowers and lizards that were sunning themselves on the walls.  It was amazing.  Here and in many of the places since, many of the sidewalks were “tiled” with white and black rocks arranged to make decorative patterns.   Which are beautiful and probably last forever.

I think my favorite part of this island was how quickly you felt that you’d found local places when you’d turn off the main tourist drag.  Wherever a cruise ship docks, you will find people catering to the ship guests and generally whatever it is, it holds very little interest for me.  So I took a left turn off the strip as soon as I could and within a block the pace of life seemed to come to a crawl.  People were drinking drinks at an outdoor café next to a plaza of an old building and adjacent was an incredible, shady park with water features and locals playing soccer with their friends and so I hung out in this area for the hour or so that I had off the ship that day.

Love the graffiti and the stonework.

Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

Tenerife, like Madeira before it is built between the mountains and the sea, with the town starting at the water and pushing its way up the hill.  This town was a bit bigger, with a light rail system and just the feel of a bigger city.  It had a beautiful plaza near the water and many shops around, but still had lots of narrow roads to wander around and explore.  I was very impressed by all the public art here.  Particularly some rather large scale bronze sculptures.  It just seemed that there was a lot of respect and value of handmade accents on buildings and the feel that you wouldn’t have to look far to find some one of a kind object.

Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain

Gran Canaria had the beach town feel.  There was a mall right by the dock where I and the guys I was hanging out with that day went bowling.  That’s right.  I’ve bowled on a tropical Spanish island.

Beyond the mall there is a downtown with lots of beach and tourist oriented stores as well as shopping for locals.  It is a reasonable sized city, but once you walk through about 5 blocks of buildings you’re on the real beach which stretches for a couple miles.  We walked down the boardwalk and then I walked back up the beach by myself.  When I retraced my steps back toward the dock I started to second guess myself.  I had plenty of time, but when I came out to where I could see the ship I wasn’t exactly where I thought I was going to be and it took a bit longer to get back than I was planning, but I’ve been giving myself at least an hour of buffer time to learn about these sorts of things.

Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain

This is the only port I didn’t get off the ship at.  I had a couple trainings this day.  There are lots of trainings when you start life on a ship.  They were about daily up to this point.  Lanzarote was pretty industrial looking right around the ship, but there were a few volcanoes on the horizon that looked like they might be fun to explore, but alas, no time.

First day on the ship.

Oct 20

I’m on the ship!  Everything worked.  We had our first safety drills and meetings.  Annette walked me around the ship for a first tour.  Just enough to give me a sense of how much area there is to get lost in.  I’m totally going to get lost.  I can’t even remember which way is fore and which is aft yet.  And yes you can feel the boat moving.  I think we’re still in port, but you definitely feel it.

I’m unpacked now and the computer is set up so I can recharge my ipod and download my photos and such.  I need to go get my A-pass tomorrow, which is how you spend money on the ship.  It’s a card you charge up with cash and then swipe to spend it.  A little freaky.  It’s how you pay for internet too.  So tomorrow I gotta get me one of those.

Ate in the crew cafeteria today.  It seems very reasonable, but tonight I’ll be going to some restaurant with Annette and Megan which should be fun.

Also this keyboard is seeming less itty bitty as I get more used to typing on it.  That’s sort of a relief.  I was beginning to wonder if I’d get used to it at all.

Oh and my room is NICE.  It’s small, but it’s not at all cramped and the privacy it affords is wonderful.  It’s nice to be able to retreat somewhere when you’re in a new environment.

Tonight we had dinner in the Ocean View lounge which is the first place I actually saw the ocean moving by the ship.  I didn’t know we were actually moving.  Tonight the sea is perfectly still.  The food was ok, and later Megan, Chris (her husband, who has joined us for this cruise) and I went to Quasar which is a disco lounge.   Megan chose it for it’s relative seclusion.  The older demographic of this cruise tends to stay away from that bar.  We had a couple drinks and chatted and then headed back to the rooms.  The décor in Quasar included a matrix of LED’s on the ceiling that flowed and strobed to the music.  Pretty impressive really.  I’ll have to take a video sometime before I don’t even notice them anymore.

There's Megan and Chris looking out of the glass elevator (there are 6 here) at midship.

A tree grows in midair halfway up the elevators.

Our adoring fans.

We've got a lawn.  Of course.

Big ship.  It takes 5 minutes to walk from my room to the glass shop.

For some reason I expected the sea to be an expanse of nothingness.  I've quickly learned to appreciate the dramatic quality of open water.

First formal night.  Check me out.  No seriously, check me out.

Super Late Second Post.

Hey everyone.  Hopefully this begins a patter of my updating this blog more frequently.  There are a lot of things to get organized when you try to transplant your life to a place that is foreign in so many ways.  Here's a note I sent out to someone early on.

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Hey,

I’m sorry that I have done such little correspondence. I’m still getting all the strange systems of living on the ship up and running. Such as my A-pass which is a card that takes the place of cash on the ship, which I think I accidentally overdrew, so I need to go to a particular office and pay up so I can again buy things and also I think that is what has caused my interwebs to be disabled. Thus the minimal contact. Also had to get my room key (magnetic, like in a hotel) replaced today because it decided it didn’t want to open my door anymore. Stupid plastic keys. Add to that, trying to remember to attend all the training sessions, go to work, and see all the amazing things on the ship and it’s a little busy or disorienting or both. But I do have time to relax, I just worry a lot that maybe I’m forgetting something when I’m not running around. I got off the ship at the first port of Madiera, Portugal which was beautiful, but I only had an hour and a half or so to walk around. Still, amazing. Gorgeous.

I might have a cold. Hopefully not.

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 But enough excuses.  On to the blog.

This is the plane to London.

Oct 19, 2010

So here I am at Heathrow.  Got through immigration and customs fine.  Now I’m at terminal 5 and I need to get to terminal 1, 2, or 3 to catch the bus to the hotel.  I just bought a $6 juice.  Orange.  Tastes fresh.  They speak English here.

Made it to the Holliday Inn and pretty much just chilled out.   Thought  a bit about trying to get out to London a bit, but wasn’t quite driven enough after an 8 hour flight and noon in London being 4am at home, I was feeling a bit like just relaxing.  Great room.  9^th floor, nice view.  The weather is pretty much like Seattle.  It was drizzling when I got to the hotel and it was on and off throughout the afternoon.  I’m pretty happy to have just stayed indoors.  Fixed some pants.  Had dinner at the hotel restaurant and had the buffet.  I’m really going to have to learn to eat less when there’s more than enough available.  Didn’t really overdo it tonight, but I definitely ate more than I would at home, and rich stuff too.  The dessert was probably the best though, kind of a chocolate and cherry cake with chocolate sauce.  Mmmm.

On a similar note, British Airways is doing it right.  They came around with free drinks for everyone, and not just, “here’s your half can of coke over ice,” I asked for beer and my stewardess gave me a can and a glass and then handed me a second can.   Wow.  And they served a very reasonable dinner too, with more beer.  I didn’t really need 3 beers, but what do you do when someone hands you a beer?  Anyhow, I heard there was breakfast too, but I’m not sure, I was asleep.

Catch the bus to the ship at 6:30 tomorrow morning.

My first view of the ship.

First Post.

Hi everyone. Welcome to the blog I'll be keeping while I'm on the Celebrity Eclipse. Today I'm trying to get things done that need to be done before I ship out. One of these things is to create a way to stay in touch with my friends and family while I'm away. Last year I hiked the Appalachian Trail (ryanhikestheat.blogspot.com) and I received a lot of positive feedback from people about the journals and pictures I posted there, so I will be doing something similar for my cruise ship deployment.

My vision for this blog is to have lots of pictures and lots of stories. Hopefully they will be interesting enough that a bunch of people will want to follow along. I get on a plane bound for Heathrow in nine days. Crazy.