Hotel do Mar Povoação

... seen some stunning red purses that I would love for myself but can't justify the translation from euros to US dollars -- this trip has been gift enough (although I still have one more day to resist . . . if I can)!

We ended up sharing a lunch in the food court -- some grilled pork Brazilian platter with rice and salad that Dan succesfully pantomined on our behalf. He only got one set of a fork and knife and laughed that there was ...

... this was a producer of several fine wines plus had the added bonus of the passion of the owner, Comendador Jose Berardo. In response to the destruction in 2001 of the great Bamyan Buddhas of Afghanistan by the Taleban government, he began the recreation of over 6000 tons of marble and granite buddhas, lanterns, terracotta solders and various oriental scultpures along paths covering 9 acres of his land. When we saw it, it was only 3 years old and isn't ...

... a general history museum, ranging from ancient times to probably about the late 1800's, but I'm really glad we went because of the quality of the items on display. For example, usually in museums (at least the ones I've been to), there's all kinds of pieces of ceramics from blah, blah B.C. or a glass figurine, who's head had been broken off, from the Txing Dynasty (I made that up, in case you are wondering). However, here all of the ...

Today we had more classes. Unfortunately none of which warrant any sort of elaboration. I'm pretty disappointed that my classes are so dull, but I figure I didn't sign up for this because of the classes, not really. I'm getting twelve credits out of the deal and if my professors mark in about the same standard that I'm used to I'll have good grades to take home to Western too. It stinks that we have to spend so much time in icky boring classes, but what ...

As you can guess, the following entries, from here up until the end of my voyage, are all backdated. I've done my best to take notes and keep my own log going, but the detail may be quite patchy in places.

April 15th -
I got up at 6am to catch the ferry from Dublin back into Wales. Ciera drove me down to the terminal and we said goodbye quickly as I was the last passenger to get on. I got a private escort of all the ferry workers hurrying me to get on so they could ...

... one that is presented at Sea World, but it turned out to be way cooler because they brought the sea lions into the audience! Every single person got a kiss from one of them, and again, they acted just like little puppies gobbling up the attention of everyone they could. The next part of the show was a dolphin show, and it was definitely the best one I have every seen. There were no special costumes, acrobats, props or sound effects to enhance the show. It was just the same two ...

... sausage wrapped in some sort of pastry and a cream cake of some description. Danielle had the same, and a sum total of 3.60 euro it all cost! HAHA - i can see myself revisiting this part of the world :o) After satisfying our hunger, we stepped out again into the dusty, dirty city that came with often whiff's of sewage at every corner; again and went for a walk to the centre bit. As i was walking around i felt very unsafe standing out like a tourist and felt like i was just ...

There has been a bit of drama in the last 24 hours and my arrangements have changed considerably. While having a few beers in peters yesterday afternoon with Tim he told me that has left the boat that carried him from the Caribbean and has found another boat leaving tomorrow (which is today as im writing this) destined for the UK. I was happy for him as he has been telling me some bad stories of his trip so far about the captain on his boat. I told ...

We have been in the town of Horta on the Island of Faial for four days now. We entered the harbor mid afternoon on an overcast day but it was quite warm. We haven't tied up to the harbor as that is 9 euros per day. We have dropped the anchor 50m or so from the harbor wall and are using our dinghy to row back and forth to shore. This place has a great small island town feel to it, shops open at 12, close at 3 so the owners can ...

Land Ahoy! shouted Jeff waking me up. I slowly climbed out of the companionway into the cockpit and there it was, the island of Faial in the Azores. That was four hours ago. The misty land mass has now become much clearer. It is green, very green indicating it must rain here a lot. There are swirling white clouds hanging over the center of the island blocking the view of the summit. Small villages dot the coast with their backs ...