Cruise Day 15: Madeira, Portugal

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!

Cruise Day 14: Sea Day

Ah....Day 14....a relaxing day at sea!  What better way to represent a day at sea than with one of Disney's most famous sea characters-----Ariel, the Little Mermaid! (Also one of my favorite Disney animated films).

Days at sea are, if I haven't mentioned it before, just wonderful-----no getting off the ship...no pressure to do anything (sure, even in ports we "choose" to go and do excursions, etc.....but we've paid in advance for those things so even if you've applied the pressure to yourself you still feel kinda like you HAVE to go and do it).  On sea days, the ship creates a pretty elaborate schedule of activities you can choose to do throughout the day.....OR, if you prefer, you can also just lay around-----swim, sunbathe, play games, watch TV and relax, eat all day, take a nap....or any combination thereof!! It's really wonderful and why sea days are probably one of our favorite parts of cruising!

Cruise Day 13: Gibraltar

Day 13 of our adventure found us in Gibraltar.  Our magnet features Gibraltar's most prominent feature, the rock....with, of course, Mickey Mouse doing a little rock climbing! :)

We were excited to be in Gibraltar because we'd been here once before on our last TransAtlantic Cruise and really enjoyed it.  The views from the top of the rock are amazing and the world famous Barbary Apes live all over the top of the rock and the roads in the area.  They are a small species of apes that have lived here for a very long time and, while not domesticated, are relatively used to humans and so, as long as you don't try to touch or annoy or FEED them....they are cute to look at and take pictures of!

So the plan for the day was to meet our excursion group on the ship and then we would be escorted off the ship to the cable car station, ride a cable car up the rock to the top, spend a little time taking photos, touring the area, watching the apes and then head back to the ship for lunch and to enjoy the rest of the day in the sun.  We had planned on not doing too much more than that to continue the theme of relaxation for this leg of our journey......

Ship Photography

Well, before I start entering more blogs here about the TransAtlantic 
portion of our cruise, I thought I would share some more pictures 
from our Mediterranean Cruise. for those who have never sailed with 
Disney Cruise Line before....the ship has it's own photogaphers and 
photo shop called "Shutters"-----and the folks from shutters take 
photos throughout your cruise...sometimes they're candid shots on 
shore excursions or at the pool and other times they're posed 
shots...often with a nice background or with the Disney characters. 
I have always been one to talk about the benefit of shutters 
photography----because Jason and I absolutely ADORE them. Not only 
do their pictures very often turn out beautifully, but having a 
collection of nice pictures from a vacation that include both Jason 
and myself is a rare treat (because we are most often vacationing 
alone together....many of our pictures that we take with our camera 
have either him OR me in them...but rarely both of us together). So 
we try to get as many pictures taken by the Shutters photographers as 
possible...and then buy the CD that they offer which includes digital 
prints of every picture they took throughout your cruise....and as an 
added bonus, because we were booked with Adventures by Disney for the 
Med portion of our cruise...our CD was included at no extra charge!!

Cruise Day 12: Sea Day

Day 12 brought us the first full day aboard the ship for our TransAtlantic voyage....which was exciting because we were so looking forward to this portion of our trip.  We sailed a TransAtlantic cruise with Disney back in may of 2007----only in the opposite direction...and we still have so many amazing memories of how wonderful that cruise was---we were looking forward to having a similarly wonderful experience this time (maybe even better since THAT time we lost 6 hours in time changes....and THIS time we GAIN 6 hours!! LOL)

Beginning the TransAtlantic portion of the trip was also bittersweet, however, because it meant we had begun the trip home.  I know people all thought we were nuts to take a trip that lasted almost a full month....but I'm not kidding when I say it has FLOWN by and we wish we could stay longer!! LOL

As you can see from today's magnet, today was a day at sea...so Jason chose an image that was both Disney and nautical! :)

Cruise Day 11: Barcelona (end of Med, beginning of TransAtlantic)

(NOTE:  Sorry there aren't a lot of images in today's blog....we weren't doing much picture taking today!)

Well, Day 11 of our cruise arrived and we found ourselves back in Barcelona.  We designed our magnet today with some images from Barcelona----specifically from Park Guell---even though we didn't really get off the ship and go into the city for the day.  If you look WAAAAY back at the posts we did about our visit to Barcelona BEFORE the cruise (I believe it was posted around Sept. 7th), you might recognized some of the images in our magnet from the pictures we took that day when we spent most of the afternoon in Park Guell.

So anyway, we opted not really to get off the boat and go into Barcelona.

Cruise Day 10: Day at Sea

Day ten of our cruise found us with no port to visit at all----a sea day!!  To celebrate a sea day....what better character(s) than the cast of "Finding Nemo"?! LOL

I have to admit that this sea day was both good news and bad news.  The good news was that sea days are generally relaxing.  You don't have to get up by anytime.  You don't have a busy schedule to keep (unless you so choose---obviously they offer things on the ship to do, but you can opt into or out of any of it).  After 7 straight days of ports, some of which were super busy and hectic, a day to relax and just enjoy the ship and the sea was a welcome respite.  The bad news, however, was that this sea day meant that the Mediterranean portion of our cruise was coming to an end-----and that meant not only that our vacation was now 50% over...but the Adventures by Disney portion was coming to an end, as well...as I've already posted once on this blog....that was kind of sad considering we had such a wonderful experience.

But before I get too mopey about that.....I'll tell you all what we did this relaxing day at sea.....