© 2009
travelogues: Atlantic cruise W-E
We’ve taken another trans-Atlantic cruise, one of those super-discounted voyages where the primary motive is moving the ship from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean or vice versa depending upon the season. As an afterthought, the cruise lines throw in a few ports of call & sell the trip to people who either don’t know any better or happen to like extensive time at sea - like us. Most of the passengers are either really old people trying to save a dime, or really young people trying to do the same.
Our days were spent blissfully sleeping, eating, and
reading. Howard added a couple of hours of bridge play most days with
his cohort of addicts. We attracted a fair bit of attention with our
Kindles, which of course are perfect for traveling & cut our luggage
requirements substantially. [Side note: Kindles are the e-book
option developed by Amazon, the primary competitor to the Sony Reader.
Howard has used his for over a year, replacing 3 newspapers and countless
books with a paper-free option. I was never tempted, but inherited his
when he bought the new model that came out just before the trip. And I’m a
convert. It is so convenient, so adaptable. I love having not one, but 100
books to choose from when I’m stuck on line somewhere. And the option to
buy & read one within minutes of hearing about it on NPR. But I REALLY
love being able to look up words I don’t know in the built-in dictionary.
THAT is priceless.]
Our
room steward tried to impress us one evening with some magic tricks, but
little did he know Howard was quite the magician as a teen, and they ended
up swapping tricks. That about summed up the big excitement while on
board. Well, we did see porpoises (dolphins? Porpoises, I think; they have
triangular dorsal fins) and had a few ports of call:
Ponta Delgada, San Miguel, Azores, Portugal. I’ve now been to all of those wacky islands in the eastern Atlantic: the Azores, Madeira, and the Canaries. Oops, looks like there’s also the Cape Verdes further south. Anyway, the Azores are part of the spreading center in the Atlantic and are entirely volcanic, like Iceland.
The
basalt making up the island was heavily used as construction material. All
the old buildings are made of stone, plastered & whitewashed, with the
window & door frames and decorative elements left dark black. The
sidewalks are heavily decorated with mosaics using white & black stone in
detailed & varied patterns.
Despite the volcanic origins, the city was very lush, and the plant life reminded me strongly of SF, with camellias, calla lilies, eucalyptus trees, agapanthus, even the detested ice plant. We made our way to a botanical garden of sorts, the former gardens & residence of a wealthy resident from the 1800s. There we saw the most enormous & impressive ficus tree, planted in 1864, with branches the diameter of most tree trunks and a root system that looked like waves on the ocean.
Vigo, Spain. This port city is on the northern most part of the west corner of Spain, just above Portugal. It sounded (and looked, in advertisements and the like) as if the Spanish spoken was not standard. For example, they used “Rua” instead of “Calle” on the streets.
I
only had a few hours there, but they were memorable, especially my
last-minute mad dash for the boat – more about that later. I made my
destination the highest point in the city - some old Celtic ruins in
Castro Park, which drapes over the peak of the hill the city has
engulfed. Well worth the hike - with stunning views of the fjord that has
made this such an excellent port since Roman times. Plant life mimics SF
as it did in the Azores - camellias, lilies of all kinds. The park
reminded me of our own Golden Gate Park, with wildish areas competing
with groomed & cultivated gardens. One area that was in heavy use by the
younger set was a layout of streets covering about a quarter acre, with
round-abouts, operating traffic & pedestrian lights, signs, roadway
markings - everything you’d expect to see in a traffic zone. Except it was
all kid-sized! And the kids were on bikes, big wheels, you name it. I
participated in “traffic school” with bikes as a pre-teen, but we used
chalk on a parking lot & had to imagine the details.
Walking back downhill, I wandered through “Old Town”. From what I’d read, the city is trying hard to sensitively restore/renovate/rehabilitate this central warren of steep old streets & historic residences, which had clearly fallen into decay. It looked like “old Europe” but the extensive near-ruins reminded me of Matera, the cave city we visited in Italy last summer.
Now
about that mad dash – every cruiser’s nightmare: The ship had docked
out in the back beyond of the controlled port area, so we had to take a
shuttle bus to the gates, which then led into town. When I exited the
controlled area, I carefully asked, and noted on my map, where we were, to
pick up the bus for the return (point A on the map). It was only when I
was finding my way back that I discovered the guide had indicated a
location, oh, about a MILE west of where we actually were (point B on
the map). Vigo is a port city, so the waterfront is heavily developed as
shipyards, and getting oriented is a little tricky. Luckily, with the help
of an elderly resident and an English-speaking crew member from another
cruise ship, I found out where I needed to be. With 45 minutes left to
spare, I hoofed the mile back to the port gates. I’ve always wanted to be
capable of running a mile, ostensibly to be able to outrun any bad guys I
might encounter. The reality is that I’m much more likely to need the
speed to avoid missing a travel connection. [Side note: There are
two stories related tangentially to this, my first run of a mile - in Las
Vegas during the summer - and causing Howard & I to miss a flight back to
the US, ruining Thanksgiving with his family.]
As the ship moved out of the fjord, I noticed large
groups of what I thought might be old military ships in wet storage, like
we have in the Sacramento River back home. I quickly realized this
couldn’t be the case because there were perhaps 1000 of them. I learned
later that they were rafts for growing & harvesting mussels. [Side
note: The Spanish mussel industry is heavily concentrated in
this region of Spain, Galicia. Mussel farming there is based on suspended
raft culture. There are around 3,400 rafts producing mussels throughout
this region.] The coastline
was lovely, rocky outcrops with splendid white sand beaches in between -
this looks like a resort destination.
On our last day, we sailed past the Channel Islands and the Cherbourg peninsula where my dad landed as part of the Normandy invasion. Come morning, we awoke to the White Cliffs of Dover. I’d seen these in 1980 when taking the ferry from Dover to Callais, but I’d forgotten how magnificent they are! Click here to read about our continuing adventures in London & northern England!