Well, timing is certainly everything! Since our gas stop in the mouth of the Mediterranean took over 4 hours, we were definitely behind schedule. Then, we hit very rough seas that we fought for over 24 hours. To say the least, many on the ship we sick! We are all well now, as a matter of fact, only 50% of our family was sick...take a guess as to who those two were??? You'll have to ask us. Anyway, we arrived in Funchal right before sunset. Luckily the days are long an daylight lasted until after 9:00p.m. As always, we hit the ground running to see what we could find here. We found some flags, pins, rosary beads, magnets etc...right off the bat. This is the first place we have stopped that accepted dollars! The Euro has certainly taken over!!! The pictures of the sail in o not do this island justice. It looks remarkably like the mountains of Rio with all the homes built into the valleys way up high to the tops of the mountains. We did not have time to visit any neighborhoods like we did in Rio an Cape Town last year, but I have a feeling the poverty level is very minimal. It seems like a very prosperous island. Houses whitewashed all with red rooftops. Lovely. All views looked like postcards. Some history for you: Maderia is the largest island in the Maderia archipelago, also the most beautiful. SOME suggest that Maderia is all that is left of the lost continent of Atlantis! There are a group of islands between Maderia and the Canary Islands where we visited last year called the Selvagems. Most people will never get to these islans. It is said however, that Captain Kidd stole many valuable goods from a Peruvian cathedral. His ship carrying all these treasures sank near these islands. There was one survivor. This survivor made it to the Canary Islands and told this story to some British sailors. Since then, there have been many a treasure hunter out looking for this sunken ship but nothing has been recovered so far!!
Funchal, is a territory of Portugal. The people speak Portuguese and very good English. They have many items for sale there from Fatima, Portugal. This is where 3 children saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin in 1917. There was a beautiful shrine built in 1953 in Fatima to preserve the area and make it easy for people on pilgrimage to visit there.
Jay and Mary Pat found us at our Portuguese restaurant and sat with us.
A Scot on holiday, from Aberdeen, Scotland, ws overhearing our conversation at dinner about money and Nicky'
s money collection. He apologized for interrupting us, but handed Nicky a Scottish Pound that is no longer used for his collection! People are really nice all over the world! Thank you Kevin, you can see him here with Nicky for his kindness and a really nice addition to Nicky's money collection!
Dinner on the streets in Funchal and Kathleen with our server, Victor, he told us his named means "victory", I guess he thought we did not know that!
What makes Nicky smile...PIZZA!! One day, he will be able to write a coffee table book on tasting pizza around the world!
Dolce and Gabanna in Funchal will probably make it's way to Birmingham, Alabama sometime in the next 2 years. We saw a store that sold plumbing fixtures and they use orange and black toilet paper!!!! That was different.
These flowers would have been prettier in the daylight!
We made some new friends in Dr.Cindy and Dr. Larry Lerner. She is a doctor of Chemistry and he is a doctor of Physics. They are wonderfully intelligent and fun to be around. They are on our trivia team!! They know all the answers about rocks, math, history and I know all about People magazine and TV Land! Works out well!! Larry and Cindy have planned some more trips that we hope to travel with them again one day. They would be perfect for home schooling math and chemistry!!! They are both retired and love to teach. They are very nice people and wonderful influences for Kathleen and Nicky.
Here is a nice shot of Maderia. What do you think? Is it what is left of Atlantis? Well, have you ever imagined what Atlantis would look like? The 
roads are not paved with gold, but they are paved with coblestone and mosaics. Actualy, the mosaics are so beautiful on the siewalks, I had a hard time putting one foot in front of the other to walk on them. They were intrically designed. The gardens in the city centre were breath taking. I wish we had been there longer with more daylight. I am positive there was foliage there I had never seen before, and I have seen a lot, so maybe these plants only grow in Atlantis?? The trees were towering, warfing us in our footsteps below them. The flowers were purple, yellow, pink, hot pink, orange, white...trees with orange blossoms, purple blossoms so brilliant it looked like someone had taken a Crayola to them! Of course what would be missing? The fragrance? No indeed. The fragrance while we walked through the gardens was like having 20 fragrance gals from Saks spraying you while you walked! VERY fragrant. The mountain peeks an sheer rock face like the Cliffs of Moher could lea you to believe that this coul be what is left of Atlantis. I hope it is. One interesting fact is that Christopher Columbus lived there for 5 years while he was sailing with the Portuguese and consiered a fine mapmaker while they were discovering the west coast of Africa. Maybe Christopher Columbus knew the answer...
Leaving a beautifully clean island is never easy. The vistas were wonderful. WAY better than I remembered them from trips here before. The best way to see Bermuda is to take a back waters trip like we did and see how the locals live and to see how the millionaires and billionaires live!
The sail away was picturesque. The sun glistening on the water and what seemed like miles and miles of small islands we passed that I never knew were there.
The sister ship to our Voyare ship is called the Mariner. We had the opportunity to go onto this ship and tour it. It was beautiful. This ship spends the summer doing Alaska cruises. Some friends of ours that we have met on the ship from last year will be getting married on this ship next month!!
