Ship Ahoy... random experiences..

We have thrown ourselves into cruise life with gay abandon.. the house band who are really very good doing covers first set disco stuff and then a selection of rockier numbers, then a young woman with a stunning voice doing more covers.... and then we actually did a quiz!!! What a night...

Today we were in our last port of call... Lexois - about 18 ks from Oporto... we havent bothered to go into the big city we are citied out but left the boat to have a, walk along the local town promonade to ..... yes.... some rocks!!!!! Dr Fred has started a bad bad case of rock yearning so it was a complete relief to see this little craggy promontory at the other end of the esplanade. Hopefully it has given him a fix until we reach Southampton in a couple of days.

Dr Fred had what should have been his last evening stargazing tonight, but the weather was terrible and the boat moving about so much the water flying out of the swimming pool made it unsafe.

We both attended a formal lunch - really nice interesting people - one chap was a coffee taster and another guest gave me a great idea for alternative bread and butter pudding... but mostly the chat was about Dr Fred and space.. we've been very clear when 'working' that I'm there as the 'help' with no expertise on astro matters - wouldn't do to get negative feedback due to people thinking I was an incompetent stargazer, but everyone is so friendly and welcoming I'd be surprised if there was bad feedback about anything Dr Fred was involved in.... of course I didn't execute any of my plans about activity disruption or staff stalking so no reprehensible behavior to report 🤣🤣. No rich husband either but I'm quite happy with what I've got.

Dr Fred gave his final lecture on the last sea day. It was very well received. Its been a busy fortnight... fun but quite a lot of work.

The weather has changed..its raining and windy.. the Bay of Biscay has a little more movement and the ship is rolling quite a bit. But we have our sea legs and its not an unpleasant feeling. Actually i really quite like it.. its lesss biring than just motoring along. The 2 days at sea on the way home didn't seem so far ... mainly because we spent a lot of time chatting to people we have met... some really nice people - some we might keep in touch with - most of the guests are very pleasant and I've only witnessed a couple of unpleasant exchanges - as long as you stay away from polictics all is good.

We went to the farewell party... I really don't know what to say... very surreal experience... a couple of large glasses of wine made a lot of difference🤣

We've eaten a lot of food - it's going to be a shock going back to shopping and cooking... its only been a fortnight but its amazing how quickly you can get used to being waited on... thinking about it.. I dont really need an astronomer at home but maybe theres another role to be filled...

We have enjoyed this whole experience and look forward to the next one. Its been great fun - surreal at times and very different to our usual adventures. Its so good to have seen some interesting places and have some winter sun.

Scotland part 2

The second half of the week continued in much the same vein. We had one rainy afternoon which was actually quite nice to be holed up in the house with the rain lashing the windows. It probably wasn't quite so nice for the two visitors that came on their bikes but they're tough cookies - and its only water- but I did feel sorry for them having to cycle six miles back down the track in the wind and rain, but given Scotland, it wasn't as bad as it could be. The big quest for the 2nd half of the week was to find some deer antiers! The chap that owned the house dropped in to visit - he was a very friendly fella and was chatting about how this was the time of year when all the Stags lost their antlers (he collected them and sold them) so after that we were on the serious lookout. It's always been Fred's mission to find some dropped antlers.... The Monro baggers continued with the mission to bag the remaining three Monros... there is discussion as whet...

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town. Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now. The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art.... Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...

Funchal

So after three days at sea we finally hit Funchal in Madeira. An escape from the ship, and I have to say it was very pleasant indeed. First of all the weather is really splendid. Especially when you know that everybody else in the UK is suffering grim storms and vile winds.. Over here it is between 22 and 25 degrees is really quite warm. Funchal is a pretty city. It's built on a hill it with lots of lovely white houses with stunning red roofs. In order to get the best of it we walked along the sea front until we got to the cable car and we took it up the hill. It was a really good ride much longer than we imagined and it's quite weird because it goes right through the town - completely over everybody's house... So not only do you get a lovely vista of the bay but you can view the beautiful rooftops and get to look in everybody's gardens and to look at their picnic sets.. clean washing nice plants... scratty b...

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