Well...day 15 of our cruise(s) arrived and brought us to the last land that we would see for quite some time---the port of Funchal in Madeira, an island that is part of Portugal (despite being closer to the west coast of Morocco in Africa than it is to the mainland of Portugal). Madeira is a lovely island with a very unique blend of very traditional rural and (in keeping with theme of most of Europe) mountainous lands as well as very urban and developed city area around the coastline.
I'll explain our magnet for the day just a bit. Jason designed this magnet because one of the things he found (and once I saw it, I did too) fascinating about Madeira is its airport-----our magnet this day depicted the airport. The airport is interesting because the runway is literally built up on a bridge! I am guessing that there wasn't enough long flat space to create a usable runway...so they built a runway that is set pretty high up on a fully supported bridge (like you see mickey's plane landing on in our magnet). This phenomenon became even more interesting when, on the tour we took, we actually drove UNDER the airport runway...and saw that there are tennis courts (& maybe a pool, too??) built under there, as well....like a country club under the airport runway!! Very odd...but cool!
