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…

Sumner

Like I promised I will describe to you the nature of the ship today. Hopefully it isn’t to convoluted for you to understand. I will hopefully before the trip is completed be able to add a link to the website with the plans of the ship and of the rooms. And as a picture tells a thousand words… My posts will only be a helper as you look through the pictures. Maybe I will post that in Lisbon, or… Maybe not. We’ll see. [The rest of this posts will be posted under the title Day 11: At Sea] I admit, I have been staying up watching shows etc. way too late and once I get to the blog it is often eleven o’clock at night. Right now I am writing this while waiting for a show to start. Now you can go to Day 11. See you there!

Sumner

Nothing much happened different than the other days at sea therefore I will not spend much time describing the days activities. Basically if you take all the previous posts that I have written, mesh them all together (give or take a few things) and then make a day out of them you will get some idea of what happened today. Colton and I tried to solve a sudoku puzzle (we didn’t succeed I think that we messed up one our logic for one square which screwed up everything else. Oh well, maybe we’ll succeed tomorrow.)

Sumner

Today was another day with a late start. About nine o’clock. We were going to go to a church service but because the room doesn’t have any windows we don’t know what time it is by the sun. If we turned off the lights, even at noon it could be midnight for all that we can tell. Anyway going to the church service didn’t work because it was supposed to start at nine. Oops. We decided to go to eat our breakfast. After that Hannah went to Club HAL and I went to the pool to see if anyone wanted to play ping-pong. Colton was there so we played for a while until we went to a talk about Seville. At the beginning though, he went thought the history of architecture. Much of this I already knew. Thank you Mrs. Duncan! After the talk we went to go eat lunch and then I went back to the pool and talked for a little while with Colton and his mom and played a little more ping-pong (we are playing a lot of ping-pong). Then I came down to the room and got my bathing suit on to go swim. A little way through my bathe, Colton and his brother Sebastian came. We played for a little while end then their other brother, Nathan came. We kept on going from the hot tub and then to the regular pool and back to the hot tub again. Then we got ready to go eat. (eat, play, sleep; what a life). After the delicious dinner we went to go to watch people at the karaoke room. There were a few pretty good singers but this one guy, I felt kinda bad for him, just couldn’t carry a tune at all. After that we came back to the room. When we go there though we had some chocolate covered strawberries which we promptly ate. The people that cleaned our rooms must have done it because Oma’s meat was not very good. I must say thought that Oma didn’t complain at a all but they must have sensed that she was not pleased, no wonder that they did, she only ate a tiny portion of the meat. Anyway that was basically it but I must tell you that if any of you have pets you probably should be wary of mom when she gets back because each night the people who clean the room always make a creation with the towels. The past two nights when the have done so mom has murdered the creations before Hannah had come down from club HAL by putting her jacket on it! Pets beware.

Sumner

The day started out really late today, ten o’clock for me. We didn’t go to breakfast because we were going to have lunch in just a few hours. I decided to go up to the crows nest but on the way I saw a boy that was bouncing a ping-pong ball on a paddle. He looked like he was just slightly bored. So I asked him if he wanted to play. We played ping-pong for about half an hour and then Colton, that’s the boys name, and I went down to the theater to watch a talk about the history of the cruise boat. I met Oma and mom down there at the talk, which was very interesting. I learned a lot about cruising in the speech. Then we met up with Hannah went to go eat lunch. After lunch, which was really good, mom and Oma went to go watch another talk and I went up to the crows nest to do my class. While I was waiting for the ladies to show up the people that I had done the trivia with yesterday called me over to play with them. I didn’t help much but it was kinda neat just to listen to the questions and think of good answers. Anyway, as the people in my iPad class showed up I asked them if it would be OK if we just met two hours later at four for the class instead of two because the talk that mom and Oma were going to was on that the ladies in my class wanted to go to as well. I decided go go up to Club HAL to see what they were doing it wasn’t anything that I wanted to do at that moment so I went down to the pool and talked with Colton’s brothers and mom. He has two brothers, one is named Sebastian, the other is Nathan. Colton is ten, and the others are seven and eight, I just don’t know which one is which. Anyway, I went back up to Club HAL for a few minutes until I went to go do my iPad class. After class we decided to meet in two days, on Monday, so that they could try out everything that we had gone over. At that point it was about time for dinner so we went to the room and got ready. The food was good and after we had eaten we went to the show. Today it was an Olympic gymnast performing some things. Mainly he used silk things that hung from the ceiling to do some tricks on. One time though he said that he was going to take a break and let the band play but he went over to the piano and started playing with them! He had learned to play because for the last few years he as been doing shows on cruise ships and he had learned from the musicians that he met on the boats. He also did a few juggling routines, one of witch he did in the dark with lighted balls. It was really cool. After the show we went back to the room to go to bed.

Sumner

Today we got up earlier than we did yesterday, about seven or a little after. We actually got to go to breakfast today! The food was good and after the meal we had to decide what to do. Hannah and I went with Club HAL to play ping-pong. And after we were done we played UNO for a little while. Then Hannah went with Oma to a cooking demonstration and mom and I went to hear a person talk about one of the ports that we went to. I dosed off during part of it do I’d don’t really remember everything that he said. Oh well. Next was lunch, which was very good, and then we played a little ping-pong before I went to meet with the ladies for our little iPad class. We didn’t have much of a class, only about twenty minutes. This was because there was another talk that all of the ladies wanted to go to so our meting adjourned and the ladies left. I decided to go and find mom and Oma, who themselves were at the talk. I couldn’t find them but we had arranged for everyone to meet in the room at about four to get ready for diner. That was done and we went to eat at the restaurant. I wasn’t feeling great, it was a little rocky. (I’m fine now, it was juts over that one spot for a few hours that was really bad. It wasn’t that bad though I just didn’t enjoy everything to its fullest extent.) After dinner we went to watch the boats sings perform some Broadway songs. I fell asleep for part of it, (I seem to be liking to sleep through things… Oh well it doesn’t matter). We all went down to the trivia show, it was pretty funny. We left a little early because Hannah wanted to go to a room where someone was playing the piano. I came to the room and am writing this blog. Well I should probably start getting ready for bed. I’ll keep you posted!