Ship Ahoy!

Thursday was another showery day, but after breakfast we headed off to the harbour as we had booked to go out on a 3 hour trip on the Santa Maria - a replica of the boat that Christopher Columbus set sail in on his first voyage. Its an impressive looking ship, very pirate looking. There were high hopes of Captain Jack Sparrow putting in an appearance. Alas, he did not! Paul had warned me to take travel sick tablets in the morning which I had. In fact he had made me quite nervous of boarding with his tales of sea sickness. I have to say I am glad I did take them, for the first hour I could barely move. The sea was choppy and the ship was being tossed across the water. Luckily though I felt a little unwell, it wasn't too terrible and by sitting still I managed to keep it under control. After a while we stopped in calmer waters and by then I was able to emerge from where I had been sheltering from the drizzle and sit where there was a better view. And the view was amazing, as was the experience of being on this ship. But you have to ask the question, how did men cross oceans in these vessels!? The crew came around at this point with Madeiran wine and cake, which was nice. Traditional Madeiran cake is nothing like what we have here in the UK. Its like a drier fruit cake, without the fruit, ha ha! Nice, but not what you would expect. It looked like quite a few people didn't care for it. One German threw his overboard, probably killing a fish in the process. Paul went for  a little walk around the upper deck, I wasn't feeling brave enough to go very far. When he came back he said a lot of people were really suffering badly from sea sickness. I mean lying flat out on the deck, or throwing up (possibly both!!) What a shame, the trip wasn't cheap and they would have gotten little from it at all! The return journey was much smoother, thank god! When we got off the ship, the crew were washing the lower deck down - guess that says it all.

When we were back on dry land, we headed to the Ritz for scones and tea, a very civilised way to spend an hour. The weather really wasn't very nice, and there were some very heavy showers. Its a shame that the weather let us down, but not much you can do about that. Between showers we explored the side streets, and found some interesting shops (including an Ale Hop - woo hoo) and another little shopping centre. So all was not lost. I cannot tell you how much we love Madeira, and just being there wandering around the streets.

We had an early dinner at Sao Jose again, Paul liked it there as they'd make him something specially. I once again had the scabbard fish, which I had really taken a liking too. After dinner we took the bus back to our hotel, and from there had a walk over to the Mall. One last look around, before we finished the packing. Unfortunately the weather took a turn for the worse, it absolutely poured. Water was cascading down the main road like it had become a river! Paul and I had no option but to be brave and make our way back to the hotel. We were drenched when we got back. I was unable to wear my trainers the next day as they were still soaked through. Luckily I was able to dry out my fleece, but we were really glad to get back to the hotel and get out of the wet clothes and shoes.  When they have rain, they really have rain!