Sumner

So today we were docked at a port which I won’t tell you the name of because I can’t even spell it let alone say, or pronounce it. I will tell you however that it is close to Rome so I will just call this port Rome for simplicity sake. In this port one cruise starts and another starts, like I told you about in the last post. Therefore we had to get up early to get packed up to move cabins (if you recall, we are upgrading to a room with a balcony/verandah). I wnet looking for colton to say goodby to them, I couldn’t find them for a while but then I found them and was able to say goodbye. It has been nice for the past few weeks to have someone to hand out with on the ship and so I was pretty sad to see them go. Luckily I have their email so we can stay in touch. It will be hard to find someone to take their place as boat-friends but it doesn’t matter so much for this part because there are a lot of ports and not so much time on the ship. Then we had to wait a while they got our room ready. After our room was ready and they had already moved our luggage in we came in and out our stuff down. Next we went up to the Lido Deck for lunch. As we were eating we looked out the window and watched all of the people come in. At one point a family with two boys, Noah  and Elijah, we assume that they were Christians because before they ate they prayed, I never got to really ask them. Anyway, Noah is fifteen and Elijah is thirteen. Another family also came in with kids, one is named Hannah (I don’t know if she spells it with an “h” at the end or not). She is eleven. Her brother name is Logan. He is fourteen and looks about sixteen or seventeen or so. The girl as well looks older than she really is, she looks to be about fourteen or so but as I said she is only eleven. After lunch mom and I went to go see a talk about some of the ports that we are going to in the Vista Lounge. It was by the official travel guide along with another lady and all that they did is advertise the ships shore excursions. We were a little surprised because the other talks that he had done were actually interesting, not just “Oo ah, buy our shore excursions, yay”. Anyway at right I went up to The Loft to see if any others would come. It was just me and her leader for most of the time, one girl, from the Philippines came for half an hour, maybe fourty-five minutes, somewhere around that. We just played some games and then when Hannah was done with her stuff we went back to the room and got ready for bed.

Sumner

Today was an at sea day. Nothing much happened of too much interest so I will describe our plans for the rest of the trip. Our next port is C-something (I can’t remember the actual name). Here one cruise starts and another ends. This is because there are actually two cruises that we are going on, a sixteen day one and then a ten day one. So far we have completed the sixteen day one and will continue on the ten day one. Unfortunately the Baldersons are not coming on the next part of the cruise so I will not have much to do each day, not that that matters too much because there are a lot of ports that we are going to in the next part of the cruise. I will still miss them though to have something to do in the spare time that we do have on the ship. So I told you guys earlier that I have been doing some Club HAL activities. I am actually too old to do those activities as it goes up through twelve. There is a teen group, of which I am the only member right now but in the next cruise there will be fourteen other teens. Tomorrow or maybe it is day after that I will go to the meeting and see if I like any of the kids and if they’re jerks or not. I definitely won’t be able to go to any Club HAL activities though. Oh well. Anyway the next cruise ends in Rome and Oma will stay with us there for a few days and then she will fly home and dad will come over to join us. We will stay in Rome for a few more days and then go on to Florence, Venice, and I think another city that slips my mind at this time (I have a lot of times that that has been happening as I have been writing this blog, maybe it is because I am writing this at **:**pm. hey last night I was up ’till *:**pm [dad don’t read the part that you just read]). Anyway eventually we we will reach Germany and dad will fly home, the rest of us will go and visit the town that mom and dad lived in for four years in Germany back before Hannah and I were born. Then we too will fly home to all y’all. Unless of course you live somewhere else besides Denver, Colorado. Well I about to have some nice views of the back of my eyelids so see ya!

Sumner

Today we went to Barcelona (bar-sell-oh-nuh or if you want to say it in the Catalan (cat-uh-lin) language you say bar-th-eh-loh-nah). Barcelona is in an area of Spain called Catalan. In this area the Catalonians live (I say that as if Russians live in Catalan). Anyway, Catalan is almost separate to Spain it has it’s own government, flag, language, as well as many other cultural differences. In a way you can compare Spain and Catalan to the relationship between Canada and Quebec just more extreme differences. OK, next subject: The ship came in at ten o’clock to the port of Barcelona and we got off the boat. We were supposed to meet in the Placa Sant Jaune (I think that is Catalan for Saint Jhon Plaza) for a guided bike tour. It was about two or so kilometers to the plaza and we had about twenty minutes to get there. We tried to get a taxi but they didn’t want to take us for such a short distance, they could make more money if they did taxi tours so they directed us to a shuttle bus that took us to the Columbus monument. From here it was about a kilometer to the square. Once at the square we had some trouble finding the correct company that we were doing the tour through. We went to the first company and gave them the papers. They said that we were at the wrong place so we went to another company that had their meeting place in the same square. They looked at the papers but they were not the right company either. I went to go see if the last company was he right one, they weren’t. The second company helped us and called the number on the paper for us and after a while he told us that it was the first company that we went to that was the correct one. Once that was sorted out it was pretty straight forward from there. We were directed down a little street to the shop to get our bikes. Then we went back to the square. There were twenty-four people so they split us up into two groups. We were with the girl, she was from Canada. We learned about the square before we went on our way. The square had two significant buildings, both were, and are, important to the Catalan government. After learning about those buildings we rode down some small streets and got to the palace, the very palace, where Columbus went to ask Isabella and Ferdinand for money to go find a westward route to India, of course we all know what happened then, he found a whole new continent, the Americas. Then we rode down some really nice streets and eventually we got to the Sagrada Familia. This building is the cathedral of Gaudi (g-ow-dee). His finest achievement. It will, when complete, have twelve towers representing the apostles, four for some saints or something like that, one for the Virgin Mary and the last for Jesus Christ himself. Currently there are eight towers and two facades. The best way to describe the towers is how mom described it, that someone took a candle and let the wax melt down the side. It really looks like something that you would see in Disney World. Many architects and artists have taken over some of the work now that Gaudi is dead, he has been dead for almost a century since nineteen twenty-six, they are trying to complete in in two thousand twenty six, the hundredth anniversary of his death. It was supposed to be completed in two hundred years, using the technology of Gaudi’s day. One thing that I though was very neat was that the tallest tower, the one to Jesus, will be exactly two metres shorter than the tallest hill/mountain in Barcelona because he says that he doesn’t want his creation to be bigger than that of God. I thought that was pretty neat. After going to the cathedral we rode down a long street to the beach. Here we stopped at a little beachside restaurant. We didn’t have anything but the view was neat. The beach was manmade for the Olympics that were held in Barcelona in nineteen ninety-two (I think). There was this sculpture of a goldfish which, when hit right by the sun, looked as if it was a goldfish in the water with the light reflecting on parts of it. There are a few buildings in Barcelona that look exactly like a building in Dubai. Of course the architect that designed them claims that he didn’t copy them even though they are the same as the ones in Dubai. After that we went back to the square, dropped of the bikes and then made our way back to the ship. We went down the Las Ramblas (loss rahm-bau-s), the most famous street in Barcelona and then got back to the bus stop to go back to the ship. The rest of the things that we did were not of much note but I will say that there was an Indonesian crew show at eleven tonight. We went to that, there was a lot more people in this one than the Filipino crew show. There was one number that was a dance/play (I like those better than the dances that the people who are professional do). It was about the good king who falls in love with the pretty princess and then goes off to get a golden deer for her. He leaves her in the care of the monkey king and then went off. But while he was away the bad king came and capture the princess and kills all of the monkeys. But one monkey, the king who had been away, survived and wonders why everyone is dead. He tries to do CPR but all that happens is that the monkeys tail flies up. Then he goes to get some highly sophisticated devices to try to revive the monkey the devices were flip-flops! Then he uses a magic spell to resurrect all of the monkeys. Is time it works! Yay! Then the good king tries to go get the princess, he fights with the bad king and then the monkey king gives him a weapon and he wins!!! Well all’s well that ends well and that brings me to the end of this post.

Sumner

Today our port was Cartagena. Cartagena means little Carthage (I think). Whatever the meaning it was the port for the day. We didn’t have a tour for this city so we went to walk around after we had had our breakfast. We made our way on a pedestrian street and then down a side street to get to a Roman theatre. We couldn’t figure out how to get into the theater area so we satisfied ourselves with just taking pictures from the top. The theater was pretty big, probably fifty to seventy-five metres (and about the same in yards) across. The structure was very incomplete but it was the first Roman theater that we have seen so far on this trip. Even though you can’t see it now it must have been the coolest thing in the time of the Romans. Just the scale of the project must have been awe inspiring. We then made our way to a castle. I was more just walls that used to be something but we did find a neat little playground and stayed there for a long time swinging and see-sawing. It was really nice because it was breezy and cool up there on the hill (the theater was built into the hill and the castle was on top of the hill). From this vantage point we could not only get a good view of the city but see many other sites of where ruins of Roman or even Carthaginian buildings still are. All around almost wherever you look there were ruins. Of course we didn’t have a guide to tell us what the ruins where from but it was just neat to see them. After staying at the castle for a while we went to go find the cathedral. We walked to the place where it showed it on the map but it was not there. We gave up because we won’t have any shortage of cathedrals on our trip. We then made our way back to the ship for lunch and after that we went back off to go to Burger King for free wifi. Unfortunately it didn’t work but we went back up the pedestrian street to see how much a museum that held some ruins of the city. It wasn’t worth the cost so we went back to the Burger King and this time the wifi worked, maybe it had less traffic but regardless we used it because anything is cheaper and faster than on the boat. We decided then to go back to the boat for a swim. I swam for about two hours actually, the last part of that time was with the Balderson boys. After we were finished swimming Colton and I played some ping-pong. We had a lot of fun but then we went back to our rooms to get dressed for formal night. After dinner we came back to the room, Hannah went to Club HAL and mom, Oma, and I watched some of Ben Hur together. We didn’t get very far and I don’t know where it’s going but I do know that it is about chariot riding and that there as been no mention of that activity at all during the first fourty minutes of the movie. I decided to go up to the theater to try to catch Colton as he was coming out and then we nt to go play ping-pong. Of course we were still in suits but hey, a very formal game of ping-pong it was. After that we went to bed.

Sumner

Today we started in the port of Malaga, Spain. Like yesterday we went with a semi-private tour group with basically the same people as before. Today we went to the Alhambra (al-haw-m-ber-uh; just add a little accent and you are good. The Spanish however do not say he H sound so it is pronounced something like this al-ahm-ber-uh). Anyway we went on her bus to the Alhambra and with us on the bus was a lady from England. She had moved to Spain because she married a Spanish guy and she learned the language and everything. She explained some of the things that we saw on the way. The drive  to Granada, the town where he Alhambra is located, was a two hour drive with a ten minute stop with forty-five minutes left to go. By the way, the air conditioning worked, almost too well I actually turned off my vent. I slept a great deal of the way to the Alhambra but I was told that he scenery was beautiful. I’ll just take their word for it. When we arrived at the Alhambra we met our guides at the main meeting place that everyone uses so there were a lot of people. Our guides name was Miguel. (Remember hat there were two groups, we were in group one and the slow complainers were in the other one. I must say though that no one complained today. What a relief!) We were given headsets so that we could hear what he was saying without him having to talk to loud. I felt like a tourist being shoved through the sights en mass. It was kinda go in, explain the stuff, take pictures and get out of the way of he next group. But hey, I’m thankful that I got to just go, not many people have that opportunity. So anyway where was I… Oh so our guides name was Miguel he took us about 600 metres, or at least that’s what he said to a building that was circular on the inside but on the outside it was square. We only peeked at this building for a moment because we had to got to the gates to the Alhambra before our time expired. We made it and then we went to he oldest part of the Alhambra called the Alcazaba (I won’t even bother telling you how to pronounce that because I don’t actually know how you do). There were some really nice views of the city from the walls. We went as well to a watch tower in this area. Then we went to another palace. We went through lots of rooms and courtyards in the palace. I will tell you about them in general and then I will pick the most spectacular ones to describe separately. If I described all of them I would be writing until I get back to the States. The palaces were all built by the moors the Muslims who ruled in Spain from around seven hundred AD to fourteen hundred AD. For their time they were very advanced in mathematics, astronomy, and just learning in general. They had preserved many of he writings of Aristotle and Plato and all of the other great philosophers of the classical age. Their advancement in the architecture of the buiddings of the Alhambra was evident here everything was mathematically correct, there are all sorts of cool little mathematical algorithms that they used to construct the buildings, unfortunately the guide didn’t go over that so even though I know they exist I don’t know the patterns that were used all over the building. The archways were all in a horseshoe shape, not he semicircular or pointy ones characteristic to the renaissance and gothic periods of architecture respectively. They also had stalactite like points on the underside of the arches. Water was also an integral part of he moorish architecture. This was because ha Arabs came from a place where here isn’t much water, the Sahara desert therefore water is rare and if you have lots of it, as needed for pools of water and little fountains, water is a symbol of wealth. The last thing that I will tell you about is the designs on the walls. Everywhere there were Arabic script mainly from the Koran which because Arabic is so pretty in the first place looked really nice. Now I will tell you about some of the individual rooms in the palace. One courtyard had a rectangular reflecting pool of water down the middle with small fountains on either side at the end of the pool. These flowed into the big pool. If you’ve seen anything about the Alhambra you have seen a picture of this. It is a classic photo that looks great, even with an amateurs camera. I probably annoyed some people by sitting down and taking a picture across the pool right behind the little fountain but hey, I got a pretty good shot. Another place which I was looking forward to seeing but unfortunately they were restoring, is the lions courtyard, this courtyard has a fountain with twelve (at least I think there are twelve) lions decorating it this is the second most common picture that you see of the Alhambra. We went through some other rooms of lesser importance but they were still really neat. A little side track. If you read our blog about our trip to Vietnam you probably read about the ruins of a palace in Hue. I thought to myself that if the Vietnamese had preserved the palace that it could be as grand as the Alhambra, unfortunately they probably won’t ever be able to restore it because of lack of funds. After those palaces we walked through some beautiful gardens with some great views of the city. I think that Oma thought that she was in paradise (she likes gardens by the way). The gardens were made by some king during the Rennaisance period as a way to make it more contemporary. Once we walked through the gardens which were extremely beautiful but which I don’t have enough time to describe we went to another palace. This was built by the kings of Granada as a pleasure vacation spot. It was built by a Moorish architect so it had some moorish influences in its design. As we were waiting for the bus to arrive we ate our sandwiches that we had fixed at breakfast this moring and then we we left the Alhambra to go to the center of Granada for a little while. We went down a pedestrian street, much like sixteenth street mall in Denver. And went into an ice cream shop for a little break. Not a word of English was spoken, all of the communication was done in Español. It is really hard when they speak to you at a hundred miles an hour though, I should have though to say speak slowly please because I know how to say that but hindsight is twenty-twenty and unfortunately I didnt ask. Anyway we made our way back to the bus to go back to Malaga. No one complained on the way and I slept for a good chunk of the ride. That was about all, of course we did all of he normal evening and nighttime activities but I will not tell you about those.

Sumner

Today we started early, went to breakfast and then got out in Cadiz (cad-ese; with an emphasis on the s), our port for the day. We had a simi-private tour to Sevilla (seh-vil is the English pronunciation but if you want to be more proper and use the Spanish version it goes like seh-v-ee-yuh) today and it started in Cadiz. As we drove out of Cadiz the guide, Francisco, talked over the intercom about the city. It is one of the oldest cities in the world and was settled by the phonetians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Visigoths (I think), the moors and now the Spanish. Cadiz was the starting point for Columbus’s journey to discover the new world. It used to be an island and Sevilla was on the coast of th sea. It has a long history of being a sea oriented city as well as an aerospace center. It was an hour and fourty-five minutes drive to Sevilla. I slept a good deal of the way. The countryside that I did get to see was beutiful, nothing like anything at I have seen in the States. Anyway when we got to Seville we drove down the main avenue and saw all of the beautiful buildings. Then we stopped at one of the squares in the city. American square I believe was the name. This park was made for the world exhibition that was held in nineteen twenty-nine. In this park was a nice fountain and a lot of pigeons. The pigeons were a gift from someone, maybe the king of Spain or something like that. On one side of the square was a renaissance style building made by Seville’s equivalent to Gaudi. There was also a moorish style building on he opposite side. The next thing that we did is get back on the bus and go to the old Jewish and Muslim quarters. The first quarter that we went to was he Jewish quarter. This area was very nice with lots of small streets and alleys with hole-in-a-wall shops and buildings that were built in very tight spaces. We went all over going down streets and through small squares. It was nice because the whole area is pedestrian only. So we didn’t have to worry about being run over by cars or motorcycles like we did in Vietnam. We went to a palace called the Alcazar. This palace was built b the moors (the Muslims in Spain) and hen taken over by the Christians in the reconquest of Spain for Christianity. Inside there was much moorish influence in the architecture and in the decoration but in some places the Christians had Christianized the buildings. One such place was a courtyard that was moorish on the bottom but on the top they had put a renaissance style floor. It didn’t look good. It was really hot, 44 degrees centigrade, 112 degrees Fahrenheit and though it was really neat it was always just where’s the next shady spot! I need shade! Etc. After going to the Alcazar we went to a square in between the Alcazar and the cathedral. This square was called Plaza del Something I forgot the name of the square but it had a statue of someone (descriptive, eh?). This was to be our meeting place after a little free time in which we could go and do whatever we wanted. We decided to go walking looking for an ice cream place that we had seen. We didn’t find it but we found a different ice cream shop and we went inside. We used our Español (Spanish) to order our ice cream. You should have seen us trying to communicate, there was lots of pointing and attempts at using the other persons language. The main language that we communicated in was Español though. We made our way winding through the streets back to the square where we were supposed to meet to go to the bus. Like I said it was 112 degrees Fahrenheit (44 degrees centigrade) and some of the peoples tempers were as hot as the weather. I will back up just a little and tell you that there were two groups of people going on the tour with two tour guides. One group had organized themselves through Cruise Critic and the other didn’t we don’t know where they organized themselves. Regardless of where they did, they obviously didn’t get the memo that there was a lot of walking involved. There was one person with a cane and another with a walker in their group which held everything up for them. When we were about a block from he bus the husband of the woman with the walker came up to the guide and had a mild explosion “You have to slow down and wait for the people who can’t keep up!!! La de da de da…” anyway this went on for a while because some other people got involved as well. One of the people from our group said that he was going to go tell the guide that we were going to walk to the bus by ourselves. That made the caravan get moving. When we got on the bus it felt like a sauna it was like a greenhouse! Some people were complaining about how hot it was and it resounded like these seventy and sixty year old people had just gotten out of preschool! On the way back I do not know if the complained any more but I do know that the back of my eyelids are very black.

Sumner

Today we were again in Lisbon, Portugal. Today though we went out intro the countryside to a town called Sintra (center-uh; without the “r” sound at the end of center). We met Susanna in the same place as yesterday and then got into her van to drive to Sintra. On the way to Sintra we saw suburbs of Lisbon. The suburbs here are nothing like those in the States because all around there are tall apartment buildings. All around you couldn’t see much of anything except for apartment buildings. Unfortunately it did not seem like a good place to live. There was graffiti galore and you just looked at it and knew that you didn’t want to live there. Another thing that we saw on the way was an aqueduct. This aqueduct was built in seventeen or eighteen hundreds. It was made using Gothic arches (the ones that are pointy). One of the arches that makes up the aqueduct is the tallest in the world. It is also I believe the widest. It did not take long to get to Sintra. When we arrived mom commented, “Now we are in Europe.” It really was too. It was the typical small European village with narrow streets that don’t have any pattern whatsoever and quaint shops and hole in the wall restaurants in hidden corners. There was a palace that we were going to go into but because all of the big tours of like fifty people were going to the palace at that time, we decided to walk around before going to the palace. As we were walking mom commented, but not to loud so as not to make Susanna feel bad, that the village looked like a little German village. We walked down the side streets just taking in the beautiful buildings and shops. One of the specialties of Sintra is their quark products. They love to make stuff out of quark. They make everything out of the stuff. There were purses, bracelets, and many other apparel including iPhone and iPad cases! I was thinking that I might buy one just for the sake of doing so but I realized that they aren’t any cheaper there than here. They cost around 30€ which is somewhere between $50 and $60. When we were done with our walk around the town we went over to the palace. It was a grand palace for the Portuguese kings to go and have a nice summer vacation. Even though Sintra is not that far frame Lisbon it has enough difference in temperature that it was a nice vacation spot for the royal families. And of course if the king does it everyone wants to do it so, a town is formed. The scale of the building was immense. Just the stairs leading up to he palace took up a lot of room it was easily fifty to seventy five yards across. This part of the stairs was not covered. It was open and the stairs wee on either side of a platform which was probably thirty to fifty yards across. Then there was a covered part with stairs in either side leading up to the main palace. It had that old grandeur typical of the time which it was built. There were some great view of the city from here and also there were some interesting rooms with glazed tiles all around. It was in interesting mix of materialism of the age of discovery as well as both the Muslim and Christian religions. The chapel that was built in the palace was built by moors (Muslims living in Spain) and had the glazed tiles typical of the age. Oval the style of the building was the Manueline because it was primarily King Manuel that built the palace. There we all sorts of neat little fun facts like magpies that were ordered to be painted on the ceiling of one of he rooms to represent all of the ladies in waiting that we’re present when a secret was leaked an who spread  the word about this around through gossip. There was also one room on which was painted the many coats of arms of the rich families in Portugal at the time. King Manuel’s coat of arms was the biggest and the only one the was carved and then painted. It had lots of symbolism but I don’t quite remember them. Regardless whatever the importance of the different symbolic things in the cost of arms it is important because it is the coat of arms of Portugal. After going to the palace we made our way thought the countryside to the furthest western point in continental Europe. I enjoyed all of the scenery along the way, even though part of the scenery was rather black, like the back of my eyelids. I wonder why that is? ;) yes, I went to sleep. I do have the excuse that he roads were very windy and I just was lulled to sleep by the movement. There was a car show going near the monument so we had a hard time parking but we did meet a man who we though was one of the car owners and got into a conversation with him about how some island in the Azores was used as a military base by the allies during WWII. He also said that if you went directly west from that point you would reach NYC. Well in between NYC and New Jersey he said. After getting pictures we got back in the car and drove past many coastal villages or towns. They aren’t very distinct towns because it has molded into one big town along the waterfront but they were still called towns. Most of the way it was beaches with restaurants serving seafood. She to,d us that it was expensive to buy seafood in Portugal compared to the United States she said 50€ per kilo! That’s like almost $75 for a two person meal! The areas that we went through were used first by the royalty as a summer vacation spot. And then the population caught on. We saw lots of people on the beach but Susanna said that only tourists go to those beaches because the water is so dirty but the locals stay away from those beaches. We got back to the boat about thirty minutes before we had to be on the boat at two or so and went up to the Lido deck for some lunch as we were eating we saw the Baldersons coming on and then about twenty minutes later some other people and then even though they were fifteen minutes late to the boat they were just meandering along. Of course they could see that they were raising the gangplank and making the ship ready to leave but they didn’t step up the pace at all. Later Mrs. Angie commented that, and I quote “I would have been bookin’ it!” some people just don’t know when it is right to speed up just a bit. That was about it for the day and I assume by now that you know the drill, make up the rest of the day because it was the same as all the other afternoon/evenings.
    ~Sumner

Sumner

Today started out at ten thirty when we woke up. Mom, Oma and I went to the Vista Lounge to listen to a talk about the architecture of Rome and then I went to the Lido Deck to see if anyone was there to play ping-pong. Nobody was so I started back down to the room. On the way, I saw someone who had just come from the bow, which was opened so that people could watch as we went under a bridge that spans the river that Lisbon was built by. By this time it was about time to go to lunch do I went down to the room to go with the est of my family. They also wanted to go to the bow to get a view of the bridge so we went to the Lido deck for some food. The Baldersons (Colton’s family) came with us and we sat together for our meal. After lunch we went back down to the room and got ready to go into Lisbon. We have a guide for Lisbon for this afternoon and tomorrow. We met this guide outside of the dock station. Her name is Susanna. The first thing that we did is drive up to a place where you could get a good view of the city of Lisbon. At this point there was a monument to the Revolution in which the Portuguese threw off their dictator. There was also, on either side of the monument, a pillar the two together symbolized the treaty/alliance between Great Britain and Portugal. This treaty is the oldest in he world. The view from the monument was very comprehensive of the day. You could see the old Muslim quarter as well as a valley and another hill that was part of the city. Much of the city had been destroyed in the earthquake of 1755, this earthquake was a major event in he history of Lisbon. The next destination was the old Muslim quarter. On the way to that quarter, we stopped at a park with all sorts of nice plants and it was really pretty. Anyway, when we got to the old quarter, we went to a cathedral. Outside, before we went in Susanna told us that we should watch our things. There are lots of pickpockets she said, as she was saying so she said, “See there, they’ve been robbed already.” She said this pointing to a police car that some tourists were getting into. They had obviously not heeded he warnings on every Internet site that knows anything about Lisbon or about most of Europe for that matter. I thought that it was rather iconic that, even though it is a cathedral where things are supposed to be holy, the pickpockets play the part of a tourist and, as they are professionals, you don’t realize that you’ve been robbed until you try to pay for something. Besides the pickpockets there was another interesting thing that you don’t see much of in America. Tram cars. They were all over the place, two of the lines went right in front of the cathedral. We got to saw some go past as we were standing outside of the building. The cathedrals construction was interesting because it was in two styles. Romanesque and Gothic  Romanesque churches have the same design as a Roman basilica, or law court. This means that enemy have a large nave in the center and small hallways on either side. It is also characterized by semicircular arches where the height of he arch is half he width, it has to be or else it isn’t be a semicircle. He main body of the church was made in this style but, as the cathedral was built over a few centuries, the old style went out of he fad so they changed styles to the Gothic style for the back of the church behind the part where people go to mass. This area was for people to go pray to the relics and such. To get to this area there’s a Gothic arch it is interesting because you can also see the Romanesque arch which the Gothic arch was built into. Then we walked around the area and saw lots of facades with glazed tiles covering them as well as many other charming sights. As we were walking we went down a street where people were decorating he streets, our guide said that they were preparing for a celebration. It was still a month away but, like us in America preparing for Christmas, they start decorating early. The celebration is because some children had sworn that they had seen visions of the Virgin Mary and in doing so they made this area a big pilgrimage area for he Catholics. Then we kept on walking and we passed a few fadu (fahd-zoo) restaurants. In these restaurants you go and eat while people sing to you. Hen we went through a neighborhood which was really nice but the buildings weren’t in good shape because the owners didn’t have enough capital to restore the buildings. Part of this is that they can’t raise the rent if the owner stays the same and the rent is sometimes less than 50€. One € (Euro) is about 1.4 dollars, the exchange rate though makes it more like 1.5 dollars. Therefore 50€=$75. Sort of there was a nice hotel that was really nice one of the nicest in the city, a five star. It was investing however that nowhere on the building did it say that it was a hotel. In the front of the hotel on the street side was a fountain that used to be a public fountain with water from the aqueducts coming into the city. After that we got back in the ban and went to the monumental area. We were planning to go to the cathedral but as it was closed for a funeral, we walked to a bakery first. We had seen the bakery in a video from Rick Steve’s it was called Pastries de Beliem or something like that. The pastures are very popular and secret. There are only four people who know the secret receipt and, though they try, anywhere else but this restaurant that serves the pastry just can’t do it right. I have no other words to describe the desert other than it was extremely delicious. After we ate our pastries we walked back to the cathedral and went inside. This one, like the one in the old quarter, is in two styles, Manueline and renaissance. Most of he building was in he Manueline style but the front altar is in the renaissance style. Manueline is a style unique to this area and it was named after Manuel, the king of Portugal when this style was popular. The actual structure is much the same as the Gothic style but the major difference between them is the decoration. In the Manueline style there are lots of decorations with a seaward theme. By this I mean ropes, ships, oriental leaves, etc. Because people couldn’t just learn about what their explorers were finding on tv, they carved it into their cathedrals, creating the Manueline style. He renaissance style is much like the Romanesque because the renaissance is characterized by the romantification of the classical Roman arts. After we went to the cathedral we drove to another site where there is a fortress that was used for the defense of he river in the times when pirates would sometimes come to rob the people of Lisbon. It had a tower and then on he side of the tower toward the river there was a platform that was lower down from the tower for cannon possibly. This tower used to be in the middle of the water but when the earthquake of 1755 happened, the water level for the river went down making this tower become the side of the river. After this tower we went to the Explorers monument this monument was to all of the great explorers from Portugal. It was kinda neat because it showed some of the people who where important in the development of world history. After going to this monument we went back to the boat and because we did nothing of note, I will not bother describing the rest of the day because I think that you can piece together the rest of he day from my earlier posts.

Sumner

[Continued from Day 9]

So as you can see I didn’t do very much of a post on Day 9 but I will do as a promised and write about the plan of the ship. I will take you from top to bottom, stern to bow (back to front) and I really need not specify this but dust for the sake of it starboard to port (right to left).

Sumner

Today was our first port day. We stopped at the island of São Miguel in a port town named Ponta Delgada. Before commencing our journey inland we went up to have some breakfast. While there we saw some of the city from the vantage point of the boat. Once we were ready to go into town, we went down to A Deck. Not a deck but A Deck, this is the bottom most level of the ship that the passengers are allowed to be on. They checked our cards as we went out and then we were free to do anything we wanted, we just had to new back at the boat by four thirty in the afternoon. We were planning on walking around the town but we decided to get a taxi tour of he island instead. The tour cost the same as if we had gone with the boat but we were able to stay in any location for as long of a time or as short of a time as we wanted. From Ponta Delgada we rode in the car for a few minutes to get to another town on the island, the name of which escapes me at the moment. He took us to what you might consider the middle/center of the town. There was a small square with little pathways going throughout. The trees had a peculiar plant or something hanging on it. There was a path down to another larger park. This park was near the side of a river, well a river for us Coloradans, maybe not for those of you who consider a ten foot wide flowing body of water a small brook. Anyway the bridge over the river upstream a little bit was the bridge that we went over to get to the town center. The river that was running underneath it was the river that the aforementioned river by which the park was located. His park had some very nice flowers and paths throughout. Some of the water from the river was diverted to form a small channel of water going thought the center of the park. After seeing this park we went to a small church. We guessed that it was baroque or classical in style (Mrs. Duncan if you are reding this) it was our first of what will be many visits to cathedrals around Europe. I think cathedrals are to Europe as temples are to Vietnam. (For those of you who did not followed us on our trip to Vietnam about every other stop on the tours that we went on we stopped at a temple. Or at least it seamed that way). After the church we went for a little walk, about a hundred yards down a street until we got to a place where there was a traffic jam and we deemed that it was necessary  to turn around. We circled around and went back to the taxi. The next thing that we went to was an overlook over which you could see the sea all the way to the horizon, or at least until you could no longer see because of the fog. You could also see the cliffs that the water dashed up on from the aforementioned vantage point. Another sight that you could see was a plateau which some horses were grazing on. It was actually more like a ledge but…