A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

But no pictures today, alas. We landed this morning at Funchal, Madeira. Every letter of every word that I type tends to be done twice or more, since I`m not used to the Portuguese keyboard.

A week ago Sunday we stopped at Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas. We´re not beach people, so we enjoyed the barbeque, attended by the free range chickens. I watched the little black chicks wandering under the tables as the happy people ate, blissfully unaware. More than once a chick stopped and looked thoughtfully at some well shaped toe, exposed through sandals. But there were no incidents, happily.

Seven days at sea go by remarkably fast. Especially for the wife, who is up early (well early by cruising standards, anyway) and tries to close down the Piano Bar every night with a busy schedule in between. I gave that up after a couple of nights. Getting old, I guess.

I did find a chess partner, though. We use the large set by the pool. I recommended FICS to him. If I manage to not drop a piece early I´m usually winning. But we take an hour or more to play, so they´re fairly serious games.

Today we´ll just wander around the Old City and maybe take the cable car ride. There are beautiful orange blossoms in the trees above me as I write. Across the road pink and red geraniums fills an iron grill balcony, the length of the street. The clouds rolling in just highlight the intensity of the colours.

After a day at sea tomorrow, we plan to make a pilgrimage to Fatima on Wednesday. That will be the feast of the Annuniciation, solemn feast of Our Lady. We have had a special devotion to her since she aided us during a crisis fifteen years ago. But that´s a story for another day. The point is, I may not have time to blog from there. If not, I´ll try to do it from the ship (far more expensive).

Time to move on. See you all later.