The End of A Long Crossing

Sorry for the inactivity my four friends and family who check this blog on a regular basis but two weeks ago we left the Caribbean for the more exotic ports of Europe. The crossing was six days long. Six days at sea can do strange things to a person. Especially when every night of the crossing they make us move our clocks ahead one hour. I filled my days with working out, writing, and getting some of the worst sleep I've ever had in my life. The first few days of the crossing I found I could never fall asleep until after four in the morning, and then the next couple of days I would wake up every two hours be up for half an hour and then have a fitful sleep for another two hours. Soon I was in a state that fluctuated between wanting to strangle everyone I saw or crying uncontrollably. then finally we hit land.

The Azores are an island chain off of Portugal. The day we arrived there was a religious festival going on. So there was a huge parade at the end of the day, but at the start of the day we got to see everyone setting up for the festival. They created these beautiful arrangements of flowers, colored sawdust, and pine leaves that marked out the parade route. Each street was responsible for their own decorations so there was a huge variety of patterns on the cobble stone streets marking the parade route. I started my trip at the Azores finding that I was the only one of my cast who was able to pull money out of the ATM’s. For once Citibank worked to my advantage. So all of us decided to have coffee at a café, I took care of everybody. (Don’t worry eventually everyone found ATM’s that worked for them and I got paid back and then some). I had a cappuccino with Johnny walker red in it and it was delightful. Hopefully I can find good internet tomorrow to show you the pictures. The town was very quaint that we were in and we went to their botanical gardens. At the end of our botanical adventure we all had to use the restroom and I decided to do a bit while I was in the bathroom where I was pretending to take a really painful dump. Unbenkownst to me just as I started my bit four nuns drove up, and got out of their car and heard me making these disgusting noises. My cast all ran away and just watched the nuns shake their head at the bathroom door and then say prayers. We finished up by watching the parade and headed back to the ship with our sanity restored. Then they moved the clocks forward again and the sun didn’t go down until 10:30.

The day after that we went to Lisbon Portugal which was just amazing. It was like the San Francisco of Europe. It had a huge bridge and their were all these narrow streets on hills. We spent six hours there and maybe saw 10% of the awesome sights. The one thing we did do was go to a castle. I took tons of pictures and just spent maybe ten minutes just looking over the sights of Lisbon. When we started our journey to the castle we went through a flea market which was adorable. There was a lot of electric typewriters, and vhs tapes being sold, it was kind of funny. Then we made our way into an amazing church, we got in just as mass was ending and the priest was nice enough to allow me to take just a few pictures inside. We stopped for a brief lunch where everyone except for me ordered hamburgers. I had a spanish omellete and a very strong coffee (a coffee which haunted me later on the ship.) All in all except for the lunch we walked for six hours that day.

So when I write you next I'll tell you about Vigo spain, or the most infamous day in my cast's short history. I would add pictures but my cast mate Ryan is using up all the bandwith at the place we're at downloading a Stone Roses Album and an old Ali McBeal episode.



Much love

Peter