May | 2017 | Coffee, Crafts and Conversation

Gibraltar

Our next stop is Gibraltar. We have been there many times, so decided to have a late start. The weather was cold and rainy. We were going to meet a young couple we meet on the ship and then walk over to Spain.

Gibraltar is a very small country, that borders with Spain. The airport is along that border and cars and people can cross it. When a plane is landing they stop everyone, land the plane and then you can cross again.

We walked in to town and it started to rain. We thought it would let up so headed to the border. Then it started to pour. We stopped in a mini mart hoping it would stop. It did let up a little, so we headed out.

We found an umbrella that had broke and had some fun with it.

It was exciting to cross the runway. I had never crosses an active runway before.

Once on the other side we went through customs ( a booth, where they checked our passports). Walked in and decided to get a coffee.

The rain started to let up so we started back. We had to go through customs again (a booth), but got our passports stamped.

On the way back Tim found some balloons and decided to play tour guide.

We then made our way into the town to find a restaurant we had been to before for a snack and internet. They were packed so we couldn’t get in. After walking around a bit more we headed back to the ship.

Had a good but wet day.

Next stop Cartagena…….

Funchal, Madeira

Our first port is Funchal, Madeira. We were here last year and did a tour around the island. It is a very beautiful island.

Today we decided to explore the city of Funchal. We walked in from the ship. The island is very mountainous. This is a restaurant on top of a hill, but it looks like it could of been a pirate liar or something.

We walked along the water and came across this “food truck”. It was smaller than any food truck I’ve ever seen, but was very cute. I’m not even sure how the guy fit in the cab to drive it. He only sold coffee, looked good.

There were some buckets and this statue

Kept walking until we found the area where all doors were painted. Some of them were interesting and some were works of art. (These are all doors into someone’s house or a shop)

We found this canal, I love the way you can find beauty in the middle of the city.

We wandered over to the fish market, my it was smelly in there 😀

Then off to find a supermarket for lunch supplies. It is always an experience shopping in foreign markets. Every one is set up so differently then our markets back home. There is also a language barrier that makes it fun trying to find something. We finally got everything we needed so we went to look for a place to eat. We usually try to find somewhere with a view, but that isn’t always possible.

Today we looked for the cathedral. We found a nice place to sit and started to unpack our lunch. As we were setting up a man walked by with an accordion. Tim gave him a tip to play for us. He was good and we had music with our lunch. We started to eat lunch and it started to rain.

There was a nice lady right next to us selling flowers and she had a table undercover, out of the rain. We asked if we could use a corner of her table. She said of course and even moved some of the flowers out of the way to make room for us. We shared some of our chips and cookies with her. She was so nice, we had just had to buy a bunch flowers from her. She made us 2 beautiful bunches and only charged us €6.