Geeky Yet Waterproof

DISCLAIMER: DUE TO A SUDDEN LACK OF GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS IN ROME, THE CAUSE OF WHICH BEING MY UNWILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR ANOTHER NIGHT OF INTERNET, THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN POSTED ONE (1) DAY LATE. SHOULD YOU SEE ME AT SWIM PRACTICE BEFORE YOU READ THIS, DON’T SUE ME.

Today, which marks three weeks of this trip, was our last day in Rome. We didn’t have time to see the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Forum Romanum like I said we would, but we saw a lot of other things. To be able to see all of Rome, I think the ideal amount of time to spend there would be, maybe… 78 years.

We walked to the Vatican (where the nearest bus stop is) and then rode one of those good ol’ Hop-On buses to the Piazza del Populo. The Piazza del Populo is a big plaza surrounded by buildings (including two churches), with an 80-foot obelisk in the middle.
Here we witnessed a situation that can only be unique to Europe: a man selling roasted chestnuts on the corner, with two people playing an accordion duet on the other side of the street, while a horse and carriage passed through the middle. If you ever catch a scene like this in Oregon, call me and I just might award you a sock monkey.

From the Piazzo, we walked a few blocks to the Spanish Steps, which is, in actuality, just a big set of stairs lined by flowers with a sign that says “Do Not Defecate”. But apparently it’s famous for the fact that it has been featured many times in movies as a meeting place in Rome.

A short walk from this was the Trevi Fountain. The Trevi Fountain is also a famous monument — it’s even been copied by Las Vegas. It is a huge stone fountain adorned by sculptures of deities, and legend has it that if you throw a coin in, you’ll return to Rome someday. (We threw in a coin.)

Our next stop was another well-known ancient landmark: the Pantheon. You probably know what the Pantheon is, but let me refresh your memory just in case:
Pantheon is Greek for “many gods”. As the name suggests, it was a temple for the worship of many gods. It is a large, round, stone building, with well-recognizable stone pillars outside the front supporting the entrance. The ceiling is dome-shaped, but there’s a big round hole right in the middle! When it rains, you don’t want to stand under the hole, but water will drain through smaller holes in the floor.
Although the Pantheon used to be a place to worship many gods, it has now been converted into a church. It’s strange seeing statues of saints and Roman gods in the same room…

After poking around the Pantheon for a while, we headed over to the Vatican to look through the Musei Vaticani — a huge museum containing ancient artifacts spanning thousands of years.
The first few rooms were full of ancient Roman statues. It was fun looking through these, because some of them we had seen before in pictures and textbooks — and these were the originals. There was one sculpture of Laocoon and his sons being dragged down by serpents, which Isa and I recognized immediately because there’s a picture of it in our Latin books!
It was also fun looking at all the busts of Roman noblemen, because you could tell whether or not the sculptor liked his model… Some looked like Greek gods, whereas others resembled primates.
Another cool thing we saw here was a very large, intricately carved sarcophagus, which turned out to be the tomb of St. Helena — Emperor Constantine’s mother.

After looking at these we went through the Etruscan-Italic room, which contained pre-Roman artifacts from the Etruscans — most of which were from around 700 BC. There was a lot of weaponry and armor, and even some ancient action-figures. One thing we noticed was that many of the helmets had some form of gruesome sword-shaped dent or terrible puncture hole on the back!

One of the most amazing things we saw at the Vatican was the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was built in the 15th century, and is famous because the whole ceiling is intricately painted by Michelangelo, and one wall contains his fresco The Last Judgement.
Because flashes of light can eventually destroy frescos, no photography at all is allowed in the Sistine Chapel. But every two minutes or so, some tourist who couldn’t follow rules would take an illegal photo, and all the guards would shout, “NO PHOTO!”. I was one of these tourists. Come on, if something says not to take photos, it must be really good, right? Well it was, and I wasn’t about to sacrifice a photo like this. At least I didn’t use flash, and I didn’t get caught!

We were at the Vatican for hours and hours trying to see everything there was to see, and by the end my legs were cramping up just from walking. When we came out, we trekked through the rain to a gelateria and then a buffet restaurant, to have our last supper in Rome.

Thus concluded our last day of this Mediterranean voyage. Rome was definitely my favorite place in the whole trip, with Casablanca second. I hope to come back here sometime (sooner, rather than later), and see the other 95% of Rome we didn’t even get to yet.
Since we’ve reached the end of this trip, I’m ready to disclose how many photos I took in the last three weeks: 1001. No, wait, that was the last three days!
OK, how many total? 4,230 photos and videos. I’m not kidding — that’s how much we saw in three weeks.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this travelogue series, because I sure had fun writing it. It’s going to be hard to get used to The Real World now… sort of like trying to get used to solid ground after being at sea for five days (I almost fell over several times, thinking the ground was still moving). But I suppose a few 5am swim practices will pound it back into me (should I walk out alive).
So, thank you for putting up with this ridiculously long posting, and I hope you’ll excuse me to go play Caesar III finish my Latin homework…

I can’t believe we’re actually in Rome. The civilization we’ve been studying for the past seven years, and now we’re at the center of it.

We went out to explore Rome early in the morning, and came back at about 8pm. We took the Hop-On busses intermittently with walking, and we saw a lot of amazing things today. We passed by the Castel Sant’Angelo at least three times, at which a battle scene took place in my dad’s book, The Fall of Rome.

The first places where we stopped were two very old churches. What was incredible was that at one of them, we saw the pillar at which Jesus was flogged.

When we were done looking around and being amazed with that, we briefly stopped by the former controlling center of civilization: the Roman Forum. Of course it’s all in ruins now, but there’s still a lot left. This was the first time I’d seen ancient Roman ruins that are actually in Rome, and it was stunning to see them in person. The ruins are not just in Rome — they were the heart of the known world!

But we didn’t stay long, because one of the most famous monuments ever was staring us right in the face: the Colosseum. We’ve all seen it a million times in movies and video games, but there’s nothing like seeing it in person. It feels unreal walking down a cobblestone street and seeing the great ruins right in front of you. There were even Roman soldiers wandering around, although a few of them were smoking cigarettes…
When, for four extra euros, we had instantly conquered the endless line to get in, we decided to take a guided tour of the inside. The wooden floor is no longer there, but what was underneath it remains: a series of stone corridors in which the gladiators and animals would wait their turn to kill or be killed. People now aren’t allowed in these former subterranean corridors, but you can go on any other of the four levels, including the top.
In ancient times, the wealthy citizens would sit near the bottom of the amphitheater, while the poorer ones would sit near the top. We saw the exact spot where the Caesars used to sit and watch — at the very bottom. I can understand why they call the top the “Nosebleed Section”, but I think they should call the very bottom just the “Blood Section”, because it’s so close to the action you could get splattered!

We spent two hours exploring the Colosseum, although it felt like 45 minutes. We could have stayed a lot longer, but when you’re in Rome for three days, you want to be able to see everything. So (after waiting half an hour for a non-existent bus), we walked half a mile to the Circus Maximus — the ancient hippodrome where public games would take place, and most importantly, the chariot races. It’s a massive venue that could accommodate 250,000+ spectators. Behind it you can see the imperial palace, and down inside you can see… joggers. You may remember a few days ago I said that Barcelona is “a mix of the old and the new”, but it’s nothing as extreme as Rome.

After marveling over this, we waited another 45 minutes for the tour bus (it turned out one had broken down, leaving only two operating in all of Rome), which we stayed on for a while until it started to get dark. Some of it was the same route we had taken before, but there’s just so much out there that we saw something new each time we passed by — including the actual place where Julius Caesar was murdered.

When dusk (and hunger) fell upon us, we sat outside a little restaurant and had pizza (I think I ate six pieces) and later gelato. Those dang Romans not only know how to rule the world, but they also know how to eat!
Tomorrow is our last day in Rome before we leave. I’m not sure exactly what we’ll be doing, but we’ll definitely tour the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Forum. Here comes another wave of 400+ photos…

Today our cruise ended in Civitavecchia, Italy, which is the most important seaport in Europe. We got up early thinking we had to leave the ship by 10am, but then it turned out our shuttle van wouldn’t arrive until 3pm. So we hung around for a few hours, saying goodbye to the observation deck, the hot tubs, and (most importantly!) the free food.
It took us about an hour to get to Rome from Civitavecchia. I was sleeping most of the time, and when I woke up, there was Castel Sant’ Angelo — the site of Hadrian’s tomb — right outside the van window!

When we got to the hotel, we spent just few minutes unpacking (and checking out the Roman internet, which is none too high tech), then we excitedly walked to the Vatican, which is only about half a mile away.
It’s hard to describe the Vatican, except by saying that it was even more astounding than the mosque at Casablanca. I’ve never seen stone carving on such a large scale. The statues of saints were more than twice as big as life size. There were huge paintings on the walls, which turned out to be mosaics — made of such fine stones that even from three feet away you almost can’t tell it’s a mosaic. There were tombs so big that they had a door at the base (but don’t ask me why anyone would need to go inside). Even the side chapels were as large as a normal sized church!
And the whole thing is in a gigantic plaza that can hold thousands of people. With all the magnificent stone architecture, it felt just like going back in time — well, except for the giant TV screen right in the middle.

After we got kicked out at 7pm (the closing time), we set out to get lost find a street pizza place to have a light — and Italian — dinner. Of course, in Rome, pizzerias are scattered on every block like coffee shops in Seattle. So we just picked the closest one, and all had delicious pizza from its country of origin.

Tomorrow I think we’ll be going on a tour of archaeological Rome — the Colosseum, the Forum, the Castel Sant’ Angelo, etc. I’m more excited right now than I have been for any other city we’ve seen on this trip! But I guess this means I have to actually start doing my Latin homework…

When we arrived in Livorno, Italy this morning, it was pouring rain. So it was good that today was the day we’d go on a Shore Excursion (an official tour from Holland America), because that would mean we’d have a charter bus!
There were several different shore excursions today, such as one going to Pisa, one going to Florence, etc. Ours was for Cinque Terre, or “Five Lands”.
Cinque Terre is a series of five villages located on the edge of the sea, about an hour and a half bus ride from Livorno. The five villages are, in order, Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterossa.
Thsee towns are surrounded by hills and cliffs, so the bus ride there had some great scenery. The hills are so steep that most of them have been terraced to prevent landslides.

Our tour group first stopped at Manarola. We spent about 15 minutes there wandering around, then we all walked half a mile along the edge of a cliff to Riomaggiore. In this village, all the buildings seemed to be stacked on top of each other, because the cliff on which they were built was so steep!
We took another short break here, just long enough for me to buy a piece of real Italian pizza, which was quite heavenly. Then we all took a 15 minute boat ride to the next town, Vernazza. The boat was rather small, and the ocean rather angry; I was surprised nobody fell and broke a rib!
When we got to Vernazza, our tour guides left us on our own for two hours to find lunch at our leisure. Grandma Nini, my mom, Isa, and I had calamari, spaghetti, and stuffed mussels for lunch. And everything was so good! The waiter was a big boisterous Italian who spoke no English, but we were able to communicate with him well enough to order our food (and a second serving of calamari).
After lunch we had some time left over, so (for €1,50) we climbed a watch tower on one of the hills overlooking the village (where we shouted “Bongiorno!” to all of Italy). From the top, you could see all of Vernazza way down below, and in a different direction all the cliffs overlooking the ocean. No wonder it’s called a watch tower…

When we were done exploring, our group took an underground train back to La Spezia, a town near Cinque Terre. From there we rode our charter bus back to Livorno where the ship was docked.
During the bus ride, we happened to pass by the Leaning Tower of Pisa! Unfortunately, it was too distant to get a good picture, but it was really cool to see the famous tower in person.

Tomorrow in Rome, we’ll be disembarking the Noordam for the last time. Since tonight was our final night of the cruise, the whole crew put on a little show in the ship amphitheater. Of course all of them sang, since they’re all Filipino and Indonesian, and the ones who aren’t are members of the Noordam Singers and Dancers!
It’s sad to be leaving the ship, but I’m looking forward to seeing Rome more than any other city we’ve visited so far. I’ll definitely be adding a lot more to my collection of 3000 photos of this trip!

This morning we arrived Monaco. Monaco is a country located (embedded?) in France and near Italy, and takes up less than one square mile! It is also the only full monarchy left in the world, ruled by a king named Prince Albert.
Monaco is famous for being a very rich country, partly due to all the casinos. A complete contrast to Casablanca, which is poor, and very dirty. Monaco also the home of the Grand Prix, so all the gift shops are filled with race car models and shirts. In fact, everyone there seems to own a fast car!

The only dock in Monaco was occupied by another cruise ship when we arrived, so we had to anchor offshore, and then the lifeboat (called a “tender” when ferrying people) took us to land.

As soon as we were ashore, we started walking to find the king’s palace. We passed through some medieval walls and towers along the way, which were right on the edge of cliff overlooking the ocean. It was cool to see our ship in the distance, with the lifeboats taking people to land.
When we got to the palace, there were crowds of hundreds of people waiting outside! We asked what was going on, and were told that the changing of the guards was to take place in 15 minutes. So we waited around to watch.
It wasn’t that exciting since I could hardly see anything through the hordes of people (my camera got a better view than I did), but there were trumpet blasts and drummers followed by a procession of guards. It was just like a parade, only this time, it was real.

After this, we walked around some more, stopping at a cathedral and Jacques Cousteau’s Oceanography Museum gift shop, and eventually ended up at — what else could it be? — a restaurant. We had divine French pizza, French fries, and pasta. All the food reminded me of France… in fact, the whole country reminded me of France! Even the hairy cook downstairs running with a knife, shouting angrily in French, and banging things around.

By this time it was only 2:30, but we decided to go back to the ship since we were all tired and didn’t feel like spending the day in the Casinos (like the rest of our shipmates…).
So, we passed the rest of the day relaxing, eating, playing guitar, and eating, and eating dessert. Now we’re getting ready for tomorrow, our second-to-last stop: Livorno, Italy!

Today we arrived in Barcelona, Spain. I can now tell people I went to Spain twice in three days…

The first thing we did was, of course, hop on a Hop-On, Hop-Off tour bus. The bus made its first stop at a very old gothic cathedral. The cool thing about this cathedral was that there was an elevator which takes you up to the very top. This we did, and it was an amazing view: you could see everything for miles around, including at least two cruise ships.

Our second stop was at another huge church called Sagrada Familia. But this one is unique, in that it’s covered with 18 steeples. Another interesting fact is that there’s not a single straight line in the whole structure.
It was designed by Gaudi in the beginning of the 1900’s, and is still under construction — they say it will be finished in 2020! You can tell which parts of it were built before Gaudi died and which parts were built after he died, because the stone is a different color.

The only problem is that there’s giant fruit on the top of each steeple.

After this last bus stop, we went to a little restaurant and had (you guessed it) anchovies and Spanish adobo kebab for lunch. We had read there was a flamenco show at 2:30, so after we had eaten we began our quest to find the Something de Flamenco place. We took a bus into the general area, then attempted to walk the rest of the way. But we weren’t finding it, and time was running out. We asked some Filipinos cleaning a window where it was, but they didn’t know. Eventually we found it, with less than 10 minutes until the show started.
But woe were we! It turned out the Official Tour had reserved all the seats, and the next available showing was after the ship would have left.

So, we decided to hop back on a bus and and tour some more of Barcelona.
While on the bus we passed by the Olympic stadium of 1992. It’s gigantic! We only saw the inside of the stadium through an open door, and only for a split second as our bus drove by, but it was enough to amaze.

Eventually we Hopped-Off the bus and started heading back to the ship. But we got distracted and took an “unintentional” detour which so happened to end in a cafe where we had some kind of deep fried desert to be dipped in a chocolate drink. I forgot what it was called, but it was a thing to warm the taste buds.

After this minor deviation, we finally returned to the ship. Although we had already been to Spain just a few days before, it was fun to go back. Barcelona feels like a mix of the ancient and the modern (with a little bit of futuristic thrown in).
Tomorrow we’ll be in Monte Carlo, Monaco. Monaco: the country with an area of 3/4 square mile, and the only full monarchy left in the world. This should be an adventure.

PB (POSTBLOG): Tonight the Noordam Singers and Dancers performed their last show of this cruise, which had a Las Vegas theme. I took some cool photos of the performance; look for them below.

Yesterday, we landed in Casablanca, Morocco. And almost as soon as we stepped off the ship, we were ambushed by a horde of omni-lingual taxi drivers! So after some haggling, a driver was touring us around Casablanca in a taxi. Some of the things we saw were the US Embassy, and the house where Bush stays when he’s in Casablanca.
Then we made our first stop, at the Mosque. I had never seen a stone building this big before. But that wasn’t all… The Mosque was in an enormous plaza. I mean the kind of enormous where you’re walking and nothing around you seems to move any closer or farther. It has to be big, in order to support three million people worshiping Allah.

We made a few more stops, including a “beach” and carpet/souvenir shop.

After our taxi tour, we went to the huge bazaar to experience the real Morocco. And wow, did we ever. It was just like you see in the movies… people selling everything from fish, to camel-leather poofs, to $1 pirated movies. You don’t make eye contact with any of the sellers unless you plan to buy something from them, or they’ll be following you around until you flee the country.
One such seller was a boy of maybe 17 or 18 (who later turned out to be 24), who confronted us with, “You must come to the shop of my father! We have everything Americans will like.” We brushed him off, saying we’d come later, then escaped down a side-alley. But before three minutes had gone by, there he was again, right in front of us! “Why you no come to the shop of my daddy?? You follow me! I take you there!”
So we had no choice but to follow him to “the shop of his father”. And sure enough, it did have everything… slippers, spices, camels, and everything in between.
As soon as we stepped in the shop, they were all — the boy (whose name was Yessin), his father, and his uncle — fitting us with Moroccan slippers and shirts. And before we had time to consent to anything, they had put it all in a bag and were going to the checkout! We took out some of the things we didn’t need, but I ended up buying a pair Moroccan slippers made of camel-leather (which seem like they’ll last for about ever), and Isa and my mom bought some other things of the sort.

After all this, we were hungry so we set out to find lunch. As we were looking for a place to eat, we stopped to look at an interesting (raw) meat display outside a restaurant. There was a suspicious platter of pink slimy objects. These elicited the quote of the day: “Are those brains, or just intestines?”

They were brains.

When we had all stuffed ourselves with delicious fish, sausage, fish, french fries, and fish, we went back to the bazaar to look around some more. And almost as soon as we had stepped through the stone archway, there was Yessin again! He quickly learned that we were there to see more of the bazaar, so he joyfully asked us if we wanted a tour. We agreed, and he called over his friend, Hamid. It turned out that Hamid (whom we guessed was about 21, but later revealed that he was in fact 28), specializes in touring foreigners around Old Medina, which is the old part of the Casablanca.
I don’t know what exactly our shipmates did on the official tour, but I’m pretty sure our tour was better. Hamid and Yessin showed us around the bazaar and Old Medina for about an hour, and during that hour we saw many things worthy of National Geographic. We went into a bakery and saw people making bread — in a real fire oven in the wall. We saw people selling camel meat still on the bone. Live chickens in a cage. Crates of fish sitting out in the open. Old women on the side of the street making embroidery with their old fashioned sewing machines. Piles of garbage on every corner… it seemed there were no garbage cans, so people just put all their garbage in a pile.
While we were walking, we started talking with the two Arabs about languages. Hamid was telling us about how he learns new languages from tourists, and I asked if he speaks Portuguese. He responded, “Eh, just a little bit…”, and then started talking in Portuguese as fast as, well, a Portuguese. I only understood the first half, which was “I can’t speak Portuguese very well”, and the rest was too fast for me to catch. When they say Moroccans speak every language, it’s true.

After we had pretty much seen everything of Old Medina, the tour came to an end and it was time to head back to the ship. Our guides asked for a tip of 20 euros each, which was kind of expensive, but it was worth it for what we got. If we had tried to find our way around alone… well, let me just say that the streets were purposely made to be confusing, to help protect against enemies!

Tomorrow we arrive in Barcelona for another day in Spain. I don’t know what I’m doing still writing at 1:30am, since we have to get up at 7 tomorrow! But if I’m still alive, expect to hear from me again soon.

Yesterday we arrived in Cadiz, Spain. Cadiz is the oldest city in all of Europe, dating from way back in the 1100’s… BC!

We were pleasantly surprised when we stepped off the ship into Cadiz to see the same Hop-On, Hop-Off busses that were in Portugal. So to initiate our 8-hour stay in southern Spain, we took an hour-long bus ride around the edge of the city.

Since Cadiz is so old, I think it was probably the coolest place we had been so far. During the first hour alone we saw the ancient walls surrounding the city, the ruins of a Roman amphitheater, and two castles.
After the bus tour, we (purposely) found our way to a guitar shop. Nobody in the shop could speak English, and none of us could speak Spanish, but we somehow got the point across that I’d like try try out a few guitars, and they understood.
And guess what happened: I ended up buying one! It has a really nice sound, and they said it was made in the north of Spain by a very old maker (but don’t ask me how we understood that).

After that, we went and sat by the beach for a few minutes so I could play it a little, then we went to go find lunch. We ended up eating outside a little restaurant (the owner/waiter/employee of which didn’t speak any English) in a plaza right under a HUGE cathedral. Again, we all had fish, and again, it was all delicious.
While we were eating, some utility guys dressed head to toe in neon green started taping down the sidewalk. Pretty soon, as we were having our dessert, they started up a dismayingly loud machine. They were laughing and smiling at us, because they knew how annoying it was! Then it was apparent that the machine was a power-sprayer, and they proceeded to paint a green line onto the sidewalk. We didn’t realize until after our lunch when we began our walking tour guided by our little map from the tourist office, that we were supposed to follow the green line! How could this be? They had just painted it!

So after our lunch, we followed the green line around Cadiz, and eventually ended up at a cool 15th-century castle. We explored a lot inside, and patrolled the walls a little bit.
The castle was located right on the edge of the water, and by this time it was getting really hot; the Spanish sun beats down on you with a force probably equivalent to that of a place like Arizona! The water looked really tempting, but we had to start heading back to the ship lest we be left in Spain.

So after calling home from a pay-phone in a Spanish bar (which, believe me, was an adventure), we boarded the ship to sail to Casablanca, Morocco.
We had a lot of fun in Spain, and somehow communicated with people even though the majority didn’t speak English. I guess that’s the good thing about knowing Latin: you can understand anything!

This report may have been rather short, but we have now, at the time of this writing, arrived in Casablanca and are getting ready to leave the ship. Expect to hear from me on the African continent soon!

This morning at 9am, we stepped foot in Lisbon, Portugal.

This was the first time we’ve been in (the mainland of) Europe for almost three years, and it was good to go back. Lisbon reminded me a lot of France… not like Paris, but probably some city like Angouleme.

When we first got off the ship, we walked around for a little while, and ended up in the Praça do Commercio square. There, we bought tickets to get on any of the many city tour buses, which cruise around Lisbon all day making stops for people to hop on at will.

A monument at Praça do Commercio

Praça do Commercio

One of the places we stopped at was the Tower of Belém, a Disneyland-esque castle on the edge of the water which was built between 1515 and 1521 to welcome foreign dignitaries. It looks like a giant chess piece, and it’s apparently the 2nd most recognizable landmark in Lisbon.

The Tower of Belém

Later we stopped at a huge church, 90 meters long and covered in Gothic-style stonework. Like most of the other things we saw, it was something only to be found in Europe.

After a while we got off the bus for a lunch break (the beauty of “hop-on, hop-off”), at a tiny restaurant called Pão Pão Queijo Queijo, which means “Bread Bread Cheese Cheese”. We all had swordfish and sardines, which again broke the Best Fish I’ve Ever Tasted record — even better than in Funchal! I love seaports.

A Toast! Dessert!

When we had all eaten (more than) our fill, we set out to find the Castelo de São Jorge: a 5th-century Visigoth castle overlooking the city. However, finding it was no trivial task — nobody seemed to be able to give us directions in English! But the help finally came from a lady who gave us the precious words, “Next right.”
Eventually we found it, along with about 20 seemingly Italian tourists. It was all in ruins, but that is to be expected of a 1500 year-old Visigoth castle standing in formerly Roman territory…

At the Castelo

When the “All Aboard” deadline of 4:30 was approaching, we Hopped-On the tour bus and headed back in the direction of the ship. It would have been nice to spend some more time in Portugal, but (with Grandma Nini’s help) we’re so efficient that we saw pretty much all of Lisbon in six hours!

A Roman Aquaduct

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to practice speaking Portuguese today, even though we had no shortage of contact with the natives (asking for directions…), because Grandma Nini, who has the power to make others speak the language of her choice, got to them all first. However, with all the signs and advertisements, I learned some new words even miles away from The Portuguese Book.

As the British-accented TV lecturer is announcing to us while I write, we’ll be in Cadiz, Spain tomorrow morning. (Which is why this entry might seem a little rough… I have to finish it before we get to Spain!) We’re passing through the Strait of Gibraltar at 4am — too bad it will be too dark to see the Pillars of Hercules! But I’m sure we’ll see things in Spain that will by far make up for that.

Yesterday we arrived at the destination it took us five days at sea to reach: Funchal. Funchal is on the island of Madeira, which is owned by Portugal and is located about 300 miles off the coast of Africa.

Now, there’s something exciting about being in a new country where they speak a language that you don’t. I’ve been studying Portuguese for the last few weeks, so I know a smattering — just enough to say some basic phrases and read signs, like “Insert card”, and “Card rejected” (more on that later).

One of the first things we did when we got on the island was to buy a phone card so we could call my dad back home. It was a struggle to communicate with the man running the stand, since the only English he seemed to know was “card”, but in the end we had the card and he had the euros.

It was then that we realized the current time in Oregon was 3am. OK, time to explore Madeira and come back in six hours.

The island is basically a steep mountain coming out of the sea. There’s a funicular that takes you up to the top, and the view is amazing — and terrifying. The highest the cable car goes from the ground is several hundred feet, but the view alone isn’t all that makes it scary — it’s the wobbling.
When you get near the top, you can see the whole side of the island, including the two cruise ships that were docked at the port.

We spent about an hour at the top of the island, looking at the sights, walking through the Jardim Imperador (”Emperor Garden”?), poking through souvenir shops, and wondering at strange hats which had what looked like a knit antenna on top. And of course, asking for directions in English (as all good tourists ought to do).

But the back way down the mountain was a little more unique than the way up: the most popular mode of transportation is to slide all the way down (2km) in a big wicker basket with two guys on the back supposedly steering.
This concept was just too good to miss. But by the time we got there, all the steersmen(?) were walking back down the road and, worst of all, had removed their signature hats. I asked one of them, “Voce fala ingles?”, to which the answer was “nao”. But they explained in Portuguese that it was finished for the day, and would start up again tomorrow. And surprisingly, I understood it!
We ended up taking a taxi back down the mountain, which was probably as close to a Disneyland ride as the wicker baskets would have been; if you’ve ever been to Europe, you’ll know how narrow the alleys are. Now imagine slanting the ground down at 30°. OK, now drive a car through it at 40mph — with no seat belts!

But of course, any good foreign travel story has to contain some mention of food. And this one is no exception.
During the ride down, our taxi driver advised us to try the Madeira “espada” (swordfish) while we were there. We ended up going to a mall and eating in a food court. But it was some of the best fish, potatoes, and fried banana I’d ever tasted.

After we had eaten, it was time to start heading back to the ship. But first we decided to give the phone booth another try; the time was now 9am in Oregon.
We took a look at our phone card, which said to “insert into slot with chip facing up”. We took a look at the phone. No slot. We dialed some 20 digit numbers that were on the back of the card, and managed to deactivate the card completely. It was then that we noticed the phone on the other side of the booth, which appeared to be about 10 years newer — and it had a slot. A friendly message saying “Introduza um cartao” prompted us to insert the card, which was immediately rebuked with “Cartao recusado!”.
Several 1-euro coins later, we had made a successful call to the States. And the moral: “the phone is always newer on the other side.”

We boarded the ship again at about 5pm, after spending eight hours in Europe. Tomorrow, we’ll be in Lisbon, Portugal, where I’ll have another chance to try out my Portuguese. Until then, I’ll be studying*!

*Except when I’m watching Nacho Libre, floating in the hot tub, pigging out on Filipino food, playing Guitar Hero, or laying out in the sun. Don’t sue me.