Plants & Fish in the Azores

Once again I was up before my alarm, but this time I headed up to the gym to stake out my spot for class. We pulled in to the port before class started, so I was able to connect and check my mail and facebook. The classes were fine and still very crowded – Jesse has his routine that he goes through pretty much without changes After class I went over and asked him if he took requests for some other favorite stretches and ab exercises, and he seemed excited to have some new suggestions.

I stopped in at the room to get changed, then headed down for breakfast by myself. I ended up at a table with a nice-seeming couple from Toronto, and a very sad woman from Florida. When I got there most of her breakfast had already arrived – 2 tomato juice, 2 pots of tea, and 2 dishes of fresh fruit. She was waiting for waffles, and meanwhile was complaining to the waiter about something when I sat down in a tone of voice that made me think “uh-oh”, and in fact she did turn out to be a downer of a table mate, except she was so weird she was entertaining. For one thing, she was very concerned that she had 15 euros that were going to go to waste, since she didn’t shop but also didn’t want to lose money by exchanging them back to dollars. I told the story of our confiscated wine (which we got back last night, by the way) and she said that she always buys two bottles of vodka (because they look like water) and puts them in water bottles to bring on board, so she can make her drinks whenever she wants. She used to bring rum in Listerine bottles (because it looks like Listerine) and two liters of coke, but the vodka is easier and more flexible. The shore excursions are boring and too expensive, and on and on. I wanted to ask her why she came on the cruises if they were so terrible, but it didn’t seem quite the right thing to ask. Then she and the other folks at the table got into a discussion of various towns in Florida. Her friend had lived in one of them before he was killed. It was all like that. I eventually excused myself so we could get going.

After breakfast we headed in to town. A few words about Ponta Delgada, on the island of San Miguel in the Azores – it’s absolutely gorgeous. Most of the buildings are no more than 3 stories high. The streets and sidewalks are cobblestone, and the sidewalks especially often have patterns made from small basalt (black) or limestone (light colored) stones. One place down by the dock had beach decorations – shells and sailboats and fish. Sad breakfast lady had also told about a botanical garden at the top of town, so we headed there and it was worth listening to her complain through breakfast to find this place. It had all sorts of local and exotic trees, including 2 (that we saw, there are supposed to be 3) gigantic trees labeled as both rubber trees and Australian fig trees, giant stands of bamboo, a banana grove, and even a cherimoya tree. It was supposed to be cloudy and cool, and did get that way later in the day, but the morning was warm and sunny, and the gardens were nearly empty for most of the time we were there. It’s a very special place, not marked, for some reason, on the HAL map.

What was marked on the HAL map were two widely separated restaurants supposedly having authentic Azorean food. We walked a bit to the furthest one, but when we got there it wasn’t open on Sunday. It was in a slightly less nice part of town, although that’s where the nautical sidewalks were. We walked back past the harbor and some uncompleted buildings, looking for the second place. By now we were hungry and having our usual lunch panic – we won’t find any place, we’ll find someplace and we won’t be able to order, we’ll find someplace and order but the food will be terrible. We’d pretty much decided to give up and go back to the ship when we saw the fish market restaurant. We went over to check it out and another couple from the ship who encouraged us to go in, saying that “everyone says it’s the best”. So we went in, and it took forever to get our order taken and another forever for our food to come. But when it came it was very good. Dave had grilled limpets, which look like the limpets from back home but are much larger and tasty, albeit very rubbery. I had a very flavourful fish soup. Dave’s main was a plate of 5 or so grilled sardines; mine was 8 or so battered, deep fried smaller fish (like large anchovies?). Both dishes were whole fish with heads and all, so we had to debone them and remove the heads and tails ourselves. After Macon this was not a big deal, and the food was delicious. We headed back to the Noordam in much better spirits. I went up to the room while Dave stayed out to take pictures of me waving from our cabin. Then he came up and cleaned the glass on our verandah for future sitting. By now it had clouded up and become quite cool – perfect weather for a nap. Which we did.

I woke up at 4:30, which was longer than I meant to sleep as I’d planned to go to the afternoon craft – pom pom luggage tags. Oh well. Dave had read for a while before he, too, succumbed to the Lure of the Nap, but he was asleep when I woke up. Eventually the Captain and Kieron came on to give their little speeches. The good news is we’re headed into some worse weather, so we’ll have rougher seas. That is also the bad news, because our last port, Horta, is a tender port (that is to say, we take the ship’s lifeboats, which are called tenders when it’s not an emergency, to shuttle back and forth because the harbor is too shallow for the massive Noordam), and we may not be able to stop there if the weather is too bad.

Anyway, we wandered around the ship watching us leave port. I stopped in at the Explorations café for a chai tea latte, which was both too hot and too sweet, but it was nice to have something warm to drink as it was downright chilly. Then it was time to shower and get ready for dinner. We were all a little out of it at the beginning of dinner, but by the end we’d hit our usual stride and had a good time. We opened the Beaujolais, and it was not as good as we remembered it, which was odd – we’re pretty good at remembering.

Jeff, Pam, Jim, and Paula rushed off to do trivia, and Dave and I rushed off to the meet-and-greet with the Captain and hotel manager. It was nice to say hello to him but I should have learned to say it in Dutch. I also got a chance to invite our cruise director, Kieron, to Nia, and met events coordinator Christine who has been making sure that we have towels, water, and someone to turn on the sound system and lights. She says we can move to 10 am which is good news, but I should probably remind her tomorrow.

Then we went down to the Vista Lounge for the show, which was the BB King All-Star Band that we’ve been rocking out to in the Queen’s Lounge. They did a fabulous show of blues standards done straight up. It takes a lot of guts to do that, but they have the voices and musicianship to pull it off. I would say it was easily the best show we’ve seen on the cruise so far, and it was nice to have them in a larger venue so they didn’t blast out our eardrums. As we were leaving we ran into Connie, a woman who has been to both my Nia classes. She was also at the Pinnacle last night. Anyway, she wanted to know if we’d have class if we ended up not being able to go in to Horta. I’m so excited that people seem to be liking the class!

After the show we went for a walk around the promenade deck, waving at the people in the late sitting dinner. Then we hung out with Paige and the HALcats in the ocean lounge. They are good, and I enjoy listening to them, but it’s not music we can dance to. Actually it was only the musicians until the last song of the set, when Paige came out to sing “Girl from Ipanema”, which was good because we hadn’t heard it yet this cruise and I do like it. Mike from the Piano Bar is in the Queen’s lunge tonight, and he’s not our favorite – which we needed to be careful not to say at lunch, because he was sitting right behind me, along with a woman with a British accent and very audible voice who was expounding on how loud American women are when we sat down, but I digress. When the HALcats took a break we headed up to our room, where we’re going to try not to fall asleep until 11 so Dave might be able to go watch a game of the World Series in the sports bar. We don’t get any extra hours tonight which we’re very glad about, because our internal clocks need a night or two to reset.

Tonight’s towel animal – The dinosaur formerly known as brontosaurus.