Friday 18th December, 2015. Madeira, Portugal

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Friday 18th December, 2015. Madeira, Portugal

We had a posh breakfast and then walked into town. We know the town fairly well, having been here several times before. We had arranged to meet Alan and Barbara outside the Cathedral at 1.00 pm. We strolled through the main street admiring the Christmas decorations and made our way to a cafe we knew well where M posted the blogs up until yesterday and D had a coffee and a Madeira cake. Aftewards we went to the produce market and had a look around before setting off to meet our friends. As it turns out only Alan made it as poor old Barbara had gone on a bender the night before and was too fragile. We spent a pleasant few hours having lunch and catching up and reminissing on the old Van Gogh days. Alan told us that Angie and Audrey were in Tenerife at the moment. We are there on Tuesday so M fired off a text and had an instant reply. We will endeavour to meet up with them next week.

We walked with Alan to 'The Presepio' (Nativity Scene) which was life-sized complete with asses and camels (and a baby Jesus with a full head of curly hair) back through the Christmas market where the stalls were all decked out in tartan. There were lots of young girls dressed in tartan skirts decorated with baubles, tinsel, pine branches and pointasetta flowers. Once back on the waterfront we said our goodbyes to Alan who was taking the bus back to his hotel. We went the other way back to the cruise terminal passing the huge statue of Christiano Ronaldo on the way. We found a short cut to the ship and took a quick look at the Santa Maria - a replica of Christopher Columbus' ship.

Once it turned dark we left the ship to go and take a look at the fantastic Christmas lights in Funchal. They have really gone to town and the place looked really pretty. We spent a pleasant couple of hours wandering along the waterfront and throught the streets admiring the lights. The market looked completely different at night - as did the Presepio. We stood and watched a few local dancers and generally took in the lively atmosphere before returning to the ship for dinner at 8.30.

The show was Danny Buckler who is a magician. We sat in the front row because M had thought that we would be safe as she had been picked on in his last show - WRONG. She was hauled on to the stage as the assistant in the appearing/disappearing "Egg in a Velvet Bag" trick. It was pretty clever and she has no idea how he did it. We listened to the ship's resident band who are called the "In Tune Band". They are pretty good and play a great mix of different music.

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