Exploring the Azores

(Excerpts from the Ship's Librarian, Thursday, May 28)
I am having a great time exploring Sao Miguel. The ship is docked right in the center of downtown Ponta Delgada. The town is a mix of the modern and the ancient. There is a small mall as well as many shops, cafes, bars and restaurants.

Yesterday, I walked about 5 miles around the town taking in the sites. Most of the architecture is Mediterranean in style with some contemporary “Euro-Trash” thrown in. The main street, along the water, is a wide boulevard. The older streets, uptown, are extremely narrow and dangerous for pedestrians, with tightly packed 2 & 3 story apartment buildings. It always amazes me how with so much land, people choose to live on top of one another. I visited 2 of the 3 largest churches in town, both over 400 years old. They were beautiful examples of rococo architecture. I ate dinner in a small restaurant, a delicious mixed grill of 5 kinds of fish with potatoes.

My dreams of beaching it were dashed by the cool temperatures in the low 70’s. Today I along with 50 cadets and Fr Farrell the chaplain, took a 4 hour tour of the volcanoes in the western part of the island. Passing through dairy farm land, the bus climbed to the summit of the volcano to a vista spot. Inside of the volcano are 2 lakes, one blue and the other green, called “The Twins”. We travelled into the volcano to the lakes and rested at a small town with coffee and Portuguese pastries. Returning to Ponta Delgada, we stopped at a pineapple plantation where some of the cadets, not me, sampled their pineapple liquor.

Tomorrow I’m joining a 7 hour tour of the east coast that includes a visit to a tea plantation, a swim in a hot spring and a lunch steam cooked for us in a geyser. Then it’s back to sea(and back to work) on Saturday heading for Gibraltar.