Funchal, Portugal – Day 8 of our Transatlantic Cruise

Sunday, November 30, 2025 – First Sunday in Advent!

First things first… CORRECTION… Morocco is NOT in the Horn of Africa. Thanks to my American-African friend, I’ve had a good geography lesson. The Horn of Africa is on the east side of the continent. We were on the northwest side. Visual learners like me, see below.

Day at Sea

Yesterday was a day at sea and we gained an hour. (So we are only five hours ahead of home now.)

We slept in, walked around the ship’s outside walking trail, along with many other people, for four miles. Then breakfast, showers, and we hunted for a quiet place to hang out. We had heard that there were board games available in one of the restaurants and that some people wanted to play Mah Jongg. I’ve never played but am curious so we found a quiet table in that restaurant where Gregg could work on his favorite pastime – computer programming for himself. :) (Not to worry, his employer hasn’t asked him to work while on vacation. This is “fun” programming.)

I joined a few ladies to just watch them play Mah Jongg. That is the first step towards learning. I think I’d like to learn – any other friends play or want to learn?

I also worked on turning the pages of my first book into a coloring book version. My thought is that it will be the exact same book, just in black and white so that the reader can color it themselves. I’ve had at least three people suggest I try this format so I’m going to give it a go and see what happens.

For dinner, we had our first Specialty Dining experience (we have five.) This one was in the French restaurant. The food was excellent!

Portugal

We arrived at the port in Funchal around 7am and it was still dark. That allowed me to take some pretty pictures from our deck. (I suspect our cruise planner, Alyson Tunnell, picked our cabin and she did an awesome job!)

After our typical breakfast – mine is a veggie omelet from the outdoor chef, a few baked beans, yogurt with fruit, nuts, and granola, and hot Englich Breakfast tea – Gregg usually has a veggie omelet or 2 eggs Sunnyside up – we got off the ship with no exact plans other than wanting to attend an English speaking church.

We enjoyed walking along the water and then into the town. The streets are often walking streets or narrow streets of either cobblestone or marble tiles in pretty designs. I got beamed up by Scotty at one point and he returned me in one piece to the same spot.

We passed a Catholic Cathedral and went to look in before the service began. We stood outside the open doors and watched the beginning of the service, spoken in Portugese.

Anglican Church Service

We arrived at the church an hour early so we enjoyed taking photos before it would feel obnoxious, then sat in the garden/courtyard area. The service was very nice. It wasn’t a huge building. The domed roof made the singing sound like everyone was robustly joining in. My heart was full.

After church, they have a garden reception. There is a table of craft items to browse if so inclined to make a purchase. And they serve coffee, juice, cake, and Medeira – a locally produced wine – in little shot glasses. Miles Madeira Rainwater wine. It would make a nice dessert wine. Full disclosure: 18% alcohol content.

Cable Car Ride

From church, we walked 20-30 minutes to the cable car and took a nice ride up to the top. We walked around and saw two churches up there. One has the Austrio-Hungarian king buried there. He was exiled after World War I. As we looked at the burial area inside the church, Gregg heard six adults speaking Hungarian. All that came to mind was “where’s the bathroom” so we didn’t try to speak with them.

On the mountain, there are several botanical gardens but we didn’t go into any. We didn’t have a lot of time left since we needed to be on board by 4:30 so we took the return cable car down and walked back to the ship.

Goodbye, Land!

It was interesting to be outside on the back deck as our ship pulled away from land. There was a different vibe of excitement as we all realized we wouldn’t see land again for seven days. We are due to be in Miami a week from tomorrow.

I don’t plan to post during sea days. It will be wash, rinse, and repeat – pretty much like yesterday. I won’t bore you. We are looking forward to just hanging out and doing whatever we feel like at the moment. Oh, and we have 4 more specialty dining restaurants to visit.

Hopefully I can get pictures inserted and this posted before we completely lose internet. I can still see the beautiful island of Madiera.