Day 30 - Funchal Madeira
Forward another hour tonight, makes it so light at 9:30pm here! This will be our 10th time change since leaving home😳.
Everyone is excited about getting onto land after 8 days at sea, so there was a very long line to go into the theatre to pick up the Royal Caribbean excursion today, bit of a pain but gave us a chance to chat to people. Got off the ship about 8:45 am and onto a bus where the lady took us into town to a market. She is South African but has lived in Madeira for over 30 years. Had a walk around the small market which also included the fish market, which you could smell! There was a cut up massive tuna at the back – they are so big. There is an abundance of embroidery here which is a big Madeira income earner, and there is also a lot of cork – handbags, cheese-cutter hats etc.
Next, we went to the embroidery shop and tasted some wine at the back of the store. I could actually drink it as it was more like a very strong sweet port. It was funny….. I went to put some in my mouth and swallow and as I inhaled, the fumes were so incredibly strong, it made me cough it all out everywhere without any warning! A nice American lady gave me a tissue ha ha!! a little embarrassing.
From there we went and lined up for the famous Funchal cable car which takes you up the mountain. Another good chance to stand and talk to people from our group. It was nice to be on a trip in a bus as you got to know people throughout the day, whereas on the ship you can be on your own quite a bit.
Started going up the cable car which had pretty cool views – got halfway up and suddenly my left hand side eardrum felt really retracted with the height and I went into quite a spin with my vertigo. It was hot in there and I started to break out in a sweat as I couldn’t see properly, but wanting to be quiet as there were others in the cab with us, but they were really nice. Spinning vertigo is pretty awful as it makes you feel quite panicked when your eyes are flicking left to right and you can’t see properly and makes you feel quite nauseous. Got to the top and sat down for a while, a lady gave me a throat lozenger to chew on. Wasn’t feeling great, but was looking forward to the famous wicker basket, toboggan ride down the hill.
My cousin Jonathan in England had taken his wife and mother on it, when his wife was in the last stages of cancer, and I remember the joy they had that day in Madeira and a beautiful photo he had of the trip, of her sitting with the sun setting behind her. She has since passed on, so I wanted to go and do it with her in mind today.
It was pretty cool to do – the tour guide said that you should give them a tip and luckily an american guy had some change for notes as we weren’t aware and didn’t have any coins, but all was fine. You seem to pay around two euros for everything here, unless it is like onboard, which is tax and gratuity of 18% on top of the costs of whatever you buy.
We have noticed that everything, everywhere is a lot more expensive than pre covid. Like a kilo of bananas at the market - 7.5 euro!
We went to a winery afterwards to have a couple of tastings, beautiful old building, it used to also be an abbey and also a jail! It was built in 1811. From there, we decided to stay in town and go for a walk as there has been a flower festival on the past week – most of the flowers have gone but beautiful colours and the most amazing day weather wise. We have been so lucky after all the wind and rough weather we’ve had on our Atlantic Crossing.
I was still feeling a bit yuck, so we decided to get something to eat as we hadn’t eaten yet and it was 1 pm. We got a sugar, cinnamon and lemon crêpe each that a man cooked for us 3 euro each, and I had a passionfruit beer which was delicious and Graeme had a more hoppy beer- 13euro and you got to keep the glasses. We happily sat in the sun and watched everything going on around us while we ate – was feeling quite a lot better so we walked back to port which was about 2 kms – I was walking much straighter by then instead of tilting to the right ha ha!
Back on board and we went up to the top deck with some other‘s watching people coming back late – it’s amazing how fine some people cut it and we were having fun yelling, “run run run” to them as they were meant to be back by 4:30 pm, and werent! Its nice too, onboard as they have the snow freeze machine that they serve you for free, the same as on the quantum of the seas, so we had one of those :-).
After that we grabbed dinner in the windjammer restaurant and sat with Helen & Barry who are originally from Portugal, but had lived in Florida for many years, lovely couple we had got to know from sitting next to each other at a show one night. After that, up to our cabin as we were pretty tired.
We have both been struggling with head colds the last few days – have been quite a few people coughing and we are starting to really feel it now, so want to get better before we have all the land tours. Graeme was asleep before it got dark, although to be fair, we have gone forward an hour so it was really only 8:30 pm!
It was an exciting day!
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Coast Fortuna also docked in Funchal today beside us
3 comments:
Bummer to have double-whammy: vertigo attack then a cold. But I guess being on a ship you have your cabin to hunker down in, relax etc, whereas if you were flying, it would be x number of hours in the air, then into an airport with lots of others etc etc.
Moving into the warmer climates from now on should be good too. x
Def agree with all the above!!
Truly amazing how you have been dealing and coping with your vertigo . Great that you have been able to do so many things and enjoying yourself . Enjoy the warm weather and don’t bring it back home please . 🤗🤗❤️❤️
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