We were up at eight o’clock once again, after an excellent night’s sleep. Going out onto the balcony to see what the weather was like, we saw that Queen Anne had company today – P&O’s Ventura was docked next to her.
Getting washed and dressed, we made our way to the Artisans’ Foodhall for breakfast, where I enjoyed a hot bowl of porridge washed down with orange juice and coffee. Then we had a wander around on deck, heading towards the stern, where we had a good look at Ventura. We had cruised on this ship in the Caribbean for New Year 2012 and, although it was an excellent itinerary, we were not too keen on the Ventura herself. She was just too big, too loud and too brash; most of her passengers were the same. 🙂
Back in 11046 we gathered together our cash, credit cards, shipboard passes and other essential items. It took a while for one of the lifts to arrive; they usually stop at every deck on their way up or down. We also found the recorded voice used to announce each deck a little irritating. The female voice would chirpily announce “The lift is going up!” before giving the deck number, but when the lift was descending the voice would say “The lift is going down” in a sad little voice that went down at the end. Quite peculiar really. 🙂
Eventually we reached deck 1 and headed to the gangway, to disembark. We decided to go first of all to the Cristiano Ronaldo Museum “CR7”, looking for a geocache on the way. There was one fairly nearby, and we followed the route using the Geocache app on my phone. When it said the cache was only two metres away, we searched all over, mainly at a large stone wall. We didn’t find the cache as we decided it was on the other side of the wall and it was out of our way to go right round. We’d look for another one later on.
On the way, we came across another one of those wonderful sculptures made from discarded plastic and other items found on the beach. This time, it was a large, colourful fish.
When we arrived at the CR7 museum, it was not yet open. A small crowd of people had gathered waiting for opening time at 10 o’clock (only 5 minutes’ time), some of them posing for photos next to the statue of Ronaldo.
Once the doors opened, we all filed in; it cost five euros each. Large red arrows were marked on the floor, telling you which direction to go in around the displays. The exhibits mainly consisted of shirts and boots Ronaldo had worn, as well as various matchplay balls he had used. There were also lots of display cabinets containing replicas of all the trophies he had won – wow! There certainly were many.
There were also many photographs and a glass-topped cabinets containing many letters which fans, mainly children, from all over the world had sent to Ronaldo. The fact that several of the letters were accompanied by unused stamped addressed envelopes showed that Ronaldo had not replied to the letters, which I thought was quite sad. I can remember as child and teenager myself, writing to the celebrities of the time and being delighted if I received a signed photo or a handwritten reply from them. Maybe the celebs of today are too full of their own importance.
We spent about 45 minutes in the museum before heading to our next stop, the famous Blandy Madeira Lodge. We had been here once before, in 2010 on the maiden voyage of the Queen Elizabeth; I can remember there being an absolute deluge of rain – I got soaked to the skin on the way back to the coach. We had no fear of that happening today, however. 🙂
As we walked along, we saw lots of signs saying that today they were having the Funchal Flower Festival, or Festa da Flor. There were several flower arches and flower carpets as well as a large exhibition hall. We decided we’d pop in there after visiting the Madeira lodge.
When we entered the lodge, we asked the lady in the ticket office if there were any guided tours. The next one was not until 12.30pm, which was an hour and a half away. She said we could, of course, have a look around ourselves, and visit the tasting room. This is what we did. 🙂
We didn’t have access to the cellars or the place where the fortified wine is actually made, but we were still able to have an interesting visit anyway. We saw several barrels of madeira as well as a vintage stone grape press. There was also a shop on site, as well as a dimly lit tasting room which had floor to ceiling shelves containing rows of dusty bottles of different vintages of madeira.
We went up to the bar and each ordered a glass of madeira; I chose a fine, smooth dry one while Trevor went for the sweet, or “rich” as they call it. They were certainly better quality than the ones we’d had yesterday. We decided to buy some miniature bottles from the shop to take home as little gifts; in fact, we were able to get the little bottles accompanied by individual madeira cake. 🙂
Back outside in the sunshine, we went into the large exhibition hall to look at the flowers. The selection of blooms and colours was amazing; some of the flowers were so delicately coloured and so perfect that they almost looked artificial. There were peonies and roses and orchids and other flowers, as well as plants with large variegated leaves. There was even a cactus selection, with a fascinating monkey-tail cactus, its long furry “tails” cascading down the side of the table on which it rested.
I took loads and loads of photos, the flowers were just so beautiful I couldn’t resist.
By now, we decided a cold beer was in order before we visited the Museum of Electricity. We knew that the Old City Pub, which we’d visited last night, was just over the road from the museum so it made sense to go there, and in any case the caipirinha was good. 🙂
The pub was doing a roaring trade, so we selected a table for two outside and Trevor went in to order a couple of beers. When he spotted some pastel de nata for sale, he bought one each of those as well. Who can come to Portugal without having pastel de nata?
The beer and the custard tarts went down very well indeed. I then ordered a caipirinha while Trevor had another beer. It was great sitting out in the sunshine, enjoying our freezing cold drinks while we did a spot of people-watching. Several pigeons strutted about on the pavement, hoping for a morsel of food from the seated diners.
After our beers, we went over to the Museu de Electricidade, but it was closed, and didn’t open again until 2.00pm. As we had 45 minutes to wait, there was only one thing for it – another drink. 🙂
We walked up the road to a restaurant/cocktail bar which had seats outside, and we ordered another drink each; this time I had an Aperol Spritz. It had to be one of the most disappointing aperol spritzes I have ever consumed. There was hardly any aperol in it (evidenced by its pale orange colour) and there didn’t seem to be any fizz in the prosecco, if indeed there was any prosecco in it. What a let down. 🙁
By the time we’d finished our drinks and walked back down to the Electricity Museum, it was open. We went inside and purchased our tickets, which were a bargain at 2,70 Euros each.
It was the first time we had ever been in a “Museum of Electricity”, and we hadn’t really known what to expect. However, it was fascinating and interesting. It detailed the history of the use of electricity throughout the island of Madeira, and a series of vintage street lamps showed how the island had been lit up, starting with lamps powered by olive oil or petroleum to the modern LED lights. There was also a large room containing several old engines and electricity generators. Large boards with diagrams and photographs offered explanations in both Portuguese and English.
We also entered a room with lots of old electricity meters, from the large old analogue Bakelite meters to the modern digital ones. Nearby was a large board to which was mounted different types of switches, from the big old ones that almost took two hands to move the lever to the current ‘rocker’ switches. There was also a display of different types of bulbs, including the popular incandescent ones invented by Thomas Edison. The entre of the room contained a large diorama showing a power station.
At one point on the ground floor we noticed a fully equipped office, people sitting at desks behind computer monitors. It transpired that the museum building used to be an old power station, and evidence of this was plain in the circuit boxes and dials we could still see on the walls in the office. The doors to the office were roped off, preventing visitors from entering what was someone’s workspace. 🙂
At the end of the ground floor was a café and some restrooms; I took the opportunity to use the latter while I could.
The museum covered two levels, and we walked up a long ramp to reach the upper tier. Here, it explained how electricity was generated in the past and in the future; from fossil fuels such as coal to hydro-power, wind power, solar power and nuclear power.
It was around 3.15pm when we came out of the museum after a very interesting tour. We decided to take a slow stroll back to the Queen Anne as the “all aboard” time was 4.30pm. We didn’t want to take a chance on the queues being colossal when we arrived back, like they were yesterday.
As it happened, it was about 3.35pm when we arrived back at the dock, and thankfully there were no signs of any huge queues. We did, however, have to go inside the cruise terminal, where there was one area for Queen Anne passengers and one area for Ventura passengers, and we had to go through security and have our bags scanned as well as walking through the metal detector, the same as you have to do at airports.
As we exited the building ready to go up the gangplank once more, we were able to get a good photo of the stern of Queen Anne.
We were back in cabin 11046 just before four o’clock, giving me an hour and a half to be showered and shampooed and to blow dry and straighten my hair. A short time later, we heard the loud blast of a foghorn and we didn’t know whether it was ours or that of the Ventura. However, our view from the balcony allowed us to see the Ventura slowly moving out of her berth and setting off for her next destination. We would probably see her again soon, in another port. 🙂
It was about quarter past five the Queen Anne gave three long, loud blasts of her horn and began to move away from the dockside. Bye bye Madeira. We had had a great visit to this picturesque and rugged island.
Down in the Britannia Restaurant we enjoyed a scrumptious meal once again, and everyone on table #349 regaled each other with what we had been up to and what we had done today. There was certainly no shortage of interesting conversation and amusing little anecdotes, one of the reasons we always request a table for six when we are cruising. 🙂
The show tonight featured Chris Hamilton, an extremely talented and engaging pianist. He was accompanied by the excellent ship’s orchestra and played anything from classical to contemporary to pop. He did a fantastic rendition of Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune as well as the well-loved Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin.
Near the end of Chris’s show, he asked people to shout out the names of pieces they would like him to play, and he would endeavour to play a medley that would include as many of those tunes as he could. It was excellent. We really enjoyed his piano playing a lot, and hoped we would see him again before the end of the cruise.
In the Golden Lion pub tonight there wasn’t the usual trivia quiz at nine o’clock; instead, they were holding a game of “Liars Club”, what used to be known as Call My Bluff on TV in Britain. It featured three members of the entertainments team, and audience members had to guess which of the three was telling the truth after they’d been asked to relate something that had (allegedly) happened to them. 🙂
After the gameshow we stayed to listen to the lively and cheerful music of The Full Irish before returning to our cabin around 10.30pm – very early indeed for us when we are on holiday, but we’d had a couple of full and interesting days (and my Samsung watched told me I’d done over 11,000 steps today) so we were quite tired.
After getting washed and changed into my ‘jamas, I read in bed for a while and perused the Daily Programme to see what was on tomorrow. We had another sea day to look forward to, and once again we slept very well, lulled by the soothing sounds of the Atlantic ocean washing against the hull of the Queen Anne as she glided along.