Woke up this morning and couldn’t believe we were now half-way through our cruise. Time surely flies when you’re having fun, as they say. 🙂
Going out onto our balcony, we could see that we were docked in Arrecife, Lanzarote. We had only been here once before, in April 2008 on the Black Prince, so it was good to be back to refresh our memories of this rugged and picturesque island in the Canaries.
The word ‘Arrecife’ derives from the Spanish word for ‘reef’ and refers to the volcanic rock formations that lie out to sea and protect this pretty little harbour. Arrecife started off as a small fishing village way back in the fifteenth century. Over the centuries it grew, until it became Lanzarote’s capital in 1852.
We let the crowds go down before we disembarked around 9.30am, and walked through the harbour, with its many small boats, until we crossed a small bridge that took us to the main street along the front. In front of us was an interesting sculpture in the shape of a fisherman in a boat; a quick look at Google told us it was called Pescador con Marlin (Fisherman with Marlin) and was by the sculptor Jorge Isaac Medina. It was inspired by a scene from Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel The Old Man and the Sea, the story of a duel between a fisherman and a huge marlin.
There is a very interesting article about Hemingway’s connection with Lanzarote, which you can read here.
We didn’t have anything planned today, just deciding to go wherever our feet took us. In any case it was pleasant walking along, getting some exercise and enjoying the pleasantly-warm temperature. Once again, it was not as warm as we had expected it to be in the Canary Islands at this time of year.
After wandering along the harbour and looking at the little souvenir shops, pavement cafés, restaurants and bars, we decided to have an ice cream. I chose pistachio flavour while Trevor selected Snickers. We looked like typical British tourists as we strolled along, licking our ice cream cones and stopping to buy some postcards and stamps at a nearby shop.
Next, we needed somewhere to go to write out the cards. Agreeing that a freezing cold beer would be in order, we stopped at an attractive looking bar with lots of character and tables and chairs outside. A cheerful barman approached us immediately and we ordered dos cervezas, por favor as I sat and wrote out the five cards, and we did a spot of people-watching. We enjoyed our drinks so much we had another; this time I opted for a refreshing mojito. 🙂
After our drinks we went off to find a postbox, before looking at the Geocache app on my phone to see if there were any caches nearby; indeed there were, one of them was situated near an interesting-looking fort along the rugged harbour; entrance to the fort was over a drawbridge flanked by a couple of large stone pillars. Once again, Google came in very handy to tell us what we were looking at. 🙂
The Puente de las Bolas is a stone bridge that serves as access to the Castillo de San Gabriel. Built in the 16th century, its 175 metres connect the castle to dry land. Today the fortress is home to the Museum of the History of Arrecife. As we followed the route outined on the Geocache app, and the numbe of metres to go came down, it was appararent that the cache was hidden in or near the Castillo.
The Puente de las Bolas stone bridge with drawbridge, and the Castillo de San Gabriel fort, which is used today as a museum
You had to be careful walking along the bridge from the drawbridge, as the ground was made of large setts, some of which had become wet (and therefore slippery) from the sea-spray. As we got nearer to the castle/fort, some attempt had been made to renew the path, and this time the blocks used were far less slippy and were easier underfoot.
Arriving at the fort, we walked around to the front which was immediately on the sea front. A steep slipway showed where small boats could be launched. The fort was surrounded with a very stony small beach and larger rocks further out, and was not a very suitable place for sunbathing. It therefore amused us to see several swimsuit-clad people, armed with large beach towels, inflatable pillows, paperback books and large plastic bottles of sunscreen settling themselves down on the concrete ground, which would have been a lot more comfortable than the rocky beach. 🙂
After a few false leads, Trevor eventually found the cache hidden in amongst some rocks, and we duly signed the log and updated our ‘find’ in the Geocache app. Mission accomplished, and we had learned some history on the way. 🙂
Afterwards, we decided to take a slow stroll back to the Queen Anne. Once again, my Samsung watch showed we were well on the way to getting at least 10,000 steps, which was no bad thing.
Back on board, we enjoyed an afternoon power nap before I got showered and shampooed and we sat out on the balcony for a while, making the most of the late afternoon sunshine. We had thoroughly enjoyed the first week of our cruise and, despite Queen Anne being a much larger ship than those we prefer, we would certainly cruise on her again, if the itinerary was to our liking. We looked forward to spending another week on this newest Cunarder. 🙂
Soon it was time to start getting ready for dinner once again. I really do think that 5.30pm is far too early for dinner (I don’t get in from work much before that time!), however, we find 8.30pm to be too late. We could, of course, opt for the so-called ‘freedom dining’, but from what we had seen, that usually meant long queues to procure a table in the restaurant at your preferred time. Again, this was one of the disadvantages of cruising on larger ships.
Around six o’clock, as we were sitting at table #349 regaling each other with what we had been up to today, we noticed people at adjacent tables looking out of the window. As we turned around to see what everyone was looking at, we were rewarded with the sight of whale spouts and the tantalising glimpse of a black fin, before the whale disappeared between the surface of the ocean again. We waited to see if he would re-appear, but there was nothing further to see.
The entertainment in the Royal Court Theatre tonight was a double bill, featuring Paul Zerdin, the hilarious ventriloquist we had seen earlier on, as well as the wonderful musical talents of pianist Chris Hamilton. An excellent show – in fact, all of the entertainment we have seen so far has been superb, including the amazing ship’s orchestra.
Then we headed for the Golden Lion pub as usual for the quiz. This time, the topic was “Around the World” so we were pretty hopeful of a high score, having been to 93 countries so far on all seven continents. We scored 17/20, which was pretty good considering there was only the two of us in the team; the winning team (with six members) scored 19, so no prize for us once again.
We then contemplated going back to our cabin, but another team of four, who were doing the Wipeout Quiz, invited us to join them. This is a quiz consisting of 12 questions; you are awarded 100 points for each correct answer, but then you have to wager all or some of your points towards one more question. If you get the question correct, you double the points you have wagered (in addition to your remaining points, if any), but if you get the question wrong, you lose the lot – hence Wipeout. 🙂
Our team scored 9/12, so 900 points. We decided to blow the lot on the next question, which was “Which is the largest land predator?” Of course, we knew this answer – the polar bear. Our total score then doubled to 1800 points – the winners scored 2000. Yet again a win eluded us!
Afterwards we returned to 11046 and settled down after propping open our balcony door. We had Gran Canaria to look forward to tomorrow, and once again we slept very well.