The November Epic # 6: Life at Sea

Sea days are, in some ways, my favourite part of a cruise. Sure, it’s exciting to step ashore, especially in a port you’ve never visited – but a ship is built to sail, and a trans-Atlantic cruise like this one is a great relaxing way to enjoy life at sea. 

 

There’s a massive list of activities throughout the day – from yoga to golf, knitting to dancing, trivia games to bingo to shopping to art auctions to movies to… well, you name it, it’s happening.

 

So, what does this blogger’s sea day look like? First of all, that depends on the weather. The last time I did a trans-Atlantic cruise we had five solid days of wind and waves from Madeira to Bermuda. On this trip, we had one rough sea day, from Lisboa to Ponta Delgada. Since we left the Azores and took our southwesterly course towards Florida, we’ve had four solid days of sunshine, calm seas, and a wonderful feeling of well-being. 

 

First thing in the early hours is to check the internet and look in on emails and social media. As always on a ship, the system just clogs up as the day goes on. Anything I can get done online before 8:00 am is a huge improvement over trying to do it later.  So that’s when this post is happening

 

Then, breakfast. Emerald Princess has a bright and cheery buffet area, as I’ve mentioned earlier in the trip, and the food, while not spectacularly good, is tasty and filling. The chef here does a great job with omelettes to order. The coffee is also better than it used to be on Princess, a huge plus. 

 

Sunscreen follows, and then it’s time to walk the deck. The ships of the Grand Class were all built with a full-circuit promenade on Deck 7, although you do have to go up a flight of stairs to circle the bow area on Deck 8. I’ve been passing on the stairs, which are a bit steep for my cranky knee, but I walk all the rest several times, perhaps with a sit-down-and-rest break, until I’ve racked up an hour or more of walking.

 

Sea days are also a great time for the crew to carry on with the never-ending job of keeping everything neat and tidy -- all the way from deck washing to painting and more.

 

 

The walking’s a little harder to do when the ship is moving more, but then you get the compensating bonus of watching the spray flying as the bow digs into the waves. Since Emerald Princess weighs in at a respectable 113,561 tonnes, the amount of water the bow can heave at one time is mighty impressive.

 

 

Or you can spend a few minutes immersed in the mighty roar at the stern as the ship’s wake streams out behind it. It’s one of my happy places.

 

 

After the walk, the next step is to go up to the Lido deck for a cooldown in the pool. For whatever reason or reasons, there aren’t many passengers on this ship actually using the Lido area during this cruise, so it’s never been hard to get a seat where you like, and you can usually get the pool to yourself for a while – or maybe share it with one or two other people.

 

 

Part of the fun on a sea day is being in the pool when the ship does encounter waves and the water begins sloshing dramatically back and forth.

 

Depending on time of day, there may be some live music from the 16^th deck bandstand overlooking the Neptune Pool, while various films, concerts, or sports events are playing almost all day on the giant Movies Under the Stars screen above the Calypso Pool.

 

Somewhere along the line, it’s time for lunch. There’s a grill dishing up burgers and hot dogs, and a pizza counter serving pizza by the slice, as well as a counter for ice cream and premium coffees, not to mention the bars at each pool. 

 

Or there’s the buffet, same deck, just aft of the Calypso pool. If I’m in the mood for something light and quick, the International Café down at the main deck of the Piazza (Deck 5) does small sandwiches, soup, premium coffee and tea, dessert squares, and the like. And one of the main dining rooms is always open for lunch on sea days if I’m in a more sedate mood.

 

After lunch, it’s nap time. Then I may head out to walk the promenade some more, before heading topsides for another dip in the pool. My lucky break was getting to photograph a rare total eclipse of the sun -- although, oddly enough, it didn't get dark and there was no corona around the eclipse.

Also on the Lido deck is the display map where the ship's course is marked off with push pins and a piece of yarn.

And then it’s time for dinner, perhaps with a drink before or a nightcap after, depending on the entertainment schedule for the day. I’ve become a familiar sight in Crooners, a bar where you either get a musician right there on the piano or you can listen to the music from the stage two decks down in the Piazza, since Crooners is on the top level of the three decks of the Piazza.

 

And finally, it’s bedtime. I know I have mentioned it before, in years gone by, but Princess Cruises scored a real winner with their bed, which is – hands down – one of the two or three most comfortable beds I have ever encountered in all my years of travel.

 

 

The November Epic # 5: The Edge of the World

My final stopping point of the cruise was the city of Ponta Delgada on the island of São Miguel in the Azores Islands of Portugal. We reached it after one day and two nights of open-ocean sailing – it’s about 1400 kilometres or 875 miles west of Lisboa.

 

 

On the map, it looks like the end of the world. 

 

Source Base Map:  https://freevectormaps.com/world-maps/europe/WRLD-EU-01-0002?ref=atr

Back in the Middle Ages, I have no doubt that the Azores helped to give birth to the persistent legends of mysterious islands to the west of Europe which appeared and disappeared as if by magic. Such legends are found everywhere from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean.

 

Well, it certainly isn’t the end of the world now. Ponta Delgada is a beautiful modern city of seaside hotels and quaint older buildings. A highlight in warmer or sunnier weather would be the large public swimming pool located just across a narrow strip of harbour water from our cruise ship terminal, on the right in this photo.

 

 

I was awake in the morning, and out on my balcony in time to watch the ship slowly pivoting around and then backing into the cruise terminal pier, right in the centre of town. There was a lot of cloud and mist around, but the landscape was studded with numerous bumps and hills on the slopes of the higher mountains in the centre of the island.

 

 

According to our tour guide, every single one was a volcanic eruption site. Some are still potentially active, and the island certainly has its share of hot springs, bubbling mud pools, and the like. It all comes of the entire archipelago being perched firmly on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and straddling the border of the North American and European continental plates, with the edge of the African plate dangerously close by.

 

Language lesson: our guide firmly insisted that the name of the island group is pronounced “Ay-zors,” with the emphasis on the long “A”. He went on to share the pronunciation of the nine separate island names, of which the one that stuck in my mind was Flores – “Fluoresh.” We’d already learned in Lisboa that Portuguese pronunciation is full of lazy “sh” sounds taking the place of many different letters or letter combinations.

 

On a volcanic island like this, the directions Up and Down take on new meaning. As soon as you turn away from the waterfront in Ponta Delgada, you are on your way Up. As we drove through the city, we passed quaint older houses and many modern buildings from apartments to the university.

 

 

Our first stopping point was a botanical garden, one of many on the island. Here I had a field day photographing the many flowers, as well as the unique trees and the artfully crafted “natural” caverns and sinkholes. These included a bush full of the bird-of-paradise flowers, a long-time favourite of mine.

 

 

Another sight, which I’d never seen before, was an entire tree of blooming poinsettias.

 

 

Speaking of trees, there are these ones – and I admired the garden's technique of hanging an identifying sign without actually nailing it into the tree.

 

 

And then there was the landscaping, culminating in a lovely little pensive sculpture by still waters.

 

 

From the gardens, we progressed further uphill, zigzagging through a number of streets to reach this pineapple plantation, all housed under glass – largely because the Azores aren’t warm enough all year round for pineapples to grow outdoors. These ones will take two years to mature and, when harvested, get sold in mainland Europe.

 

 

Here again we saw some assorted flowers, adding bright notes of colour to a dull November day.

 

 

We also got a free sample of the pineapple liqueur – at 10:30 in the morning! After having port at an even earlier hour in Lisboa, it seems that day drinking is becoming a hallmark of this tour! But a friend of mine assures me that these beverages are made from fruit, which is part of a balanced breakfast, so it’s okay in this case.

 

Our next stop was to be at the Vista do Rei (King's View) viewpoint, where we would get a splendid view of the remarkable Blue and Green Lakes, nestled in a broad volcanic caldera on one of the highest mountains of the island. Problem: the higher we went, the deeper into the clouds we plunged, and the view quite plainly was not going to happen. The king got luckier with the weather than we did. Here’s an internet photo to show what the view would have looked like, if we could see it.

 

 

Instead, our guide arranged for us to be driven down into the depths of the caldera, stopping at the bridge between the lakes, then taking a sightseeing drive through the adjacent village before returning up the hill and then driving back down to the city.

 

To wrap it up, here are a few pictures in town of what appears to be a typical Azorean style of architecture, with white walls and dark chocolate-brown trim.

 

 

As we sailed away from Ponta Delgada, the pilot boat veered away from the ship, taking the local pilot back to shore. Ahead of us: six days at sea to reach Florida, taking a southwesterly course which would lead us, hopefully, to calmer and warmer waters.