Mar 20

Port of Call Change to Santa Cruz de Tenerife

The Market of our Lady of Africa – Santa Cruz, Tenerife

Storms to the north forced us to change the Portuguese Island of Madeira for Santa Cruz de Tenerife for the much farther south Spanish Canary Islands. Santa Cruz de Tenerife was a good choice, especially since we had visited Madeira a couple of years before and were not totally impressed, as the island definitely breathes resort tourism, which we try to avoid.

Santa Cruz because of its sheer location just off the south of Morocco’s Sahara still inhibits a true African culture mixed with Southern Spanish atmosphere. It’s a lively combination of various historic influences. It is the largest island in the Canary Archipelago, and like its brethren Canaries, Tenerife was formed by fierce volcanic activity. Its landscape remains dotted with volcanic cones and areas of intense geothermal activity. Towering over the island is Mt. Teide, an extinct volcano since 1909 that, at 12,200 feet above sea level, is the highest peak in all of Spain. Santa Cruz de Tenerife is the island’s capital and our port of call. We decided to stick to town with Darcy and Caralee and make it a stressless fun day.

Santa Cruz is located on the northeastern shore of Tenerife has a population of more than 200,000 inhabitants. The island is home to close to a million residents, making it Spain’s most populated island. Its climate is known as the “Island of Eternal Spring” and we definitely enjoyed a token of spring that day.

The famous Wind Sculpture

We walked past the Wind Sculpture located in the center of the square in front of the Auditorio de Tenerife, the Castillo de San Juan and the Parque Marítimo César Manrique.

Walking down the main shore drive we passed a beautiful ‘sunken’ park and after crossing a couple of major la rambla sized pedestrian shopping street, we crossed the bridge and came up to the entrance to the famous Mercado de Nuestra Señora de Africa, locally known as La Recova. And what a pleasure that was. It stands on the site of the former Monastery of San Francisco. Its distinctive architecture, inspired by Moroccan aesthetics, features three courtyards and a clock tower, making it an architectural landmark in its own right.  The market was a visionary project designed to centralize the city’s food supply and create a modern, hygienic marketplace for the growing urban population. Today it provides a daily showcase of the island’s agricultural bounty and rich culinary traditions.

Visiting this market offers a direct connection to the local culture and heritage. It’s a perfect way to immerse yourself in the authentic rhythm of the town and its vibrant daily life. You’ll find everything from exotic fresh produce to traditional Canarian specialities here, highlighting the island’s unique offerings and the diversity of its agriculture. The enormous, partly open air market, was inaugurated in 1943 on a neo-colonial architectural base, as a tribute to African Culture and the Island’s Fishing history. The fresh markets give an eye’s delight of color and composition. The people were not rushing, it was a rather slow stroll and moving from stand to stand. The flowers and fresh vegetables and fruits were generous in providing this area with vivid colors. And the smell! The mixture of all possible herbs, flowers and bakery.

Old and new mixes well here in Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz Bridge
Our Lady of Africa Market
Mercado
Fruits and vegetables
Exotic Fruits and Vegetables
Fresh Seafood -Shrimp - Crabs - Lobster
Spices as Presents
Tower Landmark
Quiet, restful, shady siestas
Pedestrian Shopping streets
santa cruz cat message
Decorative Wall Painting
Departing with the pilot boat

It is one of those places where you want to get your wallet out and start buying bags of stuff, and then you realize with certain sadness, you’re on a cruise ship where everything food is included in the ride and the fridge in your stateroom is too small for a cantaloupe. In the end you buy some exotic spices as a gift for friends back home, because you want to leave some of your “wealth” behind for these friendly, smiling, hardworking people.

After almost 2 hours of pure delight we leave and stroll in search of a nice outside café where we can get a drink and maybe a local snack and spend a while doing our favorite thing on vacation: people watching.

Darcy and Han decided that they could live on this island. Han actually has a history with the Canary Island where he helped his friend, architect/developer Peter Riteco, in the late 1970s develop and market a resort, Parques Holandés, on the neighboring island of Fuerteventura.  Old memories kept floating the afternoon away, until it was time to return to the ship.

Parques Holandes, Fuerteventura

The Canary Islands as a tourism destination were developed in the early 1960 by Scandinavian, Dutch, ,British and German vacation suppliers. Some of the islands have suffered from over-development, while others followed a more cautious approach. Definitely worth a destination visit of several days to weeks.

 

Mar 15

2025 Sky Princess Cruise from Ft.Lauderdale to Southampton, England

The Drawbridge in Ft.Lauderdale

Our first transatlantic cruise in 2022 was mostly the result of a Covid test gone lopsided, which prevented us from flying to Curaçao in the southern Caribbean. It was meant for a two wee trip to Barcelona. However before we arrived in Barcelona on that first cruise, the bug already got us and we booked a 2 week extension across the Mediterranean Sea and the Greek Isles. The next year’s cruise was a 28 day Pacific/South Seas trip, which unfortunately turned bad because of illnesses. In 2025 we once again opted for a transatlantic cruise, because the cost pretty much equals almost 2 roundtrip airline tickets and let’s face it, after 6 months of serving hotels guests, it just feels magnificent to be taken care of by a professional hospitality crew for a full two weeks. And last but not least for those who are sensitive to jet lag, the 6 hour time difference is absorbed over a number of days, rather than all at once. If it’s done right, it can’t get any better and we feel that Princess aims high in customer satisfaction.

Platinum’s with the Captain’s Circle

Our ship of choice (well it’s really more of a case of what ship needs to go over to Europe for the summer season) is the Sky Princess, the sister ship of Regal Princess, which we took three years earlier.  Also, our routing choice this year was based on TJ’s longtime wish to visit her family ancestry’s origins supposedly in Seaton Village, Devon, not far from our end port of Southampton.

Having learned from our terrible experience during the previous year’s Pacific cruise, we had an extra suitcase filled with every medicine imaginable. We also decided to start the last 4 days prior to boarding with a vitamin elderberry liquid shot, as we have learned how easy it is to get infected with a cold or flu, just standing in line to collect your medallion. More than 3,000 people in relatively close quarters will get you infected easily.

Soon after boarding we headed for the smoking lounge on aft deck 16, since that’s where the cool people usually hang out. Unfortunately this time, the smoking area housed not only the nicest people but also some of the vilest, loudest, ultra right wing individuals one can imagine. One of them actually during the cruise claimed to be a proud right wing nazi. A quick warning to the security officers on board, made this guy shut up for the duration of the crossing. It promised to be an interesting ride ahead of us.

The sea day length was estimated at 8 days and arriving in the Portuguese Resort island of Madeira on day 9. For a schedule like that we always try to reserve a stateroom on the starboard side of the ship as that puts our balcony towards the south with usually lots of sunshine for tanning during the crossing.  Yet, as often happens in the early months of the year, storms develop to the north of us, occasionally dipping down.

Our Besties from Vancouver Darcy and Caralee

That exact scenario was the case during most of our cruise, so we were not surprised that the captain had to change course deeper to the south. As a result we diverted from Madeira to Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands. Since we had already visited Madeira in 2022, we didn’t mind one bit. Our new friends from Vancouver, Canada, Darcy and Caralee (also smokers of course) joined us for the day on land in Santa Cruz and we all had a great time.

After Tenerife we were looking forward to a day in Casablanca, Morocco for a day strolling in the Ancient Medina which turned out magnificent. But our last port of call, supposedly La Coruña in the increasingly popular Galicia area of Spain was the next victim of weather, as we only quickly anchored to let some ship- entertainers off, before steaming northwest through the notorious Gulf of Biscayne to Southampton, England.

Leaving Ft. Lauderdale
Princess cruises
The Piazza in the Sky Princess
Captain's Circle
champagne party
Ship's Art
More Ship's Art
Enjoying the Music
Tenerife Medaillon
Two Margaritas please

Nov 30

The Road Leading Up to our 2025 International Travels

Beaver Island Ferry Biting through the Waves

This offseason had to be scheduled a bit different since TJ needed some facial skin procedures as a result of cancerous spots. Since we did not know the length of the recovery process we decided to have the procedure done early in November in Petoskey, so that everything could properly heal prior to traveling.  Less than a couple of weeks later we started our off season travels.
Our travel down from Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan is pretty much a given, since the youngest daughter and her adorable family lives in the city of Holland/Michigan. Here is where we usually stay a week or longer before the Christmas Holidays, to spend some fun days and have our car maintained. Our Murano is from 2007 and spend her first ten years short tripping the sunny Florida climate. Since 2016 she has primarily done the long journeys east-west and north-south. This year she is going to get a heavy make-over engine wise and new tires. She’s worth it. If you ever need a great travel car, the Nissan Murano definitely qualifies.

As soon as the car has received dealer approval for the trip south, we get on the road direction Nashville/Brentwood Tennessee for a Christmas visit with Kay who, just a year earlier, had lost her longtime husband Rich had also been  Han’s oldest friend in the USA.  A week of good food, great restaurants, some fancy nail work and visiting other old friends is on the usual menu, as well as a good amount of Mexican Train games.

After about a week of rest it’s time for our next trip stops bringing us back ‘Home” to Amelia Island/Fernandina Beach, about 30 miles north of Jacksonville, Florida. Here we usually stay a week to ten days with old friends Jack and Sharon, who provide absolute hospitality heaven, one block from the beach. We lived in Fernandina Beach for almost 10 years, operated a B&B on the beach there, had a very popular website and still have tons of friends there. So never a quiet moment when we’re on island.
Early January we say goodbye and leave for two weeks in a Hilton Head condo. Now Hilton Head is chosen because it has a nice swimming pool in the open public area, 4 floors up enveloped by condos. Han is in his element and swims daily between 75 and 100 laps. The hot whirlpool is an extra luxury for his knees. In the weekend son Drew and his wife Jessica, both work for supermarket giant Publix and live in Savannah, come for a visit and we all are having a great time thrift shopping, discovering the town and having dinner in several restaurants.

After the two weeks in Hilton Head we’re on the road again and via well established cities in Georgia such as university town Athens and Atlanta suburb of Marietta we drove back to Tennessee’s eastern mountain range and settled in a wonderful old Airbnb in  Allard near Jamestown with a great mom-and-pop grocery store called Burnette’s Suprette less than 500 yards away from the AirBnB. We used the week to cook dinner for TJ’s oldest Maranda, who owns a horse farm on the Cumberland Plateau and we rested that week, reading, eating and sleeping.

When the week was over, we were ready for the “exhaustion” of another transatlantic cruise.
We drove back 2-1/2 hours to Brentwood/Nashville where we left our car with dear friend Kay and flew Delta (yep we get points) to Ft.Lauderdale. (Of course via Atlanta…) An airport taxi later and we checked into a nice Airbnb owned by a fellow Caribbean brother, with whom we had a long and animated conversation about politics and cultural differences. The next morning we took off to the cruise ship port in search of the Sky Princess. which was supposedly going to take us from Ft. Lauderdale transatlantic to Madeira/Tenerife/Casablanca/Santiago de Compostela/La Coruna  to Southampton in England.
This time we were ready to explore England and TJ’s ancestry with Southampton as our starting point.

Apr 30

A Second Winter on Beaver Island Michigan

Our Besties Brian and Maria

Remembering the good times we had during our first winter on Beaver Island during Covid, and the fact that we have made deep friendships with some other “islanders”, combined again with the fact that it had been an exhausting vacation season at the Beaver Island Lodge, AND the fresh memory of our disastrous Pacific cruise, we early on in the year made the decision to spend the winter  on island.

You have to understand that during the summer season, which roughly runs from Memorial Day in May to a couple of weeks past Labor Day, we work 7 days a week and socialize with friends maybe twice, if our respective stars align. It’s the time you make your money for the year, so all focus is on planning for a perfect execution.

2023 was a rough season for hospitality on Beaver Island. After the flare up of Covid 19, the island had witnessed an increase in visitors, that now had been replaced by guests that demanded their entitlements to be met.  On a 55 Square mile island with a population of some 600 people that is at the best of times hard to accomplish. The hospitality infrastructure is simply not available. So it was a hard season and we wanted peace and tranquility and we lazied through the winter of 2023/24 with just a short April 2024 trip to see the kids and grandkids in Holland, Michigan.

Brian and Han making music

Dinner nights with friends, game nights (in particular Mexican Train and some card games) and music nights were on a loosely drawn up schedule. With our “besties” Brian and Maria, who own and operate the Beaver Island Retreat Glamping, we worked up a calendar and enjoyed a soft winter. Early in the new year we ventured out on some island boodles, to check on beaches, forests and new developments. For those of you unaware, an Island Boodle is a Beaver Island creation that involves a car or truck with a load bed , some loose chairs, a table, booze in a cooler, covers or blankets to stay warm and a cranked up radio and off you go for hours through the forests and past the beaches of an island that offers 9 miles of paved road and 97 miles of gravel and sand roads.

It’s fun.

Before we left the island again later that year, we told the owners of the Lodge that 2025 would be our 7th and last year to manage the operation, as we would be retiring.

 

Apr 15

Getting Sick During Travel is no Fun

Our Pacific cruise was over and more sick than ever, and ungodly early in the morning, we slouched ourselves to LAX for a flight back to Nashville, where our car was parked with friends Ric and Kay. It was going to be a long road back up to Beaver Island and another season of managing the Beaver Island Lodge.

It was the first time (and definitely the last time) we sailed on the Crown Princess, which in a deeper study of events, had been prone to serious illness events from the day she was launched. We had taken Delta Airlines from Nashville to LAX the day before the Crown sailed, took a cab from the airport and stayed in a San Pedro hotel that was known for catering to cruise ship guests. The advantage of that approach is that these people offer free shuttle service, know the perfect departure times and have experience in getting your luggage to the ship on time. The night before the cruise we had dinner in a little Mexican Pollo restaurant a block up the street from the hotel, which was excellent. 

The cruise ship port of Los Angeles is much smaller that Ft. Lauderdale and probably because of that a bit more chaotic. The check in lines were long and tiring, but once on the ship we went on a search for a smoking area and that became a nuisance because the smoking area on this ship is a cramped and covered area next to a bar on deck 16 with no open air flow.

The problem with this cruise was less the floorpan of the ship or even the small indoor smokers area with little to no ventilation. No, the problem was that the entire cruise was doomed by sickness and a ship hospital that was not prepared, or even equipped, to handle a daily onslaught of patients getting sicker and sicker.

We went on a handful occasions at least to find medicine like cold and flu, Vicks, Nyquil or Dayquil, nose spray,  but there was simply nothing available. We checked the stores on the ship for any cough or tight chest relief. Nada. Every port of call became a quest for medicine, but nothing really worked.

Then we heard from crew members that their nickname for the ship was the Death Boat. Turned out that ambulances waiting at our ports of call was for guests, who could not be helped on board anymore. At some ports we detected 3 to 4 ambulances on the pavement, waiting for passengers to be transferred.

It became so bad that fatalities were reported, at least 4 guests died from various causes such as drowning and heart attacks. What’s worse is that the Crown Princess medical staff was not up to facing this situation and when they ran out of medication they closed the hospital wing.

Eventually we made it back to San Pedro, took a tax to LAX and were back in Nashville by late afternoon. We did not want to get our friends sick with this ugly illness so we decided to check into what was a backwater Holiday Inn and drove the next morning to Berea, Kentucky where we stayed for 5 nights in a motel we’d been before. Since TJ was still not getting any better we went to an emergency clinic, where she got a steroid shot and antibiotics. The nurse made a mistake and administered a 15mg shot instead of a 6.5mg shot, so poison control was on our schedule that day, together with the doctor’s sincere apologies. But…the shot worked, because after almost 20 days of coughing and wheezing, she was better the next day,

The most important advice we can pass on after this trip is, to stock up on medications as much as you can. You know there are clothes you’re going to pack for your trip, that you will never wear. Use the space for medications.

It’ll pay off.

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