This blog will cover Friday through Sunday afternoon.
Friday night on board the ship we had a variety show by the Royal Caribbean Production Singers and Dancers. Everyone is getting excited about seeing land again. We have been at sea for 6-7 days. Saturday we landed in the Canary Islands. There are seven islands in the Canarys. They are all volcanic islands and the last eruption was in 1909. Here are some facts about the Canary Islands.
- The birds are named for the islands - not the other way around
- The islands are names for dogs (canaria in latin is dogs) the first people thought they heard dogs barking so they named it Canary. It turned out that the sound they heard were seals barking.
- Mount Tiede the volcanic mountain on Tenerife is the highest mountain in Spain. Higher than the Pyrenees.
- The Canary Islands are part of Spain. They are several hundred miles from Spain and only 63 miles from Africa. Bill would have really liked it if we had landed in Africa so he could mark off another continent, but we didn't.
- There is a whistling language called Silbo that is taught in all the schools as a mandatory language. It was developed in the Canary Islands so the people could communicate over many miles. I put a video clip in the shared photo album of our tour guide demonstrating it.
- Christopher Columbus used the Canary Islands for restocking on his way to the Americas.
- The worst aviation disaster in history happened in Tenerife. 583 people died on two Boeing 747's that collided on the runway in 1977.
- There are seven islands in the Canary Archipelago, we are visiting three off them - La Palma, Tenerife and Gran Canary.
The island we landed at on Saturday is La Palma. We didn't have any excursions planned so we just got off the ship and walked around town. The architecture and the shops were very pretty. Prices were very reasonable also. I bought a pretty scarf and a dress in La Palma. We were back on board last night and had dinner again in the main dining room, Tides. Food was okay. After dinner we went to the atrium and listened to big band music and watched people dance. At 9pm they presented a variety show made up of crew and passengers.
The first act was passengers who got together and learned Michael Jackson's Thriller dance. Then they created a choir of passengers who came on and sang Big Girls Don't Cry, Sherry Baby and Walk Like a Man. They were just ok.
Then one of the passengers from California, an older (my age) woman who is cruising with her mother, came out and did stand up comedy. She was pretty good considering how hard stand up comedy is. Next we had a line up of passengers singing solos. Pretty bad over all. Then the Indonesian crew members came out and did some sort of dance that was telling a story. The story I got out of it was that it was too long. The Cruise Director came out and tried to get them to end it and they just kept going on. Finally they left the stage and the Indian crew members came out and danced. That almost went on as long. The Cruise Director had to shoo them off as well. Then we had a couple of old guys and an old lady coming out and singing solos. Only one was worth hearing. This guy sang My Way in Spanish and he had a great voice. The last act was an older couple who came out and played a classical piano duet. So overall it lasted about 30 minutes longer than it should have. But I didn't die from it, so I guess it was okay.
This morning we landed in Tenerife. We took a World Heritage tour that included wine tasting.
Because the islands are so isolated, the grape vines here were not affected by the blight that took out vines in other places in the world. So there are some wine vines here that aren't found any where else. We tasted several wines and all I can say is.......Bill loved them. That of course means that they were all sweet. It was real hazy and we didn't get to see the top of Mount Tiede. The first part of the tour was a walking tour around town. We went to the local market and to some churches. then we did the wine tasting. We got back to the ship around 2pm and I caught up on my blog. So that's all for today. Enjoy the pictures!
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