April 22, 2024 Sea Day #8
Our 8th and final Sea Day.
There was no rush to get up this morning. There were some rougher seas last night and you could feel the rocking from the five meter waves. I felt a little dizzy and a little queazy, but Larry was fine. The sky was cloudy, the temperature 12°, windy and still five meter waves in the morning. By noon the captain announced the waves were just three meters and would be less than one meter by 6 p.m. He was correct.
We had a pleasant breakfast in an uncrowded dining room with Tiffany and her mother Mary from Portland, Washington and Aaron and Cathy from Atlanta, Georgia.
At 10 a.m. in the B.B. KIng’s Blues Club there was a cooking presentation by the Executive Chef who made Sriracha Salmon Bowl, which was on this evening’s dinner menu. One of the facts he mentioned was that cucumbers were first seen in records from India dating back 3,000 years.
On the daily planner Cake Me Away from 11:30 a.m to 2:30 p.m. (because of the hour forward time change at Noon) was highlighted. Last evening the cruise and travel director, Nick, mentioned that it is an event to indulge yourself with cakes for lunch. There were about two dozen varieties of cakes, about half were chocolate. After lunch at the Lido buffet, we shared a piece of the Creme Brulée cake. While eating lunch, a parade of smiling crew members (servers, cooks, maintenance) were singing and playing guitars and tambourines, congaing their way through the buffet area and pool area to the claps and encouragement of the passengers.
The captain’s noon / 1 o’clock announcement stated that the ship is 320 nautical miles from Brest, France and will pick up the marine pilot at 8 a.m. to arrive in port by 10 a.m. We have no excursion planned. The city looks like a good place to explore on our own. There will be a shuttle from the ship to the castle since it is a working port.
Paul Eschenfelder’s presentation was a continuation of yesterday’s about Portuguese explorers. He mentioned that a lot of the documents of the 15th and 16th century Portuguese explorers were destroyed in 1755. There was a severe earthquake off Lisbon’s coast that caused a destructive fire and a tsunami which destroyed the King’s library. Fortunately, some of the documents had been copied and were in Portuguese universities inland. In 1494, Spain and Portugal with the blessing of the Roman Catholic pope negotiated the Treaty of Tordesillas establishing a longitude line where to the east (mainly Africa and east, but did include the eastern part of Brazil) was for Portugal to explore and claim and to the west it was for Spain. (North, Central and South America). In Africa and India when a Portuguese explorer went on land they took a stone Cao inscribed that Portugal claimed the land or they just found a boulder and chiselled their claim on the stone. In July 1497, Vasco da Gama left Belem, just outside of Lisbon at the time, with four ships and 170 men. On da Gama's first trip, as he related the terrible storms and sea conditions as his ships rounded the horn of Africa to the Portuguese king, he had called it the Cape of Storms. The Portuguese king suggested the name would be Cape of Good Hope. The second voyage edged up the African east coast further, but again the crew was sick from Scurvy, caused by lack of vitamin C. They landed at Mozambique and were given a hostile greeting. A fight against the locals with the Portuguese who had cannons that shot three pound shot defeated the army and the ship departed further north to the kingdom of Malinda, in current day southeastern Kenya. Here they ships were greeted with open arms as news of the rout had reached Malindi, who was feuding with Mozambique. It was late January 1498. The crew recovered and the Malindi ruler supplied da Gama with a pilot to guide them to Calicut, India where they arrived in early May 1498 having favourable spring trade winds. It only took 23 days, but their early departure from India before the fall winds favoured sailing west took 132 days of tacking against the wind to return to Malindi. By the time they returned to Belem in September 1499, there was only one ship carrying 50 men and a small chest of spices. It was worth a fortune to the king. In 1500 the Portuguese king sent 13 ships with trade goods to India. They discovered what was described as a green island following the currents west of Africa just before they turned east around the horn. They had travelled further west than planned and the “island” was the bulge of eastern South America, later Brazil. The ships continued to Calicut via Malindi, only seven ships returned with spices and made an 800% profit for the king. The Portuguese were a powerful marine country trading in the Red Sea and with Japan eventually ending the monopoly of Italian city states (Genoa & Venice) and the Arabs with their sea route. With all the farmers going to sea in the hope of making money there were not enough people to grow crops and populate merchant ships. Portugal had colonies in Africa, Oman, Brazil and Indonesia before running out of people to continue exploring.
We climbed up to the Lido pool to buy some Gelato and play Five Crowns before going to the Rolling Stone Rock Room for Happy Hour cocktails and chatting with Bill and Lynn. They were going to Tamarind for dinner this evening. They told us that since Bill had a minor stumble on an Azores excursion, he felt that his body might fail him again on their planned French river cruise where there were daily walking tours and possible steep gangways. They cancelled all reservations for that trip today and are flying back to California from Amsterdam when we get off the ship on Saturday. Heather was also eating at Tamarind for dinner tonight. It was just us, Sharon, Lois and Eric at our dining room table. They have not booked any tours either for tomorrow.
After dinner was the last Ballroom Dance Hour for this cruise since the next four days we are in ports. After the dancing we went to the World Stage to get seats for the 7:30 p.m. show with the singers and dancers featuring songs of Las Vegas divas. After the show we got our computers and headed for the Grand Dutch Café for caramel lattés to drink as we prepared the blog.
We didn’t walk on the Promenade deck this morning due to the ship’s rolling but tried to walk the long way to out activities. Total steps today were 7885.
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