2004 Europe

Tampa Reunion





April 9 – Miguel and Avi Caterneau drove me to the Santa Ana train station so I could check baggage. The Irvine station does not have baggage check service and the conductors on the trains are getting pickier about where you put carry on luggage. I took the Surfliner train to Los Angeles where I boarded the Sunset Limited train to Orlando, Florida. We left exactly on time and that was the last on time event of the day. We were already one hour late when we were only three hours out of LA. All night we stopped on sidings to wait for freight trains to pass going the opposite direction. It’s a funny thing. No matter how rough the tracks are, I only wake up when the train stops and I have a hard time getting back to sleep until the train starts moving again.



April 10 – I awoke at 6AM, just in time for first call for breakfast. The train is a little over two hours late this morning. After another day of stopping for freights we finally got so far behind schedule that the engineer and crew reached the maximum time they could be on duty (the technical term for this is ‘timed out’) and we had to park just outside Demming, NM to wait for a new crew to come by pickup from El Paso to drive the train the rest of the way in. We were parked on a siding for about 2 hours. We are almost 5 hours late at this point but are moving again and heading into El Paso. I’ve met several people heading for FL and cruise ships. One lady from Arizona and another couple are also heading for the ms Noordam. They are both stopping off in Orlando before going to Tampa and the ship.



April 11 – Got up at 6:30AM and headed to breakfast. It’s raining and we’re going to spend all day getting across TX. It did rain all day and we are now 8 hours late heading to New Orleans. Our TA, Monica, is a good-natured young Latina. She is very energetic and helpful to the people on the car who are not able to get around very well. She brings them their meals and helps them with little things. I hope they appreciate it and give her a nice tip. After we leave New Orleans we will be going by Blue Bayou (Bayou Bleu on Louisiana Maps), the area made famous by Roy Orbison in his 1963 song of the same name.



April 12 – Got up at 6:30 AM again and had breakfast. In case you haven’t caught on yet, breakfast is my favorite meal on the train. The food is the best and if you eat early the diner is not crowded. We are currently in MS and riding right along the ocean. Very pretty. Swamps on the north and ocean on the south. As the day continued we ran later and later.



Finally Amtrak decided to take us off the train in Sanford, FL and bus us the rest of the way. First the bus went to Orlando, then Lakeland, finally my destination, Tampa. We arrived in Tampa at 6AM, 9 hours late. After a $25 cab ride I arrived at the Radisson Bay Harbor Hotel only to find that the hotel had no electricity. High winds over the previous day had knocked out the power and I was not able to check in or get a room. Finally at 9AM one of the employees decided they could get me in a room and worry about checking me in later. I hadn’t slept in 29 hours so that sounded good to me. I got a 3-hour nap and was able to check in and have lunch at 12:30AM. The short version of this is you have to be flexible to travel by train in the USA.



April 13 – Actually the last part of the above paragraph took place this morning. (Oh, oh more evidence of the validity of Triscadecaphobia.) After I got a little more sleep I went to the airport on the hotel shuttle to pick up Diana. Her flight was only about 45 minutes late due to the connecting flight being late arriving in Atlanta. We had dinner at Crabby Bill’s in the hotel. Very good seafood.



April 14 – Today we met with Sherry McMillen, a friend of ours that had moved to FL from Irvine, and went on a drive down to Clearwater and Sand Key. Very pretty spots. Sherry took us to a Wal-Mart where we bought another carry-on size suitcase. It’s a blue American Tourister and it has a very convenient layout. Then we met with Bill and Almira Mauger and Shirley and Max Minear, all friends from previous cruses that live in the Tampa area. We were table mates with Bill and Almira on our ms Amsterdam transatlantic cruise in 2001. We met Shirley and Max on the Asia-Pacific Explorer cruise on the ms Volendam in 2003. Shirley and Max will be on the 2005 World Cruise with us. We talked for a while at the hotel, catching up on latest events and then went to early dinner at Landry’s Seafood, also very good.

To continue the journey, go to the bottom Archives and click on July.

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

ms Noordam





April 15 – After breakfast at the hotel we boarded the shuttle to go to the ms Noordam. Even though it was just after noon we were taken straight on the ship and to our rooms. The ship had arrived in Tampa 4 days earlier and they were all ready for us. We have room 711 on B deck. An extraordinarily large E class room. It’s the largest room we’ve ever had on a ship. There are only two rooms like this on the ship and both are located just aft of the doors for the gangway on the starboard and port sides of the ship. We are on the starboard side. I think these rooms were once offices for one of the officers but were redone as passenger space during a refit.



The Noordam is a small ship by modern standards at 33,930 gross tons. The other ships in the HAL fleet are mostly 55,000 to 65,000 gross tons and the new Vista class ships are about 85,000 tons. The QM2 is the largest cruise ship currently afloat at 150,000 gross tons.



I managed to get my new Fujitsu laptop connected to the ship’s wireless network and am ready to send reports back to the USA. For some reason I can’t send mail to AOL accounts from the network on the ship. I had the same problem while I was on the Kinko’s network several years ago while traveling in Denver. I hope I can find a way around that. Maybe I’ll use my AOL ‘bring your own access’ account to send to my AOL buddies.



April 16 – The first of 7 full days at sea. The current ghost band of Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians is on the ship, playing big band music as arranged and scored by Guy and his brother. I enjoy the brass and woodwind sections. Two years ago HAL decided to take the brass section out of the ship’s bands completely and cut back on the woodwinds leaving only one. They added a keyboard and guitar. They theory being that the keyboard could be configured to play the brass parts where necessary. As a theory that’s interesting, but in practice it is a disaster. The ship’s band’s music now sounds very flat. I think they were updating the general music mix to use less ‘big band’ music and move into the 50-60’s oldies that their clients now view as their music. Unfortunately, the person who designed the new band configuration forgot or never knew how important brass is to that type of music. Another place this shortcoming shows up is in accompanying the performers who bring charts for the band to play to back up their shows. Most of the charts have a brass line that the keyboard now plays and it’s terrible. Every cruise evaluation I do for HAL includes this sentence. Please, please bring back the BRASS section of the band. This is another reason I’m glad the Guy Lombardo band is with us. They have a full brass section and lots of woodwinds. Unfortunately all they play is ‘big band’ music so the 50-60s oldies still sound weak and flat.



There are two lecturers on board. One is a historian. His first lecture was about the train that was built across Mexico, at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, to carry cargo from the Atlantic to the Pacific 7 years before the Panama Canal was finished. It did well but after the canal was finished it went broke in 3 years. It was much faster and cheaper to ship through the canal. The seas are fairly smooth. The ship started moving a little late in the evening. He’s a college professor somewhere and all I can say is I hope his students have large reserves of NoDoze. The information he has is fine, but his presentation is stilted and boring and his speech patterns are distracting. In short, I’ll probably skip his future lectures.



Diana and I have sailed on the ms Noordam before, a 12-day Christmas cruise in 1990. We also sailed on her sister ship the ms Niew Amsterdam on a 16-day Panama Canal cruise and a 35-day South Pacific Cruise in 1986 and 1991 respectively. We had forgotten how much we liked the smaller ships. It was very nostalgic to be back aboard. HAL sold the Niew Amsterdam several years ago and is selling the Noordam this November, lease with option to buy actually, to the same company. They are getting a little old and don’t have the modern amenities that the newer cruisers like, balcony rooms, etc. Since these things don’t mean much to Diana or I, we are a little sad to see the older ships leave the fleet.

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Welcome On Board

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

First Formal Night





April 17 – Today the weather was warm and the ship was still rocking a little. They put out the traditional apples, crackers and seasickness bags. The movement is not that bad but they like to be careful. We spent the day in shipboard activities, lectures, an amber seminar, and of course eating. This was the first of 4 formal evenings and the captain’s reception party so I wore my tux for the first time. The people with us in the picture above are all on the Noordam's cruise staff. The girl on my right was Miss Mississippi in 1997. The evening’s entertainment was a musical performed by the ensemble cast on the Noordam, four men and six women. They did a review of famous personalities, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Judy Garland, Diana Ross, etc., wearing their costumes and singing their music. They are all good dancers and four, two men and two women, are good singers. A girl named Casey is the best singer and she is very good. Note: I later discovered that Casey is actually KC, and her first name is Kari.



April 18 – We seem to be sailing a more northerly course than I would have suspected this morning. The sky is cloudy and it’s a little cooler. We attended a seminar on pearls and a coffee chat with the members of the Noordam cast who performed last night. The oldest performer is in his early 30s the rest are just out of college and starting their careers.



I just found out that a man fell in his room last night and broke his hip. We are diverting north to Bermuda to drop him off for more advanced medical care. We should get there tomorrow AM and then continue on our way to Horta in the Azores. The captain was sailing a rhumb line course for our first landfall in Europe, Horta in the Azores. A rhumb line course allows you to steer a constant heading to the destination and avoid recalculating the heading every so often. It isn’t the shortest distance between two points on a sphere, read as the earth, but it simplifies navigation. With our diversion to Bermuda we are sailing almost straight north at the moment. When we get to Bermuda he will compute a new course northeast and sail a great circle route. A great circle is the shortest distance between two points on a sphere, but we will be some 200 nautical miles north of the original rhumb line and in much colder, rougher waters. Ironically, although we have diverted north before sailing east, in essence doing two sides of a triangle rather than the hypotenuse, because the new course is a great circle and the old course was a rhumb line, we will sail a shorter total distance to get from Ft. Lauderdale to Horta. Extremely counter intuitive unless you know some geometry and a little about navigation.



The ms Noordam has tea at 4PM every afternoon but this afternoon they had Royal Dutch Tea. Instead of the usual assortment of cookies etc. they provided a very elaborate layout of tea sandwiches, scones, cakes, chocolate covered strawberries and assorted pastries. This evening’s performer was Justin Miller, a guitarist. He was great!! Diana bought two of his CDs. He is also a music historian and has a doctorate in psychiatry and taught for 11 years at Yale and Colombia medical schools. He will be giving a lecture tomorrow on the ‘big band’ era.

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Seafood Curry from the Lido Grill

April 19 – Our cabin is on the same deck to which they attach the top of the stairs down to the tender platform. At 2AM this morning I was awakened by the sounds of setting that platform up. The injured passenger was transferred to a small Coast Guard like cutter from Bermuda to be taken in to the hospital so we never actually stopped in Bermuda. In fact, since it was dark, I never even saw the island. I think the cutter came out quite a way to make the pick up.

I went to Justin Miller’s coffee chat today and I finally realized how I knew him. He was on the Volendam for the Asia Pacific cruise as the professor part of ‘Smitty and the Professor’. She (Smitty) was a torch singer and he played the piano for her and also lectured on the big bands. The cruise director, Peter Daums, told me that they have since divorced and he has returned to performing, using the instrument that he played to work his way through med school, the guitar.

It just dawned on me that I should list the dances we’re learning on the ship. So far we have learned the meringue, waltz, rumba and foxtrot. I discovered that the dance I’ve been doing for years that I call the Longenberger two-step is actually various improvisations on the meringue. The entertainer was a comic magician, Woody Pittman. He was funny, but how many ways can you do the standard rope, ring, card and hat tricks? His comedy was the best part of his act. We also saw the movie ‘Big Fish’. I think Diana liked it, I just thought it was goofy.

April 20 – This mornings dance class was the cha-cha. Diana and I are pretty good at that so it was free dance time. Did you know that you can Cha-Cha to most rock-and-roll songs? I love it but it drives the dance instructors wild. Anything 4/4 time can be a cha-cha. In fact a lot of 50s R & R actually has a 1,2,3 & 4 cha-cha beat. Just don’t tell anyone I told you this. ‘Real’ dancers find it irritating.

I spent the rest of the day relaxing. Tonight’s entertainment was Celeste Francis. She has a powerful and very accurate voice. She was trained in opera but prefers to sing ballads and big band songs. She’s the only performer so far to perform without a microphone and there was absolutely no problem hearing her. Her husband, Trevor Jones, who accompanies her on the piano, was with the Electric Light Orchestra in the ‘70s. He also wrote music for the movie ‘Brassed Off’.

April 21 – Went to the coffee chat with Celeste Francis this AM. She’s performed in a lot of West End musicals as a member of the chorus. She has recorded with Jack Jones, the Platters and Frankie Avalon.

They had a curry bar out by the pool at lunch today. The chef made seafood curry to order and there was yellow curry chicken and red curry beef. I had him make the seafood curry very hot and it was great. I sampled the other two and the flavor was good but they were too mild to be great.

The Noordam Cast did another show this evening. They are all talented. One couple dances exceptionally and one couple sings exceptionally, but they all dance and sing. The hard parts just go to the specialists. My opinion that KC is the best singer has been reinforced. After the evening show they held the Officers Black and White Ball.

April 22 – Our last full day at sea before Horta in the Azores. The seas are rougher today. Not violently so, just a pronounced roll side to side. Makes for great sleeping but dancing is trickier. Today’s dance lesson was the Tango. It was pretty exciting on the rolling dance floor. The entertainment was Paul Pappas, a pianist. He was excellent and very energetic. He played in many styles from classical to honky-tonk.
(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Horta, Faial, Azores



April 23 – At last, a day in port. Horta on Faial Island in the Azores to be exact. (The locals pronounce the name A-zor’-rays, not A’-zors like we do) It’s a beautiful volcanic island. Good news, the ATMs over here are multi-lingual. I was able to get some Euro right on the pier. It will be nice from the currency standpoint that every country we’ll be visiting except Switzerland and the UK will use the Euro. Simplifies the currency planning problems.

The entire Azores archipelago is volcanic like the Hawaiian Islands. It is a green, sub-tropical island that gets cold enough for apples but stays warm enough for citrus. The main attractions are a ‘new’ volcano that added about 1.5 sq. miles of land to the west end of the island in 1957 and the caldera of the volcano that formed the island originally.



They have about one earthquake a day. The last strong one was about 7 years ago and was a 6.5 magnitude on the Richter scale. The 1957-8 eruption was from a submarine volcano just offshore on the west end of Faial Island. Before it subsided it had grown enough to join with the island’s shoreline and destroy the lighthouse that guarded the western approach. It’s first floor is buried and the part you can still see is the second floor. In the last 40+ years half of the cladera of the new volcano has collapsed back into the ocean. We visited the area and even after all that time there are still very few plants in the area. Right next to the lighthouse sight the volcanic ash is 15 meters (50 feet) deep. A few long grasses grow in small clumps on the lunar like landscape. It doesn’t have the multicolor hues of Haleakala Crater on Maui, just the dull gray volcanic ash infrequently interspersed with the tan of limestone strata.



Our next stop was the caldera of the volcano that formed the island. You have to go through a small tunnel from the parking lot to the caldera itself. It’s about 2,600 feet high, 1.25 miles across and in contrast to the 40 year old, this caldera, home to 400 species of plants and animals, is very green and lush.



Our tour took us around the entire island in about 4 hours. Our guide was German and has lived on the island for 20 years. The island is also very green and lush. There are hedges of Hydrangeas everywhere, sometimes up to 8 feet tall and 5 feet thick. Unfortunately they don't bloom until late May. It must be spectacular because there are hedges everywhere along the roads and between the fields. We caught the last tender to the ship and were just in time for dinner. This is the last time we will be tendering into port. Not being docked creates a major bottleneck getting ashore. Being along side the pier will simplify getting on and off the ship. During dinner we weighed anchor and are off to Punta Delgada, Sao Michael, another of the 9 Azores islands.

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

I'm standing on 15 meters of volcanic ash with half of the 1957 caldera to my right

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Second Floor of the Lighthouse Destroyed in 1957 Eruption

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Sete Cidades on Sao Miguel, Azores


April 24 - Wow, two ports in two days! Today we're in Punta Delgada on the island of Sao Miguel in the Azores. This island is much larger than Faial. It has high-rise buildings, maybe 8 stories, and much more traffic. Still by SoCal standards it's a pretty laid back place.

In the AM we went on a tour to Sete Cidades (Portuguese for Seven cities). It's actually two lakes, one bluish and the other greenish, in the crater of an old volcano. It was pretty cloudy so both lakes looked green. I've attached a pic of the lakes. We also visited a pineapple plantation and the Punta Delgado botanical gardens. The pineapples they grow are smaller and rounder with a smaller crown. They are very sweet. The gardens are on the site of a 16th century monastery and some of the walls of the old buildings can still be seen.

When the tour ended, about noon, we had the bus drop us off downtown. Diana did some shopping and I had a slice of Azorean pizza. It was great!! It was topped with some sort of Portuguese sausage, green olives with pimentos, delicious cheese (a local specialty), some sort of shredded veggie, and a somewhat spicy sauce. The crust holding all this together was absolutely perfect! Not at all sweet like most American pizza and also not thin and cracker-like. It was about 1 centimeter thick and had a wonderful taste and texture. The cheese and other toppings added about another 1 centimeter so the pizza was almost an inch thick in total and just perfect. Not too much or too little of anything. The pizza and a large diet coke were 2.5 euros, about $2.95 at the current exchange rate.

After lunch we walked around town. There are a lot of structures from the Portuguese Colonial period. The Azores were the first discovery Prince Henry the Navigator’s sailors made in 1427 after 11 years of unsuccessful exploration. There are many buildings from the 15th and 16th centuries. Most older buildings are of block and stone. Most of the stone is plastered over and whitewashed but the borders and accent stones are of the island's own black basalt stone. They are left unpainted and provide the black accents and borders you see in the picture of the Chruch of Sao Jose at the bottom of this page. A picture of Punta Delgada's main plaza is next. As you can see it is paved with black and white cobblestones set in patterns. The entire city's sidewalks are made the same way. Each street has its own unique pattern in the stones.

While touring the streets we encountered groups of school children walking along the streets with their teachers, apparently headed to a museum or local site. All it took was one “Ola” (unlike Spanish, accented on the la’), and the kids would break out in a spontaneous celebration. They called back, danced, waved, laughed, smiled and jumped around, undoubtedly spurred on by the sight of my video camera. Even the teachers laughed and smiled and called back, “Ola”. People here seem very warm and happy. They especially like it when you speak Portuguese rather than Spanish even though they understand both. Learning just a few words of greeting in the language classes aboard the Noordam has really paid off. So far we’ve gotten some Portuguese, Italian and Dutch (most of the deck officers are from Holland).

Tonight is another formal evening and show by the repertory cast. I'm looking forward to it, as they have been very good. The show just ended and it was great! Casey Cook came into the audience and took me out to dance with her. She was already my favorite singer, now she’s just my favorite period. After the show they had the Desert Extravaganza in the Lido. There were all sorts of sweets done up in very intricate and fancy styles but my favorite was a cake in the shape of a wheel of cheese with marzipan mice crawling around on it. I didn’t take my camera so there are no pictures. Neither Diana nor I had a bite to eat; we were still full from dinner. They had my favorite HAL desert for dinner today, flourless chocolate cake. Yikes!! Think a little heavier than a chocolate soufflé and you’ve got it. Dark, rich, creamy chocolate cake that’s a little soft and warm in the center! Yum.

Must be time for a rest as we have another day at sea tomorrow.

April 25 – We are now on GMT and will be on it until we head into the Mediterranean Sea towards Rome. It will be nice to go several days without losing an hour of sleep. This morning we had a port talk by Obelio, the onboard port lecturer. He will make a presentation on each port we visit, giving us a feel for the logistics and local color. He will also discuss sights you should try to see and the local crafts to look for. He usually introduces some of the social customs that may be different from ours so we don’t inadvertently offend a native. The entertainment this evening was a variety show featuring three of the performers we’ve seen on the trip across the Atlantic, Woody Pittman, the magician/comic, Carme Pitrello, the Las Vegas lounge style singer/comedian, and Justin Miller, the Big Band expert and guitarist. All three are very entertaining performers, but Justin Miller is by far the best.
(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Church of Sao Jose (Saint Joseph)

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Punta Delgada's Main Plaza

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Funchal, Madeira

April 26 – Today we are in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. It’s a bigger city than either Horta or Porta Delgada. In fact, we have visited these three cities in order of increasing size. Madeira is noted for its wines. They say they have four styles made from four different grapes, sercial (dry taste, light color), verdelho (medium dry, golden color), bual (medium sweet, dark gold color, sometimes spelled boal) and malmsey (the very first grape brought to the islands, sweet, chestnut brown). I am here to tell you that all the wines, regardless of their description, are sweet by our standards. It was very popular in colonial America.

We didn’t have a ship’s tour until the afternoon so we got off the ship early and walked downtown. It’s a much busier place that either of the other Azorean islands we’ve visited. People bustling everywhere. We went to the Cathedral of Funchal, built in the 1500s. Just down from the Cathedral we found the Mercado dos Lavradores. It was full of flower, fruit, leather and lace stands. At the far end was the fisherman’s cooperative. We got there about 9AM and it was very busy. They had lots of Tuna, Barracuda (or a fish that looks just like one), eels, rock fish (looked like red snapper), and several species of fish I couldn’t identify. And here's the best part, the really good tuna in the picture below was 3 euros a kilo. That's $1.75 a POUND! and it was caught overnight so it's totally fresh. That entire fish market did not produce a noticeable fish smell, it was amazing. We walked by the Parliament, the Presidents palace and the headquarters of the military. All the buildings appear to be from the 1700s or earlier. None were open for visitors. The guards at the military headquarters carried 4-foot swords over their shoulders like rifles. The sidewalks in all these cities have all been made mosaic style with dark basalt and white stones. They have an amazing array of patterns and designs in them. After Diana bought some postcards we headed back to the ship.

Author's Note: The fish I described as a barracuda above is actually an Espada Preta or Black Scabbard Fish. It's related to the Perch family. It is a predator fish and has rows of very sharp teeth. The shape is long and streamlined, just like a barracuda.

In the afternoon we rode the cable car to Monte, a parish of Funchal about 1,500 feet above the harbor. The views from up there were very nice. The cable cars were small, enclosed gondolas that hold 6 people. We rode up with two ladies from Holland and a young couple from Portugal. Everyone spoke English so it was a very friendly ride. I greeted the couple in Portuguese and they answered in Portuguese first then English to let me know we could keep talking. I’m sure my accent gave away the fact that I didn’t know much of their language. After arriving in Monte we walked about 200 yards to a hilly street where they have wicker sleds with wooden runners. A rope is attached to the front of each runner and two men use these ropes to pull the sled to get it started and then whip it past them and jump on the back of each runner much like a dog-sled musher. They turn the sled sideways to slow it down and alternately drag their feet to steer. It doesn’t go that fast, but I’m sure it reached 30 mph at some spots. You could smell the wooden runners heating up. I half expected them to start burning. The men wear white shirts and pants and a skimmer-like, brimmed straw hat. The ride to the bottom was a lot of fun.

After that we boarded a bus for a trip to a point over the city for some pics and a coffee. The coffee was great but, even though I drink coffee black in the States, I had to add a little sugar to tone it down. They give you two 9-gram (that’s a little over a quarter ounce) packs of sugar with each small coffee so I think the custom is to drink it fairly sweet. Then it was back on the bus for a stop at the “Wine Lodge”. Set parallel to the oldest street in Funchal across a cobbled courtyard, is the Old Blandy Wine Lodge. Sampling rooms go back to the 17th century. Once the annex to a Franciscan monastery it now houses some 800,000 liters of Madeira wine. The main tasting bar has historic murals painted by the German artist Max Romer. Here we had a tasting session with the Madeira wines. As I said before they’re all sweet, some are just sweeter. The least sweet is somewhat like a sweet white Zinfandel. The sweetest is like a very sweet Port wine. All are fortified so there is very little chance that they will go bad if you have a bottle open for a long period of time. After the wine tasting we went back to the ship just in time to sail away to the sounds of Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians by Al Pierson. Gives you a very nostalgic feeling, even though you never actually experienced the real thing. Weird!

They were having a BBQ on the Lido deck this evening so we decided to skip dinner in the dining room and eat al fresco on the lido. They had steak, chicken, sausage, ribs and salmon from the BBQ as well as salad makings, bean salad, fresh fruit salad and a shrimp, calamari, slaw sort of salad. It was very good.

The cast for evening entertainment was made up of the cruise staff and passengers. Both Diana and I had parts. It was a lip sync 50s-60s rock and roll review. Diana was Leslie Gore and I was Tiny Tim. Diana got to do ‘It’s my party” with a back up group of similarly dressed party girls but I had to do ‘Tiptoe through the Tulips” solo. It was a hoot. They had costumes for us, Diana got a poodle skirt and I will not describe how I was dressed except to say that there was a wig and ukulele involved. Sorry that there’s no pictorial record of this event, NOT!!

April 27 – Our last day at sea on this leg of the cruise. Tomorrow we will be in Cadiz, Spain, the fourth largest city and the day after Lisbon on Diana’s birthday. All our dinner mates will be leaving in Lisbon and I hope their replacements are as nice as they are. I’m just relaxing today and catching up on some pic processing and writing. The Noordam cast presented this evenings entertainment. It was called ‘All That Jazz’ and had blues and jazz tunes. They were very good once again. This type of music seems to suit Casey’s voice.
(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Funchal Fruit Market

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Funchal Flower Market

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Funchal Fish Market

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Wicker Sled

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Diana at Plaza Espanola


April 28 – Today we are in Cadiz, Spain. We got up at 6:15AM, double yikes, to be on the bus to Seville at 7:45AM. It was cloudy in Cadiz but it was raining in Seville. Not very hard and not all the time. It was about 1.5 hours from Cadiz to Seville and the trip went smoothly once we were out of the city limits. In the cities, both of them, the traffic is terrible. Much worse than SoCal. The gridlock might hold you at a traffic light for three cycles.

Cadiz and Seville are both in the province of Andalusia. Cadiz is one of the oldest constantly inhabited cities in Europe. It was founded either the Iberians or the Phoenicians over 3,000 years ago. Some claim it is the oldest town in Western civilization. It is a fishing town that has grown to about 800,000 people. We didn’t spend any quality time there because we were headed to Seville.

The first stop on the way to Seville was at a truck stop on the highway. It was just a gas station and a café. You know you’re in a civilized place when the fast food on the menu is 9 different kinds of paella, one of my favorite Spanish dishes. I hope to have some before we are done with this cruise. We stop several more times in Spain.

When we got to Seville it was very cloudy and soon began to drizzle. The city is built on the Betis River. The Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans all occupied this area, using the river for a way of commerce; the Romans called it ‘New Roma’. This area was under Muslim control starting in 711 and ending in 1248 when Fernado III recaptured it for the Castilians. Seville is the capital of Andalusia. The first thing we toured in Seville was Los Reales Alcazares or ‘The Alcazar’. It is a Palatine fortress built in 1364 and is the oldest building of its type still in use in Spain. They are conducting an archeological dig under the marble floor of the interior patio and they have exposed some of the original Roman structure that the current palace was built on. The king uses it when he is in Andalusia so we were lucky that he’s not in town.

After this we walked through the Jewish Quarter that occupies some of the oldest parts of the city. It has very narrow streets, perhaps 10 feet with no sidewalk. Two-storied buildings line the streets, producing an increased impression of closeness. The area has many small shops and cafes that would be attractive if it weren’t raining. The Jewish population was largely driven out of Spain during the Inquisition but a small community still lives there.

Our next stop was the Santa Maria Cathedral, the third largest Christian church in the world. It was built between 1401 and 1506 on the site of a mosque that had been converted into a cathedral. The minaret and the patio of orange trees are the only parts of the original mosque remaining. The cathedral is in the Gothic style but has an unusual rectangular form in place of the normal cross shape. The panels behind the altar are carved in the Gothic style and took almost 50 years to carve and guild. It measures 18 by 20 meters and contains more than a thousand sculptures. It has 36 panels that depict the life of Christ from birth to death and is the largest retable in a Christian church. The pipe organ has four sets of pipes each set on either side of the choir, which occupies the center of the structure. Two sets face toward the choir and two face outward. It has a total of 7,000 pipes. Unfortunately no one was playing it as they only use it on special occasions. The minaret of the former mosque, called the ‘Giralda’ is over 93 meters high and was built in 1184. It has come to be the symbol of Seville. The cathedral is gigantic in scope and full of highly decorated and intricately carved structures. On of the most unique is the crypt of Christopher Columbus. The cathedral is one of 5 places in the world that claim to have his bones. His crypt is a casket being carried by four pallbearers. I’ll attach a pic although it was hard to take. My little flash was not up to the task so I had to hand hold a half-second exposure. It came out pretty well actually, everything considered.

The orange trees were interesting in that they were the ‘bitter’ or Seville orange variety used in making Scots marmalade. While southern Spain was under the control of the Moors they grew the otherwise inedible `sour oranges` largely for the medicinal qualities of their skins. In the early 1800s James Keiller, the founder of the Dundee Company, introduced marmalade made from these oranges as an aid to breakfast digestion, first, in Scotland, then in England, and subsequently, in a number of Empire markets. By the 1870s, `Dundee Marmalade` was being bought in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and China - mainly to British expatriate consumers. By the end of last century, its fame was global. Keillers did not invent marmalade. What they did was take one particular version - orange `chip` marmalade, increasingly favored by domestic jam-makers in Scotland - to improve, standardize, and promote marmalade. This is another of the great marketing successes of all time. Taking oranges that were not edible and turning them into a unique product with a worldwide market.

The other two I’ll mention here are Ivory bar soap that’s “So pure it floats.” when in reality it’s so full of air bubbles it’s lighter than water and a lot less soap per bar; and Thomas’ English Muffins which are “Full of nooks and crannies” to improve their taste when in fact what they are is full of large air bubbles once again decreasing the amount of actual muffin in each one. Two cases of turning air into a value-increasing ingredient in a product. Double Yikes!! At least Keiller was selling something other than air, inedible sour oranges.

After leaving the cathedral we boarded the bus and rode out to the Santa Cruz Quarter. In 1929 Spain hosted an international exposition in this area of town and many of the exposition structures remain and are still in use. The Spanish Plaza housed Spain’s exhibition. It is built in a half circle with a 200-meter diameter with towers anchoring each end connected by semi-circular building with portico to the main building in the center. In the middle of the plaza between these towers is a large circular fountain. A picture of Diana in the plaza follows this post. After a short visit there we boarded the bus and returned to Cadiz and the ms Noordam.

This evening we said farewell to our tablemates, Beverly, Ann and Harry as they are disembarking in Lisbon. Beverly is returning home and Ann and Harry are staying in Europe for the wedding of their daughter in France. They live in NoCal and Beverly lives in Massachusetts. It has been a lively table, the youngest we’ve ever had by a big margin. No one was over 65 and they are usually all over 70 if not 80. The entertainment was British comedian Duggie Brown, he was very funny.
(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Alcazar Patio with Roman Excavation

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Rod with Johannes (l) and Dindin (r)

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Diana & Rod at Queluz Palace, Portugal 



April 29 – It’s Diana’s birthday today and we are in Lisbon, Portugal.  We were about an hour and a half late getting into port.  Heavy seas and strong winds forced us to run slowly over the night.  I woke up once about 3AM and the ship was pitching quite a bit but not violently, very smoothly.  It rocked me back to sleep in no time.  About 400 of the 1,000 people on the ship for the last cruise are staying on to go to Rome and since more people boarded than disembarked I’m told the ship is full.  As they are getting people off the ship they are sending those of us ‘in transit’ on tours.



We booked a tour to Estoril, Cascais, Sintra and Queluz.  Estoril and Cascais are cities on the Atlantic coast north of Lisbon.  They are small towns and very picturesque.  We didn’t stop in them, just drove through sightseeing.



Sintra is inland a way and in a hilly area north of Lisbon.  It used to be the place to go in the summer and the King has his summer palace, Palacio da Vila, there.  It is a very old building with an unclear history.  Some people claim Arab chiefs lived there during the Moorish occupation.  The current building (pic attached) has Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic buildings as well as a Gothic chapel.  Those two odd shaped things sticking up at the back are chimneys.  It is still in use by the royal family.  The town itself has very narrow streets and is built on the side of a hill.  There are the ever-present cafés and shops selling lace, textiles and ceramics.  The region has a specialty pastry that is rectangular in shape, about 5” by 2” and 1” thick.  It’s filled with an almond confection that just melts in your mouth.  With a cup of Café Latte it was great!



After Sintra we went to Queluz to visit the royal palace there.  It is much newer, having been completed in 1786 and it is built in the Baroque style with neo-classical influences.  I’ll attach a pic.  The rooms are opulently decorated in very much the same French style that influenced the designers in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Lots of silk wall coverings and gilded wall decorations.  Beautifully inlaid wood furniture and Asian ceramics.  A toned down version of the Hermitage. 



After this it was back to the ship.  This evening we had two new couples at our table.  One is very a very conservative and quiet couple from Iowa and the other is a heavy drinking woman with a Hungarian husband from Florida.  I’m not sure exactly how this mix will develop but it’s going to be interesting.



The evening’s entertainment was the same ‘welcome on board’ show we had in Tampa with the addition of Sam Veale a ‘physical comedian’, read juggler.  He was entertaining but how many ways can you toss balls in the air?  The highlight for me was the repertory cast doing their two welcome numbers.  Go Casey!!



We lose another hour sleep as we move forward to Paris time.  Tomorrow Morocco and we don’t get there until Noon.  Yea!

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger

Palacio da Vila, Sintra, Portugal


To continue the journey, go to the bottom Archives and click on July.

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger