Notice what time we are in port today. Siesta is from noon to 5 .. but I’ve read that the supermarket and internet café stay open during siesta, so I guess we’ll go look for Dr. Pepper.
On my morning walk before we got into part:
There was a shuttle bus that took us out of the working port area and dropped us off at a group of restaurants, a supermarket that was smaller than our 7-11 back home, and a Burger King.
We decided to walk to city center first and do this area when we returned. We walked along a lovely, palm tree lined, wide tiled walkway that first was next to a harbor with water at low tide. It transitioned to restaurants with living areas surrounding them. We found a lovely little souvenir shop that had the cutest merchandise. We left that shop about 40 euros lighter with some trinket type items for friends and family.
We spotted a church steeple above the buildings and more toward the sea and made that our next destination. On our way there we were overtaken by Gus, our waiter in the MDR. It always makes us smile when these hard working young people get a chance to get off the ship and have some free time to enjoy themselves.
The church, (name), and was open. There were a few tourists inside and we had the opportunity to explore the beautiful interior, the architecture, artwork, paintings and the structure itself. Same as the last port, I was drawn to the ceiling in this church. While yesterday’s was a painted wood ceiling this one had a beautiful, dark stained wood ceiling.
There was a sculpture of Cesar Manrique, who according to information that I’m copying from “What’s in Port,” says that he had an enourmous influence on the regional council who gave him a free hand to o whatever he wanted. According to his autocratic aesthetic guidelines, no building – except church towers – should be taller than a palm tree. The only “skyscraper” on the island is one hotel structure in Arrecife, but it was built during his absence from the island. He also banned roadside dumping as well as requiring rubbish and electric cables had to be buried underground.
Here are the rest of the pictures from our time onshore:
It seemed like the majority of the ship went on the excursion to the volcano where they got to ride a camel. Here’s a picture of Pat and Cyndi that she shared with me:
When we were preparing to leave the captain said we would have following seas this evening, with 224 miles at 20 knots to make our 7am arrival in Agadir, Morocco.
Back on the ship we had dinner and then rounded out our evening with music trivia and Rolling Stone. Called it an early evening since we are up early in the morning. One of our bar tenders told us the next day that the band didn’t play their last set because there were only 3 people in the lounge.