Barbara's Travels

One last evening at sea

We had a little money left in our ship board credit account so decided to have our portrait taken by the resident photographer. Turned out pretty well.

Our next trip is scheduled for late June. We fly in to London, board ship at Dover, sail to Normandy, around the Brittany Peninsula and down the Biscay Bay coast of France to Santiago de Compostela and Lisbon.

Until then we will be busy with our avocations of sports statistics and gifted advocacy and with tearing out our utterly destroyed upper lawn and putting in some paved areas and walkways, new sod and renovating the lower lawn and the raised garden bed. Ought to keep us busy enough.

Adios.

Puerto Banus

I was mistaken. The yacht basin is at Puerto Banus. It is filled with yachts from all around the world, some small but some very large and luxurious — got a million or two to throw away on a yacht? The shopping street facing the harbor is filled with very high end shops and cafes.

Marbella, Spain

Having little to do the next day we took a bus tour to the seashore to the yacht basin at Marbella. The interior of the church there is very ornate, and people appear to enjoy decorating their house fronts and balconies.

The strange sculpture is a Dali. There is a plaza full of them.

La Manquita

The cathedral is built on the site of a former mosque. Only one tower was ever built so it is known locally as “One-Armed” — La Manquita. The interior looks as though it was built for giants. It was very dim inside so Bob’s pictures don’t do it justice. It was lovely!

Barbara and Pablo

Much fuss is made about Picasso being from Malaga. His birthplace is now a museum and in the plaza outside a statue and a bench where you can have your photo taken with him. Seems to me we have a similar type photo of me with a statue in Bratislava, Slovakia…..

Malaga, Spain

View of the City of Malaga from the Gibralfaro castle hill. The city was founded in the 8th century BC by Phoenicians, as were so many coastal cities in what is now Spain.

There’s Bob on guard duty at the castle.

Straits of Gibraltar

We sailed through, heading east. around breakfast time. Traffic going both directions is tightly controlled so the ship had to enter at its appointed time. Picture one is the African coast and picture two is the Rock of Gibraltar. It was excessively windy on deck and on deck 5 you had to run from one side to the other, fighting the wind to open the doors. Our passage was so fast that if you didn’t run out on deck at the right moment, you missed it entirely.

Aside

We’ve seen a lot of lava fields in our trips — Iceland, Hawaii, the Snake River Craters of the Moon, Yellowstone, but Lanzarote was very special. How the people manage to make a living among so much sterile land I don’t know.

Some interesting facts: By law houses must be painted white (we did see a few exceptions), can be only two stories and the trim can only be green, black, blue or brown. For the greater part, people seem to obey these regulations.

We have had very nice weather throughout this cruise. No rain though it is the rainy season. Just warm enough to enjoy being outside but not warm enough at sea to enjoy sitting out on deck.

After Lanzarote we had a day at sea with an entertaining lecture about the Euro and the Dollar. Learned a lot.

More cinder cones

The strange blue green color is because these photos were taken from inside the bus and the windows are tinted. This landscape was formed between 1730 and 1736. There is very little vegetation of any kind, just miles and miles of ash, solidified lava and cinder cones. Eerie.

Cinder cones