For those interested in our plans for Portugal in January and February I am posting the following information:
- Booking Website: www.homeaway.ca I think that it is important that you use the Canadian site so that you consistently get Canadian dollars for the search.
- Town where I have been looking: Carvoeiro, Algarve
- Price Range: $60 - $90 per night Canadian
- The unit that I have booked: I have included this so that you can see what you get for what you give. Regardless of what price is showing on this page, I paid $83 Canadian per night. Our landlord is a PremierPartner which is similar to an AirBNB SuperHost. We stayed with a SuperHost for several months in 2017-2018 in Toronto. I suspect that SuperHosts and PremierPartners try harder.
Our Unit The unit occupies three floors - 1st, living room, kitchen, 2nd bed and bath, roof top terrace.
- Billing Details: So that you can see a sample of the final cost calculation here is the quote for our unit.
I am currently looking for a 2nd month but I am taking a couple of days off to clear what I have seen from my head.
I intend to use the flight application titled "Hopper" to plan and book airlines. They have a unique algorithm that suggest to you not only what flight to take, but when to book it to get the best rates. Speaking of flights, I have not figured out the flights (Faro or Lisbon) and how to actually get to Corvoeiro (bus, mule, train).
For my birthday the most important gift you could give would be to promise to never forget.
How to celebrate a 70th birthday? Carol and I both have serious head and chest colds and were basically comatose on her birthday. My birthay present to Carol was a concoction of Tylenol and Vitamin C every 6 hours for the full day.
I also purchased her some front row tickets to the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch of the ARABSAT-6A satellite from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Centre. We had just been there in March touring LC-39A and were awaiting the lauch eagerly.
This launch was very historical in that all three boosters used for the launch were recovered and will be reused. Videos of the recovery are amazing. It is something that I never thought that I would see.
Finally some words to match the photos.
These photos were taken at East Beach on St Simons. It is one of the best beaches that I have ever seen - kilometers long, a couple of hundred meters wide, clean sand and people really enjoying walking, digging and exercising their pets. I really dislike walking on most beachs but this one was a great walk. The sand was firm under foot, it had a very gradual descent to the water.
I stopped to help some old folk with their group photos. They were happy to oblige and share their pleasure.
We have moved on from Nettles Island to Titusville for the planned launch of a communications satellite at 6:58PM this evening. While at dinner we had a quick look at the NASA website to ensure that we had the time right. Oops, it has been delayed until March 15th. We will be gone - nuts.
We are installed in a unit on Nettles Island. It is old and tired, unclean, and inhospitable. But for now it is home. We rented it based on photos on the internet and we will be a lot less likely to do that in the future. I have decided that we will not do any cooking in the place - I would not know where to begin. Joan saw the place before we arrived and warned us but it was all too late, we had made the booking and now we are living with it.
We are changing our plans though: there is a launch from Canaveral on the 13th and we will stay in Titusville for a couple of days to see the launch and visit the space centre and then we will head to The Villages to stay with some friends from Collingwood/Palm Desert who now own a home In The Villages. Our final stop will be with Marsha and Jamie on St Simon Island in Georgia - then we will head home.
Our excursions from this cruise have been generally disappointing to me. Yesterday in Ocho Rio we had a great excursion.
We had opted for the VIP beach excursion complete with beach chairs, appetizers, lunch, open bar and entertainment. It was everything that it claimed it would be. The appetizers were good and plentiful, the meal of jerked chicken and lobster was very good, and there were ample opportunities to get yourself plastered. The entertainment was not outstanding but it was entergetic.
If there was one complaint it was that they were serving a local bottom shelf rum in their drinks and my guess was that it was refined by Sunoco - head-shakingly strong. After pouring the 1st drink into the sand I decided to show the bartender my last name on my shipboard card. He got very excited and made me a rum punch using Appleton 151 - still strong but it did not give me whiplash. He kept the bottle under the counter just for Carol and I.
The staff were very good, attentive to every need and eagerly interacting with the group. Both Carol and I were grateful for a good final excursion to the cruise.
Carol and I are Panama Canal veterans. We have now travelled from the Atlantic through all of the locks to the Pacific. The 1st three locks were aboard the cruise ship and they took 90 minutes. The last 2 sets of locks into the Pacific took 10 hours (6 hours by bus, 4 hours by boat). Just saying.
Here is a picture of Carol and I studying the lock from insire our cabin. It is funny that the camera perferred to record Carol and I looking at the lock rather than the lock itself. It is an overlaid selfie I guess.
We decided to take the Hop On/Hop Off bus through Cartagena. Although it is a beautiful city with a terrific old walled portion of the city, it was overrun with stret vendors trying to sell sunglasses, tablecloths and bottled water amongst the usually locals crafts. I swear it was the same tablecloth vendor in each square and side street.
There were not many opportunities for photographs but here are a few.
