Almost at the End

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We've just had the Captain's Farewell Cocktail Party and final formal night. The last Baked Alaska parade and pictures with the waiters. You can imagine that we have grown very close to our waiters. They take such good care of us and we have gotten to know alot about them and their families back home. I am going to be fighting back tears when we have to say goodbye.

Yesterday we were in Lisbon, our only European stop on this trip. We arrived at 10:00 AM so we were able to see the Belem Tower, Monument to the Discovers, 25th of July Bridge, and Christ the King statue as we came up the Tagus River into port. It looked like it was going to rain all day, but we only got a brief shower and luckily were inside for that. Mom has been to Lisbon a number of times before so wasn't interested in going ashore, but I had never been so Hugh and I took the shuttle bus into the city center. Typical of all Turcotte vacations, the famous Praca do Comercio (Main Square) with its fabulous black and white tiles was completely boarded off and under construction. So I didn't get to see it. But we took a great tram tour around the city. Lisbon is a bit like San Francisco with steep streets, but here they are especially narrow and winding. Buses cannot go through, so the street cars (trams) are the only way around. There are no skyscrapers here, but lots of wonderful old buildings covered in patterned tiles. Absolutely stunning! We wandered through the Cathedral and old Alfama quarter which has streets so steep they are really staircases that wind up and down. Saw lots of wash hanging on lines from one window to the next. I really liked Lisbon and would love to go back someday to explore it more thoroughly. That's the trouble with cruising: you only get a brief taste of each port. But on the other hand you get to find out where you'd like to return.

Two days before Lisbon we were in Santa Cruz, Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. It was a gorgeous sunny day. Mom took the shuttle bus into town and wandered around by herself. Hugh and I took a tour to the Pyramids of Guimar which are ancient step pyramids very similar to those in Mexico and Peru. These were discovered by Thor Heyerdahl -- of Kon Tiki and Ra fame -- who lived in Tenerife. He spent a large part of his life trying to prove that ancient civilizations could have travelled from Mesopotamia to the Americas (via the Canaries) using reed boats that look alot like our pontoons. He thought the pyramids linked these places together. There was an excellent museum along with the pyramids and, surprisingly, we discovered that our cruise line company, Fred. Olsen, owned this museum! Apparently one of the family is very interested in archeology and since Heyerdahl was Norwegian like the Olsens, they probably got along well. The bus trip to the museum went through the Esperanza Forest which was 5000 feet above sea level. It was fascinating to see the vegetation change as we went up the North side of the island and down the West. Gorgeous Canary Pines in the forest that looked similar to our Black Pines and red and orange poppies covered the dry volcanic cliffs. Tenerife is a hugely popular resort island for the British as well as many other northern Europeans with over 6 million tourists each year. It was sparkling clean and up-to-date with excellent roads and new construction everywhere. Such a contrast to many of our other ports on this trip. It is part of the European Union, so must meet their standards...and it showed.

We saw a whale this morning that was swimming along with the ship. I don't know what kind it was, but it "blew" about half a dozen times which was quite exciting.

Tomorrow, Easter, will be busy with packing up. We arrive in Southampton early Monday morning and have a Northwest flight out of Heathrow in the afternoon. We get to the Cities in the late afternoon and plan to stay with my brother, Bill, that night. We should be home sometime Tuesday. We look forward to seeing all of you soon. It has been a wonderful adventure that I hate to have come to an end. I'm not looking forward to coming back to reality. And, by the way, Rainy Days will not be open again until about May 1st. I haven't seen a catalog or ordered a single title in almost four months, so it will take a while to get up and running again. Not to mention getting the house back in order and taxes done! Thanks for reading this! Time to go to the final Crew Show.

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