So, trepidation. If this cruise on Ventura wasn’t a good one then P&O would slide onto our shitlist. Everyone’s got a shitlist. And we didn’t want P&O to move to our shitlist because as a cruise company they’d generally been not bad prior to 2021, and for us, they were super-convenient, sailing often from just down the coast from us. “Please be good,” we thought, “or, at least, better than Iona, which is a low-enough bar for you to surely exceed.”

This wouldn’t be our first time on Ventura, and if you’ve got the ability to select Cruises from the site’s menu then you’ll see that we previously sailed on her in 2017 on a weekend cruise to Belgium. Not only that, but Ventura is a Grand-class ship so to counter that trepidation that I just keep going on about like some madly-obsessed lunatic there was that feeling of familiarity to look forward to, and the warmth that came from knowing this was our favourite design of ship. 2021 had been a year of new ships for us in the form of Regal Princess, Scarlet Lady, Sky Princess, and (mutters) Iona, with only Ventura offering a return trip. We approached this cruise cautiously, but hopeful and as positive-minded as we could, mostly because we still would have pandemic cruise credits with P&O to use up at some point and we didn’t want to throw them and our annual leave away on something that we ultimately would not be massively looking forward to.

Right then, as certain popular cruise bloggers are prone to saying. That’s set the scene in our heads ahead of this Ventura cruise. Was it important I did that? No. Could you have cared any less now that you’ve joined the exclusive club of a handful of people who’ve actually read all that? It’s highly doubtful.

This cruise on Ventura would eventually take us to Spain, Portugal, and a few of the Canary Islands, and it should have taken us to Madeira too but if you ever get that far into this travelogue series you’ll discover that this doesn’t occur for reasons I’ll explain then. The reason we picked this cruise and used up some of our cruise credit was specifically because it was hitting Portugal and the Canary Islands, neither of which we’d visited at all before. But before we could do all that we had to get aboard and depart from Southampton.

Covid-testing had been a stressful activity but necessary precaution ahead of all of 2021’s cruises. As I write this now just into the second half of 2022 that requirement is becoming less stressful with at-home testing with certification and, in some cases now, a wink and a nod and a “Yeah, sure, I’ve definitely tested myself last night and I definitely don’t have anything honest mate” at the port. I have thoughts on all this but I won’t go into them here. The test for Ventura was conducted at the port, involved no queue of traffic at all, which was nice, and was all done with negative results texted to our phones before we’d driven from the testing marquee to the terminal. Lovely. Actually getting onto the ship then involved such a long and unmoving queue on the walkway that our cases made it to the room before we’d boarded. Less lovely, but who cares, right?

The cabin we’d chosen on Ventura was C523. C means it’s deck 10, and deck 10 on Grand-class cruise ships operated by Princess and P&O mean you get a double-sized balcony, half-covered. We like big balconies even if it seems all the major cruise lines have developed an aversion to them with their newer designs, and this mix of cover and non-cover means you can enjoy it in any weather, take advantage of the sun in reasonable privacy if that’s your thing, and get uninterrupted views of the stars above at night (so long as your neighbours either side and above you remember to turn their effing balcony lights off). 523 is an odd number so that means it’s on the starboard side of the ship which is useful for my wife as she’s easily confused by ship layouts hence us trying to be consistent when booking.

As I’ve mentioned already, it was Halloween, and a smattering of themed decorations were present in The Exchange when we headed there for drinks and an early attempt at trivia. P&O do a very good British pub on their ships but our track record prior to this point had been poor in getting the first drinks we’d ordered; every time they’d not had one of the first things to catch our eyes on the drinks menu. However, we were pleasantly surprised when this turned out not to be the case on Ventura. Not only that, but we then went and won the trivia. Prior to 2021 we’d never won any trivia on a P&O ship but on both Iona and Ventura we had decent runs. Either we got smarter or a lot of people got dumber at around the time Covid hit the UK, and checking what the politicians and people on social media were generally frothing at the mouth about over that period I’m leaning towards the latter.

We ended up sharing a table for dinner just because it was easier for everyone involved. The food was average at best, but there was nothing wrong with it. One of the more pleasant surprises was that the menu featured a few things that were slightly different, and that was good to see as cruise lines have certainly tended to keep a fairly small range of dishes on rotation over the years, and especially so in the pandemic era when there’s been repeated messaging about “Oh, we have a limited selection because of Covid” and “Oh, we’ve had to temporarily suspend that thing we used to do or offer because of Covid.”

The wind was fierce and the sea conditions rough on the sailaway – enough that traffic in the Solent was limited, the sailaway was delayed a few hours, and we were warned to expect a bit of a lean on the ship – so it wasn’t a complete surprise to later on hear announcements on the ship asking for stretcher bearers. We were also told not to worry if checking the position of the ship at any point as instead of heading directly towards the Bay of Biscay we were going to detour towards Brixham in Devon to offload the pilot in the early hours of the morning as it was far too rough to attempt it anywhere in the Solent or English Channel.

We finished our first evening aboard Ventura in Metropolis with cocktails and the accompanying sounds of the pianist who we got to chat with a bit during breaks.

We would have two full days at sea before hitting our first port in Portugal.

We awoke after a terrible night’s sleep which we think was down to our cabin’s position coupled with the sea conditions. C523 is in what cruise ships consider to be the best location: midship. Midship means that you get less up-and-down motion than being fore or aft because the ship acts a little like a see-saw on the waves. If you don’t like too much motion then this is considered better, and things that are considered better are more expensive. Midship cabins are more expensive than those at the fore, which is where we’d normally book a cabin, but not because of the price difference; no, we love lots of motion. C523 was all we could get, though, because we left it late to book. Our cabin, however, despite apparently receiving less vertical motion, appeared to be on the pivot point of the ship. It creaked and cracked and groaned all night. We had to remove all the hangers from the wardrobe to stop them driving us insane but we were still woken up dozens of time through the night wondering if we’d just heard someone stumble into our room and bounce off the wall.

Luckily, neither of us suffer from motion sickness and if there’s one thing that’s very welcome after a poor night’s sleep then it’s a day of doing very little. Armed with reading material and some photos of the day’s programme of events on the phone for convenience we headed off to do nothing but relax.

We don’t often go and see talks or shows on cruise ships – that’s just the way we are – but a talk about journalism by Ian Murray caught my eye and we gave it a go. Very interesting, and some great anecdotes alongside the history of how local journalism has changed (not for the better) over the decades.

The day was spent mostly inside Ventura. We’d have loved to have used our balcony more but the wind on the first day of November was ferocious and had a bite to it as you can imagine, and the weather was clear one minute, showering with rain the next.

We did not go with a drinks package on Ventura. Iona had demonstrated to us oh so clearly that P&O’s drinks packages are designed for the lowest common denominator of drinkers who cruise with them, and that’s not us. This, though, gave us more freedom to pick what we actually wanted to drink without worrying about wasting what we’d already spent on a near-worthless daily package. Wine flights in the Glass House and a pre-dinner cocktail in the Tamarind Club went down nicely, and this would be our first encounter with the club’s singer, Nikki Jayne, on this cruise. She would prove to be a firm favourite.

And as for dinner on this first sea day aboard Ventura: we decided to pay extra for some speciality dining at the Epicurean. Our experience at this venue in the past had been decent, but Iona a few months earlier – and I know I keep harping on about that horrible ship – had inflicted upon us an absolutely awful meal, environment, level of service, and spot in which to eat. We wanted to give P&O a chance to redeem themselves. Everything on Ventura was a chance for P&O to say to us “Hey, we’re sorry, look, really, Iona was an aberration, a horrible mistake, we will make things up to you, you’ll see.”

We loved our meal at the Epicurean on Ventura. Everything was perfectly prepared, the service was impeccable; it all felt just like it should. So impressed and relieved were we by the meal we’d had, we decided to book a second visit to the Epicurean for later in the cruise.

The only issue with speciality dining on a cruise ship, for us, is that we tend to book for late in the evening and it typically tends to render us incapable of doing anything else after we’ve finished. A walk? A dance? Hell no. I just want to unbutton my trousers, thank you very much. We ended up taking a drink back to the cabin and watching Hotel Transylvania 2 in bed – yes, we are that rock ‘n’ roll when we cruise – ahead of another creaking, groaning night of highly-interrupted sleep.

The second day at sea on Ventura rolled around, a little brighter, a little less windy, a little warmer.

We did even less on this day aboard the cruise ship than we’d done the day before, and that’s no bad thing. We did manage to get a little more time on our balcony for some decent views while reading. There were no trivia wins today, but we got close with a tie-breaker that we ended up losing out on. We also met another couple with whom we would start combining forces for the trivia for the remainder of the cruise.

One thing that we did spot in the activity planner for the day was a large advert for Eric Lanlard’s Afternoon Tea, something we’d heard good things about but had never experienced before. We decided to book it up and give it a go and we were not disappointed at all. The presentation was wonderful, the range of food very interesting, and it met with our approval. Is it the best afternoon tea we’ve ever had on a cruise ship? No. To date, that accolade belongs to afternoon tea on Virgin Voyages’ Scarlet Lady, probably on the quality of the tea itself, rather than the assortment of sweet and savoury dishes. However, we wouldn’t hesitate to have this special afternoon tea on a P&O cruise again.

It was a formal night on P&O Ventura and we’re not the biggest fans of formal nights. I don’t particularly like wearing jackets as I find them too restricting in movement and don’t have the inclination to get something tailored for my body shape that might make me appreciate them more. Since we were pretty full from that afternoon tea anyway we decided to buy a bottle of wine at the Glass House, grab some Pringles and M&Ms from the shop, and retire to our room for the evening to have a cinema night, watching the first two of the Maze Runner films. Yeah, we know how to live. The wine was lovely, the evening views from our balcony were gorgeous, and the movies were just appalling.

In the next post of this P&O Ventura Canary Islands Cruise travelogue series we’ll be paying our first ever visit to Portugal with a stop at Lisbon, an excursion to see the city’s aqueducts, and a lovely sailaway out of the port at sunset under the city’s bridge.

After two full days at sea on P&O Ventura we woke up in the capital city of Portugal, Lisbon. Not only was this our first visit to Lisbon, it was also our first visit to Portugal.

“You’re going to Lisbon? Oh you have got to try the tarts, the egg custard ones, the pastel de natas, surely you’ve heard of them?”

“Yeah, we’ve heard of them. What else should we do in Lisbon? What would you recommend?”

“After the egg custard tart things?”

“Yeah, what else is there to do in Lisbon?”

“You could take a tram to an egg custard tart shop, I suppose. The trams are yellow, just like custard.”

“Do the Portuguese have some kind of mind-control ray that has been developed by custard tart bakers in Lisbon? Nod once if you’re under its control. We may be able to deprogram you.”

It was surprisingly difficult to get any must-see things in Lisbon from any of the people we knew who’d visited the city, although the people we knew were exactly the sorts of people who would say “Pay for a tour? When I can walk at random and possibly accidentally see something? I think not!” Even grudgingly pulling up some websites allegedly containing things to do didn’t produce a massive list of interesting or varied sights, with numerous suggestions being so far from Lisbon they hardly even counted. It felt like someone visiting London for the first time and being told “Definitely try some jellied eels, then take a trip to see Oxford University.” In the end we did what we always do when we’re visiting a strange place for the first time and that’s took a look at the excursions being offered for our cruise ship’s visit by the cruise line itself. Almost immediately we spotted a tour that included a visit to the aqueduct, a look at the reservoirs, a walk through some of the reservoir tunnels, then a walking tour of some of the city’s landmarks. Engineering works of art and history? Yeah, that ticked way more boxes than joining a queue at a place that sold tarts to tourists did.

The weather in Lisbon for our organised excursion with P&O can best be described as changeable. In that respect it followed the pattern of sunshine and showers that had been with us down the Bay of Biscay for the preceding two days. However, it was warmer than England (well, duh) and the showers were lighter and briefer. The view from our balcony was across the calm surface of the River Tagus.

From the port side of the ship we could see Lisbon itself. The church-like building prominent in a couple of the photos below is the former seventeenth century Church of Santa Engrácia, converted in 1916 to the National Pantheon. Within its interior are the tombs of celebrated national persons and cenotaphs. Our knowledge of famous Portuguese people is limited enough that only the cenotaphs of the explorers Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama trigger a bell of recognition. The Vasco da Gama Bridge which crosses the Tagus (pictured above as it could be seen in the distance from our balcony on Ventura) is the second longest bridge in Europe.

We had to meet ashore for this cruise excursion as opposed to meeting in a lounge or the theatre on board the ship. Meeting ashore is a far better way to do things, and particularly so when masks are still encouraged or required. No more sitting around uncomfortably warm for minute after minute after minute, no more listening to the same background music playing, no more trying to play the game where you guess which people at the ends of the rows of seats will pretend they didn’t hear the instruction to leave in an orderly fashion row-by-row so they can rush out and nab what they consider the best seats on the bus. Now, if those people are so absolutely desperate for the front seats they have to get off the ship early and spend all their time on the bus waiting for us instead.

I was quite pleased by the reflection in the wet surface of the dock at Lisbon of Ventura and, as you can see from the photo below, we were moored alongside MSC Virtuosa during our visit to Portugal.

After a short drive through the streets of Lisbon with a few of the sights pointed out, many of which we’d see on foot later, we arrived at the Águas Livres Aqueduct, part of what forms the historic Museu da Água (or Water Museum). We were early – it hadn’t opened when we arrived – and had to brave a fleeting shower before our guide popped back out of the office with keys to lead us on our way.

Lisbon is an odd choice for a location for a large city given its historical lack of fresh, drinking water but cities have a way of growing up where they want and Lisbon’s easy access to the ocean was attractive. The Tagus that flows beside Lisbon and out into the Atlantic also pulls in a lot of seawater into the estuary with the result being it’s too brackish to drink so water was transported from farther afield by aqueducts built by the Romans, but by the sixteenth century this wasn’t enough for the growing population and proposals were made to use and improve on what was already there to increase supply for the increased demand. It wasn’t until the early eighteenth century that proper taxation was levied specifically for the funding of the construction of the Águas Livres Aqueduct and this was eventually completed enough to start delivering water in 1748. The centrepieces of the design of the gravity-fed aqueduct were the 35 arches supporting the aqueduct and crossing the Alcantara valley. It was this part of the aqueduct that we would begin our Lisbon cruise excursion walking along.

The views over Portugal’s capital from the aqueduct were good, but not great. Lisbon is a fairly flat, arguably uninteresting city to look at from the air, although there are reasons for that which I’ll get to in a minute. However, it was nice to be above the valley with its main roads passing below us and its houses built up on the sloping hills either side. The tallest of the arches of the aqueduct reaches 65 metres in height and, like those across the main, highest, central section of the construction, is pointed in a Gothic style. The smaller, supporting arches on the lower sections of ground either side, though, have rounded arches instead, borrowing from Romanesque architecture and acknowledging the work of the Romans in first building an aqueduct system for the city.

In 1755 an earthquake centred in the Atlantic Ocean hit Lisbon resulting in fires, a tsunami, immense destruction, and a loss of life potentially as high as 50,000 people. Local people had rushed to the open docks assuming they were safer from the collapsing buildings around them, only to watch the water recede then rapidly flood back in. Candles that had been lit for religious reasons were knocked over and the city went up in flames. 85% of Lisbon’s buildings were destroyed, but the newly-constructed aqueduct survived intact. One positive aspect that came from the result of the fire was the birth of seismology, and there was a political shift away from some of the theological aspects of Portuguese society towards a more scientific approach, no doubt accelerated by the destruction of all the churches and perception that divine intervention had been somewhat lacking. Funny, that. The subsequent, relatively uniform look of Lisbon’s buildings and its generally low-level architecture can therefore be excused by having the city burned to the ground.

The main course of the aqueduct is 18 kilometres long and we were able to look along some of its length when we stepped through the interior chamber of Águas Livres. This gave us a view of the arched, protective tunnel and the stone gutter that would have held the pipe that delivered the water to Lisbon. Being gravity-fed, the aqueduct relied on the water coming from a higher elevation to a lower one and the shallow angle of the aqueduct meant that the time for water to make its journey to Portugal’s capital was measured in days. The aqueduct fed numerous fountains constructed in the city and was still in operation until the 1960s when it was finally decommissioned.

We had walked along most of the length of the northern side of the Lisbon aqueduct and after passing through the interior we returned to our starting point by walking back along the southern side. This gave us more interesting views as we could spot the Ponte 25 de Abril suspension bridge over the Tagus (we would cruise under there when leaving Lisbon later that evening, and you can see photos and videos of that in a later post in this travelogue series) as well as the Sanctuary of Christ the King sculpture, inspired by Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.

However, what we mostly had was sunshine directly in our eyes so photo opportunities were more limited as we made our way back to the bus.

A short ride brought us to the next part of our tour of the Water Museum complex in Lisbon, the Reservatório da Mãe d’Água das Amoreiras (or Mother of the Water Reservoir).

Mãe d’Água is the largest of the reservoirs built to store water for the city of Lisbon. Completed in 1834 it can hold up to 5500 cubic metres of water. More than that, though, it looks really pretty. Brightly lit stone walls and columns reflecting in inky black water. Lovely. The church-like appearance of the reservoir was not accidental and you could almost be forgiven for seeing a statue of a religious figure on the far wall against the green background of the stones; that’s what I thought it looked like, anyway. That’s just pareidolia at work, though. The window at the top of the wall is from a viewing area at the back of the reservoir. Just below it is a stylised dolphin’s head which forms the end of the aqueduct and it’s from there that the water used to stream out onto the cascade – green and yellow with limestone build-up – and into the 7.5 metre deep pool.

Access to the viewing area is through a couple of archways built into the cascade and up a steep, narrow set of steps. You can see the view from the viewing area both along the aqueduct’s tunnel and down into the reservoir below.

Continuing up the steps – well, we had to as there was a large tour group that we were part of behind us – brought us onto the flat roof of the Mãe d’Água reservoir, and this provided us with more views of Lisbon from a relatively high vantage point. We had plenty of time to take a slow stroll around the top of the reservoir before making our way back down into the building.

Meeting up with our cruise excursion group outside, we then all took a short walk back to where the bus was waiting. This was just beside the commemorative arch built beside the aqueduct in 1748 to celebrate delivery of the first water through the system.

A very short bus ride brought us to the Principe Real Garden, but it wasn’t the garden that was the true destination.

Down a set of steps in the centre of the garden took us to another reservoir, the Reservatório da Patriarcal. Not as big, not as clean, not as attractive, and certainly not as filled with water as Mãe d’Água had been, but this reservoir had something else: a tunnel we could walk through.

After a short explanation of how the reservoir system operated we all put on lights strapped to our heads then set off on a walk through tunnels that would otherwise have been pitch black, were often barely over head height for me, were cool, echoing, a little eerie, but fabulous. The walk was around 400 metres long.

We emerged into daylight and relatively high heat and humidity once more at Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara, a landscaped terrace with a large fountain and some decent views across part of Lisbon again. This brought the aqueduct and reservoirs portion of our cruise excursion to an end.

In the next part of this P&O Ventura cruise travelogue series I’ll cover the short walking tour of Lisbon that we then commenced upon.

This second half of the Lisbon tour features a short walk from where we’d emerged blinking in the sunshine from the reservoir tunnels down to where the bus would be picking us up. The relatively short but winding route did take us past some of Lisbon’s historical spots, though, so we picked up some information along the way and here you’ll be able to learn what we learnt and see what we saw.

We began our walk where we’d finished the water system exploration, and that was at Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara. This is a terraced spot with a large fountain, popular as a viewing location thanks to its elevation. The annual Web Summit was taking place in Lisbon during our visit and, yes, I too think it’s horribly ironic and clearly the brainchild of people of management levels and above that a summit about all things web takes place in person.

“Let’s get the brightest brains and interested parties to discuss the latest innovations on the internet!”

“Yes! Great idea! Let’s book hotels and auditoria and arrange for people to fly in from all over the world! Somewhere fairly warm. There ain’t no I.T. person like a sweaty I.T. person.”

“So we’re not going to host this online using the internet itself?”

“You’re fired Keith. That sounds horribly like the sort of common sense that comes from the lower echelons of the workforce.”

The most prominent sight from our vantage point was Saint George’s Castle (or Castelo de São Jorge) and it certainly looks like the sort of place that would be top of our list for a visit if and when we ever return to Lisbon. Prior to being taken by the Christians in what was arguably the only success during the failed Second Crusade in 1147, the castle or other fortifications on the hill had been used defensively by Celtic tribes, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Suebi, Visigoths, and, finally, Moors. Personally, after the defences had been overrun by the fourth of fifth group of people I’d probably have written this location off as indefensible or just plain jinxed and set up camp somewhere else, but that’s just me, your average know-nothing-about-military-matters Mark.

We began our walking tour, and just before leaving the terrace we passed a memorial statue to Tomás Quintino Antunes who founded the Portuguese newspaper, Diário de Notícias, in 1864.

Very close to the statue was the uppermost point of the Ascensor da Glória, one of Lisbon’s famous funicular railways. We’d seen photos of the funicular trains before, looking pretty and yellow and clean and always photographed in bright sunshine and with high saturation and oh my god no, no these ones were not like that at all. Grim is the word that springs to mind. You think that a narrow, steep incline between old buildings with traditional funicular carriages riding up and down them sounds quaint, and maybe you think that a little bit of street art might add to the uniqueness and touristic appeal, but then you get some truly appalling graffiti instead and you wonder if you’ve accidentally transported something out of the 1970s that might have featured in the movie The Warriors to Europe by mistake. Yeah, if you’re thinking of riding one of Lisbon’s funiculars then I’d pick something other than this one.

Our walking route took us towards Largo Trindade Coelho, a public square for want of a better description, but this necessarily brought into view something you see a fair bit around Portugal by all accounts: tiled façades on buildings. You could probably guess their purpose, but in case it’s not clear, while these are now and always were to some extent decorative, originally, their glazed surfaces provided additional protection from damp conditions that the materials used for the buildings couldn’t adequately supply. Aesthetically, I’m not sold on the look of the tiles, but I imagine that if you’re the sort of person who loves flock wallpaper then you probably have a different opinion entirely.

Into Largo Trindade Coelho next, and the purpose of this was to have pointed out the buildings around it and the statue and marker inside. On the north side of the square was the Jesuit church and museum of São Roque, which is possibly Portuguese for Saint Rocky, portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in a number of movies. I can’t be sure as I’d wandered away from our guide to take some photos. The main statue there, though, of some local interest, was called O Cauteleiro and it’s a monument to the lottery ticket sellers, with the buying of lottery tickets once being a popular pastime for people desperate to escape poverty, and the country’s national lottery having been in existence for well over 200 years. The worn bronze on the hand and ticket of the statue shows you just how much people like to rub statues for luck despite any evidence of it working, and just how little people care about the transmission of germs or whether or not their hands smell like old pennies all day.

The other memorial in the square was the Consórcio de Dom Luís. This obelisk with circular crest was erected in 1862 to commemorate the marriage of Luís I to Maria Pia of Savoy. I’d like to say that they fell in love over their shared adoration of lollipops, hence the shape of the monument, but the truth is that Maria Pia wasn’t even Luís’s first choice for a wife. Following a number of deaths without heirs in the royal line of Braganza there was some rush to get Luís married and starting up the royal family baby production line. He narrowed some possible brides down from a list of noble houses around Europe, then asked his cousin, Queen Victoria, and his great-uncle, Leopold of Belgium, for advice. They both recommended Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria but her father turned down the marriage on the grounds that she was too young. Thus it was that Luís picked Maria Pia of Savoy instead, and that request for a hand in marriage was accepted even though she was even younger than her Austrian namesake.

More tiled buildings and streets and pavements led us to the next stop.

Largo do Carmo was another public square with two items worthy of note. On the east side of the square stood the white walls of the Carmo Convent with its impressive gothic doorway recessed into the stone. That’s another historical location added to our “to visit when we come back to Lisbon” list. Although built in 1389 for the Carmelites, much of the exterior architecture facing the square was reconstructed in the early twentieth century to fix some of the effects of the 1755 earthquake responsible for a lot of damage and loss of life in Portugal. I covered some of the ramifications of that earthquake in the previous post in this travelogue series. The convent itself is now ruins and a museum.

The stone structure in the square in front of the arched doorway to the convent is the Chafariz do Carmo, an 18th century public fountain that was part of the city’s aqueduct system. The quality of its construction allowed it to survive pretty well intact when other structures in Lisbon had collapsed in the earthquake of that century, and we could tell from the stylised dolphins that decorated it both that it was connected in time if not physically to the Mãe d’Água reservoir that we’d visited earlier in the day and that stonemasons really didn’t know what a dolphin looked like back then.

Our Lisbon walk took us to the southern end of Rua do Carmo and northwards and downwards along its length is where we headed. Our next stop was visible all along this pedestrianised road and only required a small detour around a couple of different busking groups to reach.

The Santa Justa Lift was fully inaugurated in 1902, and, like the funicular trains, was designed to assist the people of Lisbon with getting up and down the low but numerous hills that made up their city. It was originally powered by steam, but within 5 years it had been converted to use electricity. Featuring neo-Gothic designs in iron, the lift stands 45 metres high and contains two cars capable of carrying nearly 30 people each in them up the seven storeys to the viewing platform and walkway at the top that’s a popular tourist attraction. We’d very likely take a ride in the lift should we return to Lisbon because it feels like the sort of thing a visitor to the city should do, but there was no time on this day’s trip.

Equally as interesting to me as the engineering wonder that was the Santa Justa Lift was the street art near its base. This was Two Pelicans In The Heart Of Lisbon by street artist Artur Bordalo (or Bordalo II), part of his Big Trash Animals collection, made mostly from rubbish as you could probably guess from the photos. Impressive work and a wonderful contrast to the decorations that had blighted the Ascensor da Glória earlier on our walk.

We continued along the Rua do Carmo with a few stops so our guide could point out some old shops along the way. Do you want some gloves? There’s a glove shop! The designs of these buildings were early 20th century in the main, Neoclassical for the main part but with hints of Art Nouveau to me.

Our short walking tour of Lisbon was almost at an end now. Coming out of the north end of Rua do Carmo we emerged at Rossio Square, the popular name for Praça de D. Pedro IV. Pedro IV briefly ruled Portugal, and when I say briefly, I mean briefly. He ascended to the throne in March 1826 and had abdicated by May in favour of his daughter. The reason for this was that he was already Pedro I of Brazil and working two jobs in two different time zones was just never going to work out. I couldn’t do it now and I’ve got the ability to work remotely over the internet. Take note, Web Summit people. Pedro had an interesting reign, filled with suppressing rebellions, becoming emperor, abdications, and scandalous affairs, but he is credited with helping to bring representational governments to power in Brazil and Portugal in place of the absolutist regimes they’d previously been subjected to, and a popular, attractive, open space in the centre of Lisbon named in his honour is the reward for that.

These sorts of walking tours tacked onto the end of other excursions are of necessity fleeting things designed to eat up some time, point out a few things, give you a taste of where you’re visiting, and almost always spending longer than you’d like in one place and not enough time at all in another. You can’t please everyone. We’d have liked to have wandered into the main part of Rossio Square to see the waved mosaic flooring there or the monuments or the fountains but we merely strolled past it and got to admire some of the architecture around the area from a distance. On the north side of the square was the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in the Palladian Neoclassical style. It sits on the location of what had been the Baroque-style headquarters of the Portuguese Inquisition who, unlike their Spanish counterparts, were never immortalised in a Monty Python sketch. The headquarters had survived the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 but burnt down in 1836. Shame. It was decided to rebuild on the spot a theatre and it was named in honour of Maria II, the daughter to whom Pedro had abdicated the throne, and another member of the Braganza Royal Family who had a life filled with adventure: married off to an evil uncle who usurped the throne in classic fairy tale style is just the start of it.

It’s all going a bit architecture crazy here at the end of this account of our meander through Lisbon’s streets for which I make no apology as it’s something I’m very keen on and this is my site.

And so, still heading northwards from Rossio Square, now to a style of architecture I’d never heard of before: Neo-Manueline. As its name implies, this is a revival of an earlier Manueline style that is a 16th century Portuguese take on Gothic. The revival period covers the late 19th century when this train station – the Estação do Rossio – was built. It’s impossible to gaze at its façade and not be mesmerised by the doorways formed from overlapping horseshoe-shaped arches. Absolutely beautiful work. This station was the site of the assassination of Sidónia Pais in 1918, another one of late 19th and early 20th century Portugal’s Interesting People. What does his story contain? Military background, politician who helped to create a constitution that he then completely ignored when mounting a coup, and afterwards, becoming de facto President in a country that had no established position for that role, watering down the separation of religion and state to get the support of the Catholics. I mean, damn Portugal! Was there anyone in that country in a position of power from 1800 onwards who didn’t wake up each morning and think “Insurrection? Affair? Subjugation of part of the population? War with someone? Or something a little more old-fashioned and murdery today?”

Our walking tour of Lisbon came to an end at the place where our bus was due to meet us. We were a little early or it was stuck in traffic, but either way that gave me a great chance to be suitably impressed by the building we were standing outside. If you like Art Deco – and what monster doesn’t like Art Deco? – then you can’t help but gasp just a little at the sheer beauty that is the Teatro Eden. Functioning as a theatre above an arcade of shops from 1931 to 1989 it is now a hotel, with only the front-facing elements of the original building surviving. Sure, I wasn’t a fan of the tiled fronts on buildings generally, but the rest of Lisbon certainly wowed me with some of the engineering and architectural styling we got to see on this day visiting the city.

Opposite the theatre, in the middle of Restauradores Square, was the Monument to the Restorers, an 1886 obelisk which commemorated victory at the end of the war between Portugal and Spain in 1668 that had seen Portugal gain independence and its own royal house – the Braganza family – after the union of 1580 had subjected the country and all its overseas dependencies to Spanish rule under the Habsburgs. The two statues on the left and right side of the plinth in the photos represent Victory and Independence respectively.

The final photo I fired off before boarding our bus back to the port was of the lovely lines of the Altis Avenida Hotel, mainly because it just looked pretty against the blue sky over Lisbon. Despite a far older appearance, this was built in the 1940s, but the architect, Luís Cristino da Silva, was fond of the Salazarist style of architecture which borrowed elements from Germany and Italy’s futurism leanings towards impressive, modern representations of earlier, imperial designs.

And with that, and a short bus ride – that had we realised it was going to be quite that short we might have skipped in order to walk back and spend more time in the city, possibly stopping for a beer somewhere (because we’re us and that’s what we like to do) – we were dropped off back by the cruise terminal in Lisbon. The long building opposite the ships was a government building and reviews on Google suggest that being typical of governments the world over it’s not a place where anyone has anything to positive to say about experiences inside. Outside it looked nice, though.

MSC Virtuosa and P&O Ventura looked lovely on the Tagus, and all that surface water at the port from the rain showers that had accompanied the morning part of our excursion had dried out in the very dry, sunny, and warm afternoon of our brief city walk.

Back on board Ventura we made our way to the top deck to grab some lunch and a few shots of the Lisbon city skyline from our cruise ship just in case it was miraculously any different from how it had looked before we’d disembarked earlier that day. Of course it was different. The sun was in a new position in the sky. The colours were brighter. The shadows were elsewhere. The National Pantheon still dominated the view, though.

The next part of this Ventura cruise travelogue series will conclude our port stop in Portugal’s capital city of Lisbon with our departure from the city at sunset, to include cruising under the Ponte 25 de Abril.

I might not have left my wife behind to read while I wandered around the top of the ship taking photos if there had been activities that had interested us, but it tends to take a certain something to grab our attention and this sea day didn’t have it.

Breakfast out of the way; wife relocated to a lounge with her Kindle so as to give our room steward time to plump up the pillows, tuck in the duvet, replace our towels, and give the basin a quick wipe over; time to point my camera in the general direction of the ship’s uppermost reaches and views out to sea.

The weather, as you can tell from the photos, was fairly bright, but cloudy enough with a brisk-enough wind to keep the sun away most of the time. That won’t stop the average Brit from hogging the spots around the swimming pools or on the open decks when they’re on a cruise ship, though, especially as the ambient, sheltered temperature was reasonably nice.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the whole laying around on loungers in my shorts next to other people in their shorts or bikinis with bare feet and bum cracks and hairy backs glistening with sweat on show all over the place, but it’s nice that so many of you people with that disgusting kink find so many of your kindred spirits like to go cruising too.

Grand-class ships will have two main pools and a few other smaller ones on them, so no shortage of options if you want to go swimming. On Ventura one of those main pools is protected from the elements by a retractable roof. Great for itineraries that are hitting more inclement parts of the world or when cruising in the winter seasons, and probably the main thing you should consider if choosing between Ventura and her sister ship in the P&O fleet (as mentioned here: P&O Cruises: Azura Versus Ventura) and you like to swim. We’ve never once actually had a swim in an enclosed pool area on any ship, mainly because they always tend to be so humid and noisy.

On this sea day on Ventura I just limited myself to shooting pictures of the various swimming pools and sea views from the top deck so there isn’t a lot more to say from the remainder of the photos as I headed towards the ship’s aft and its tiered spaces with small pools offering attractive views of the wake.

Once I’d met up with my wife again we decided we’d treat ourselves to some non-alcoholic drinks (we do that from time to time) then decided we’d do something we don’t normally do when we’re on a cruise ship on a sea day, and that was to have lunch in one of the dining rooms. Typically, if we eat at all, it’ll be from up by the pools or from the buffet, but it’s nice to change things up every now and then. Well, it can be nice. To be honest, the food options in the dining room were pretty mediocre and took ages to arrive.

Later in the afternoon we made our way to The Exchange for the trivia with a couple with whom we’d started teaming up with some success. Not on this occasion, however. I took the opportunity to snap a few shots of the drinks menu here, and I know some people just love to see them if you follow any of the cruise groups on Facebook.

“Does anyone have a drinks menu they can share?”

“What ship, Sandra?”

“The one we’re going on to Spain in 2026.”

“That’s years away. The menu will have changed by then.”

“Have you been to the website?”

“What ship, Sandra?”

“I know, I just want to see if it’s worth getting the drinks package.”

“What ship, Sandra?”

“Have you tried searching this group? People share pictures of the drinks menu every other day.”

“We loved the drinks we got on our honeymoon in 1994 in the Maldives.”

“What’s that got to do with this group?”

“Anyone?”

“You just have to click on the search box and enter ‘Drinks Menu’. It’s not hard.”

“What ship, Sandra?”

One thing we didn’t like on this particular day on Ventura was the fact that this was day four of the cruise but the second formal night. I know that some people love formal nights. We honestly don’t have an issue with a formal night per se but we’d like to see it done maybe once per cruise – once a week if absolutely necessary – and to really make it an event. When the formal nights come thick and fast and the only difference you can see on the ship or evening’s activities is that the backdrops and lights are set up for the ship’s photographers to try to sell portraits then it doesn’t feel special and, more than that, it’s an effort we’d rather not make on our holiday. It’s true that these days the lines are more relaxed with how people dress even on formal nights, no longer barring them from venues or tarring and feathering them in the atrium, and that’s a good thing, and we dress pretty smartly anyway, but I just don’t feel comfortable in a buttoned-up shirt and tie and don’t want to have to do it more than once on a cruise, and I don’t want to think that everyone’s staring at me for not conforming with the dress code even though I know that’s a side-effect of my introverted nature.

All of that is to say that we opted not to dine in the main dining room on this day. Had this been a Princess ship then we’d have ordered food to our room and watched a movie and left the fancy clothes-wearing mob to enjoy each other’s company, but P&O charge for room service so we weighed up between hitting the buffet or trying a speciality venue and opted for the second, giving Ventura a chance to show us how their Beach House fared against our experience on Iona. More on that in a bit, though, because first…

Our cabin balcony was on the starboard side of the ship and Ventura was heading south down the Atlantic, west of Africa. This meant our view was towards the west and that’s where the sun was setting over the horizon. You can never tire of looking at sunsets at sea. You can never tire of looking at the sea. Every moment is different, every light beam reflecting off a wave in a new way. And when you have puffy clouds dotting the sky you can get some stunning colours along their edges as the increasingly refracted sunlight illuminates them while the blue wavelengths all around give ways to pinks, purples, and oranges. If we believed in souls then we’d say there’s nothing better for them than to gaze out to sea as dusk approaches, but we don’t because we’re not daft so we can’t. It feels bloody wonderful, though.

After a long, peaceful, uplifting period watching the waves and the sun we headed down to the Red Bar for a couple of pre-dinner drinks. The views down into the atrium on Ventura aren’t the best simply because P&O’s interior design on their older vessels leans towards dark and claustrophobic with a hint of 1990s shopping centre. I decided to push the boat out – well, when on a cruise ship and all that – and try an Aperol Spritz since there are many cruise bloggers who rave about these drinks. Yeah. Well. It was okay enough to give it a second go just to see but no, not really my thing. Just goes to show that you can never trust the opinion of a cruise blogger. Liars with terrible tastes in everything, every last one of them.

Dinner then, as mentioned, was at the Beach House. You can read what we thought of this venue on Iona here – P&O Iona: Food And Entertainment – and if you’ve read that then you’ll know that prior to Iona we’d never been to this eatery on one of P&O’s cruise ships before. We’d already discovered that the Epicurean on Ventura was about a billion times better than Iona’s experience so we were interested in seeing if the same would be true of the Beach House. The style of food isn’t one we’d normally go for and it would be wrong to say that my wife approaches food like this with an open mind no matter how many times she says she will. I know she’s going to grudgingly pick something and claim it was okay. She knows she’s grudgingly going to pick something and claim it was okay. She grudgingly picked something and claimed it was okay. I was less reserved but also thought it was okay. Nothing brilliant, again, and not any worse or better than when we did it on Iona either, but certainly worth doing very occasionally just for something different.

The evening ended for us at Havana, just for one, sat at the back by the bar with all the other people who’d decided posh frocks and jackets could take a hike.

In the next post in this Ventura cruise travelogue series we’ll pay our first visit to the Canary Islands as we arrive at Tenerife.

The first of the Canary Islands we approached will come as no surprise to you because the likelihood of you landing on this paragraph of text without knowing the title of this page is so ridiculously small I’m just not going to entertain the possibility. We opened the curtains to our cabin to see we were on the final approach to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital of the island of Tenerife. Directly across from us on the sail into the port we could see a couple of AIDA cruise ships seemingly at anchor just off the coast and assumed that we might be joining them with potentially tender boat operations to follow but it was to the main cruise terminal we headed instead.

We will often take excursions when we travel, and especially on the first visit to any destination, because we like to get to know a place before wondering if there are things we’d prefer to see on our own, and thus it was at Tenerife too. In fact, we’d seen an excursion we really liked the look of because it would include two of our favourite things: an observatory and a volcano. We’d previously visited an observatory in Chile – the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Coquimbo – and we love spotting volcanoes when we travel. The trip to the Teide Observatory would be right up our street…

… only the Cumbre Vieja volcanic ridge was erupting on the island of La Palma during our visit and scientists wanted to monitor it using the solar telescopes we had been due to visit. Shakes fists at scientists.

The result of all this was that our excursion was changed. No more observatory, and instead a more general visit to Teide National Park. Oh well.

After a reasonable drive up winding roads climbing up hills, and with a running commentary on the island’s geology and history we stopped at an observation point that not only afforded some views across to the volcano that gives this national park its name, but also the observatory that we should have been visiting – thanks for that – and exposed geological formations showing how layers of different minerals were laid down over time and then pushed up by tectonic shifts and volcanic eruptions on the island.

Ah, what could have been.

Our viewpoint was to the east of Teide. In addition to being a volcano, Teide is both the highest point in Spain and the highest point of any island in the Atlantic. If you look at the photo below then you should be able to make out cable car pylons along the left edge so it is possible to ride to close to the summit, and if you’re keen on walking then a limited number of permits to walk to the top of Teide – at 3715 metres above sea level – are issued each day. Cruise excursions did include the option of taking the cable car up the volcano but you would have needed to have booked those fairly early as they’re popular, and if you’ve had the misfortune to have your actual excursion cancelled at the last minute and swapped for something else like a certain person writing this sentence you might be loosely acquainted with, then you’re shit out of luck. We weren’t that bitter though, as we’ve ridden a chairlift up a volcano before, don’t you know? Yeah, we’re a bit fancy.

The next stop on our drive through Teide National Park was at Portillo Alto. This small hamlet mostly consisted of a restaurant, some government-run lodgings, a small shop, and some parking spots. The primary reason for stopping, though, was because it had public toilets. We do understand that as people get older they can’t go quite as long without needing a pee, but it still puzzles us when we see some make a rush for the toilets during an excursion stop, then immediately grab themselves a coffee afterwards. Do you people have no comprehension of biology and chemistry at all? As for us, we simply stretched our legs and admired a little of the Tenerife landscape until our group started to climb back aboard the bus.

Continuing with the theme of Not Quite What Was Intended that formed this cruise excursion on Tenerife, our next stop was supposed to be to La Ruleta Vista Point. In fact, we did drive there, but the area consists of a road with a roundabout at the end of it for turning, and with parking all along the road for buses, cars being expected to go elsewhere. Well, they may have been expected to go elsewhere but they didn’t, which meant the road was a chaotic mess of cars blocking the buses, buses queueing and struggling to turn around, and us being sat on the bus for over ten minutes before the guide decided we’d try what should have been the last stop first then come back to this spot.

Off we set for Zapato de La Reina, also known as The Queen’s Shoe. You can immediately see why from the photos below as the erosion of this particular rock formation has left a natural arch resembling a high-heeled piece of footwear. If you’ve ever fantasised about being a tiny human trapped on a planet full of giant women – and statistically-speaking, around fifty percent of the sorts of people who read this will have – then this is the place to visit.

Ten minutes of admiring the landscape – and it is surprising just how attractive mostly dry and rocky, undulating hills dotted with tough-looking bushes and grasses is – followed by another ten minutes of our bus trying to reverse out of the car park because some car had thoughtlessly parked where it fancied instead of where it should have been – again; I’m sensing a theme here – which then caused tailbacks along the road by the viewpoint.

Seriously, people, tourists hiring cars, whatever: just, please, have just the slightest bit of consideration for others when you’re travelling, and especially if you’re travelling to somewhere popular. If it’s a spot you’re not supposed to park in then here’s a crazy idea: don’t park in that spot. There’s probably a reason for it even if you’re too lacking in imagination to think what that might be. I know nobody who’s actually the sort of complete arsehole who thinks rules apply to other people and God forbid that you should have to walk a little further or maybe wait a little longer for something! will ever read this, and I know I’m just shouting into the void here, but there’s a therapy in that action. I’m trying to reduce the blood pressure that’s been raised just recalling how infuriating it was on this trip to lose a solid 20-30 minutes of our paid excursion because of other people’s selfishness. Some people don’t have websites like this and they can’t vent in the same way I am. Those people might die. Every time you park like a prick you might kill someone. Murderer.

Anyhoo…

Back to La Ruleta Vista Point we went, and after what looked like another fruitless attempt to find a space, but seemingly with the approval of a person wearing a police uniform or other uniform indicating officialdom in some capacity at the location, our bus driver said “Fuck it! Everyone off, and I’ll wait here in the middle of the road!” He said that silently, in his head, and in Spanish, which I don’t speak, but sometimes you just know from the slump of a pair of shoulders and the smallest shake of a head.

La Ruleta is situated almost directly due south of Mount Teide on Tenerife and so it provides good views of the volcano if that’s what you’re looking for. But the real reason that this area of the relatively flat basin beneath Teide is so popular with tourists is not so much the mountain, but rather the rock formations. These are the Roques de García.

Rocks in distinctive shapes acquire names over time, and the rocks in this part of the national park were no exception. People with cameras and with tinnitus who are easily distracted tend to not pay a lot of attention to what’s being said by guides about those rocks and names, and this was also an occasion where no exception was to be found. I have a vague recollection of having one of the rocks pointed out and a name attached to it along with a description like “And these are the two mythical lovers who are holding one another and gazing into each other’s eyes” and thinking “Ha! Yeah, no, it’s just a pointy stone but I can see that intense dehydration out here might affect a person.”

In the photos below you can see some of the flat landscape between Teide (which would be to the right of these pictures) and Pico Viejo, another high peak and part of the chain of mountains visible. This is the Las Cañadas caldera and the different colouration of the ground you can see illustrates the split in the caldera caused by tectonic and volcanic activity of the two mountains either side of it. It’s this which also led to the formation of the rocks.

In a shocking example of me having a bit of a search online I have found the names of two of the rock formations in Roques de García that I managed to take photos of during our Teide National Park tour. In the foreground below you can see El Torrotito which Google helpfully translates as “el torrotito” so many thanks for that, giant technological behemoth. The rock behind it with the narrow base supporting the bulk above is called Roque Cinchado or “Stone Tree” and it’s considered a symbol of Tenerife, having previously appeared on banknotes.

We’ve never been to the Vasquez rocks in southern California, but based on its many appearances in TV, and most notably Star Trek as far as I’m concerned, the rock formations at La Ruleta felt a lot like a European version of them. I could easily see a Spanish Captain Kirk fighting a Spanish Gorn amongst the arid, appealing, attractive landscape. Perhaps over the Gorn’s terrible car parking that had forced the Enterprise to circle around for a while looking for a spot to stop.

Our Teide National Park excursion on Tenerife came to an end and we headed back across the island towards the port and our waiting cruise ship, with just one more stop at Portillo Alto for those whose coffees they’d had last time at the hamlet had now worked their way through their systems and who were in desperate need to relieve themselves.

So, what did we think about this excursion? We got to see impressive landscapes and a volcano from a distance. And we like those things. We also got to see some lovely rock formations in a caldera. And it turned out that we like that too. The biggest disappointment would be that we didn’t visit the observatory, of course, but that’s not in the hands of the tour organisers or the cruise line so I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. There was a fair bit of driving but we knew this anyway. It’s the small price you have to pay to get to see some interesting things sometimes, and the commentary on the bus took us through a range of topics relating to the island including its economy, some weird Scottish immigrants connection, and numerous other things, so it was educational and enjoyable. Issues with “other people” and their parking is again not the fault of the tour guide or driver, but it felt like it was something that was to some extent predictable given just how horrible and selfish people generally are so it would’ve been nice for a quicker alternative plan to have been enacted in order to give us extra time at the photo stops. But then again, all the plans in the world can’t account for people being dicks.

In the next part of this Ventura travelogue series we’ll be back aboard the ship for the late afternoon and early evening ahead of our sail away to the second of the Canary Islands on this cruise.

We headed up onto the top deck to grab some lunch from the buffet and some obligatory shots of Santa Cruz from Ventura. I did think that the buildings of the port city against the backdrop of the mountainous landscape of Tenerife through patchy clouds of sun and shadow looked very attractive.

We decided to take a wander around the top deck. Views out to sea and the AIDA ships at anchor, as well as a higher viewpoint down to the steamship docked nearby greeted us

In the last of the pictures in the set of photos below there are two interesting pieces of architecture on display: a dark brick building and a curved white structure behind it. The building is the Palacio Insular council headquarters, constructed in 1940 and designed by the architect José Enrique Marrero with a fair dose of Art Deco there as influence. The clock on its tower was commissioned in 1950. The curved white structure beyond that is part of the gorgeous Auditorio de Tenerife, a venue for the arts designed by Santiago Calatrava and inaugurated in 2003. These two structures would be very prominent on the Tenerife coastline when Ventura eventually sailed out later in the day.

We caught some trivia – we didn’t win – then spent some time back in our room, on the balcony with a drink and our books, awaiting Ventura’s departure. Occasional ferries and catamarans popped in and out of the port as the clouds billowed over and the sun began to set. There was a delay in us leaving Tenerife but it either wasn’t announced or we missed the announcement because we were on the balcony. We might have had time to explore ashore after all. There’s always a next time.

Eventually, though, in full darkness, our cruise ship finally pulled away from Santa Cruz de Tenerife, shadowed by the pilot boat and granting us some pretty views back to the council building and the auditorium reminding us of Razer, one of the robots from Robot Wars. The low clouds over the hills and mountains behind the city reflected its orange-hued lights, lending the dusk landscape an ominous, suffocating blanket.

Once Ventura had cleared the port area the combination of night and a bit of a sea breeze made it too chilly to remain outside. Besides, there was eating and drinking to be done.

First up was a visit to the Tamarind Club for a couple of cocktails while listening to Nikki Jayne singing. She was fabulous, and since this cruise she’s gone onto hosting the Limelight Club on Iona, so a step up for her. Edit: and since then she’s become a cruise director with Princess Cruises!

We’d eaten more in the buffet than we’d planned to when we got back aboard Ventura so decided we’d try something a little smaller than a main dining room meal for dinner, opting to eat in the Glass House instead. A lighter meal was the plan, but somehow we probably ended up eating more than if we’d just stuck to the complimentary food option instead. It was all very good, though.

We treated ourselves to a nightcap before heading back to our room reasonably early as we’d have a fairly early start the following morning on an excursion on the second of the Canary Islands we’d be visiting, Lanzarote.

Before we headed to Timanfaya, though, there was the matter of waking up in the port of Arrecife, on the eastern side of Lanzarote, and about fifteen kilometres from where we needed to be. The weather was warm when it wasn’t windy, but it was rarely anything other than incredibly windy. A day of sunshine and cloud cover to come.

Our bus ride from Ventura to the national park was accompanied by a very similar bit of information about the history of Lanzarote to that we’d had on Tenerife when we visited Teide National Park. Understandable.

Timanfaya is the result of volcanic eruptions in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over a hundred volcanoes ejected out over two billion cubic metres of lava across the island’s previously fertile landscape, burying it under the sort of landscape you might expect to see on Mars today. No deaths were recorded but nearly half of Lanzarote’s population emigrated as a result.

Geothermal heat emerges in certain places, and the main visitor area at Montañas del Fuego – where our bus initially dropped us – showcases this in a number of ways. Firstly, a restaurant on the site uses the heat from thermal vents to cook food, as you can see below.

Other demonstrations of how hot the ground underneath our feet was came through first being given some buried stones to hold (yeah, very warm), then watching some straw held over a hole until it caught fire, and finally watching one of the guides at Timanfaya pour water into a hole only for the steam to shoot out seconds later.

We had a little bit of time to simply admire the landscape before we’d take our bus on a ride through it. What struck us was the variety of colours of the volcanic vista.

A big surprise about Timanfaya National Park on Lanzarote was comparing it to Teide National Park on Tenerife. We’d imagined that both would be pretty similar, but that truly wasn’t the case, and we’re glad that we decided to take volcanic landscape tours on both islands just to see how very different they were.

Timanfaya only formed the first part of our day’s cruise excursion on this particular Canary Island. Following on from the national park we would be seeing how Aloe Vera is extracted (oddly fascinating), then paying a visit to (and sampling the wares of) a vineyard with a difference, with grapes grown in circular depressions in the volcanic soil, making use of the minerals and heat for a unique style of wine. You’ll be able to see photos and read about all of that in the next post in this travelogue series: Aloe Vera And Wine On Lanzarote.

First up was the Aloe Vera Museum, located in the small town of Yaiza on the southern edge of Timanfaya National Park. I won’t lie; we weren’t expecting much other than a sales pitch here, but the museum – which is free to enter – put on a demonstration of cutting the plants and showing off the natural aloe vera goo (I think that’s the technical term) as well as rubbing it into arms of anyone who showed an interest in having goo on their arms. As I mentioned, fairly interesting, and surprisingly so, and enough that we did take a look to see what sort of aloe vera products they might have for sale. The answer was a lot, but nothing caught our eyes enough to part with money. That’s not true for others on our tour who ended up wandering back to the bus with bags of stuff. It’s always nice to see cruise groups contributing to the economy of places they visit.

Of more interest to us was the vineyard, or the Lanzarote equivalent of a vineyard, of Bodega La Geria. Circular depression in the volcanic ash and soil, or areas surrounded by low, circular walls protect the vines of a number of varieties of local grapes, the most prevalent of which is the Malvasía Volcánica. The elevation, underground heat, protection from the worst of the wind, and the cool Atlantic breeze make for a versatile and unique grape, and for some sweet wines. A little too sweet for our tastes, if I’m being honest, and we’re red fans rather than white anyway, but it was lovely to see how the wine was made here.

These two short visits concluded our half-day excursion on Lanzarote so that all that remained would be to head back to Arrecife where Ventura was docked and to head off to the next island, due to be Madeira. That was the plan, but the plan was about to get torn up and scattered, and you can read about that in the next post in this series.

Ventura wasn’t the only ship visiting the island of Lanzarote on this day. The German cruise ship Mein Schiff 4 (let’s not talk about the unimaginative naming system) was on Ventura’s port side. Not a cruise line we’ve cruised with, and probably unlikely to given the additional hurdles of the language barrier and potential embarrassment and spontaneous combustion from wandering into the nudist section of the vessels that have one.

Ahead of Ventura was Sea Cloud Spirit, a luxury, three-mast, full-rigged ship that we’re also unlikely to sail with unless the lottery fairy pays us a visit. She looks gorgeous.

Taking those photos from the front of the ship involved leaning into the wind and bracing myself against anything nearby. An older passenger had been up on the top deck with us with his camera in hand and had given up. My wife and I returned to our balcony, enjoying how much the sea around the dock was being churned up by the wind, expecting an imminent departure.

However, the time for sailing away came and went, and we could still see staff down on the dock. Our initial thoughts that either an excursion was late coming back or that we might get to see pier runners (in that wind!) turned out not to be true as the captain made an announcement over the ship’s system. Two passengers had taken ill and, for reasons that weren’t explained but which led to a lot of speculation aboard Ventura, Lanzarote couldn’t (or wouldn’t) take them. As a result, the ship would need to make a detour to the island of Gran Canaria overnight and the planned stop at Madeira had been cancelled. Everyone was disappointed, of course. Us too, naturally, since we’d never been to any of these parts of the world before, including the Portuguese island. Worth remembering when you’re saving a little bit of money by doing things yourself during cruise planning, is that for those with trips booked through independent companies there likely was a flood of frantic communications at this point to get refunds, if possible.

Somewhat later than planned, Ventura backed away from Arrecife on Lanzarote. We passed one more cruise ship as we departed. La Belle Des Oceans is small enough to be classed as a yacht. You won’t be surprised to learn that she’s another cruising vessel we’re highly unlikely to ever experience.

The last thing to watch out for was the disembarking of the pilot onto the pilot boat. We didn’t quite get to see that as it occurred out of view of us, but it must have been a fun experience based on just how much the little vessel was bouncing up and down on the waves and getting drenched with spray in every trough it hit.

There then followed a long sail past Lanzarote’s south-eastern and southern coastline, and a very attractive coastline it was too, with plenty of coastal towns and rugged, barren shore backed by the pretty peaks of the volcanoes and mountains of the island. As the slow cruise progressed so the sun dipped towards the horizon and the colours of the sky and across the land changed from moment to moment. Late evening cruising with mostly clear skies and just enough cloud cover to reflect and refract sunlight is a wonderfully calming experience.

Enjoy the gorgeous landscape of Lanzarote from the sea with these photos from our balcony on Ventura.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series from the Canary Islands I’ll go through the evening meal and activities aboard Ventura along with the unexpected views of Gran Canaria at midnight as we cruised into a very industrial port.

The evening aboard Ventura, subsequently, was filled with a few glum faces because of the news about the removed Portuguese island from the itinerary, and there was some speculation about the state of the passengers who couldn’t be left on Lanzarote and couldn’t be taken by helicopter or ferry or dinghy or fired out of a cannon to Gran Canaria while the rest of us headed off as per the original plan. The consensus was Covid, but we’ll never know for sure.

We picked ourselves up from the bad cruise news with some time in The Tamarind Club as the ship’s stand-out singer, Nikki Jayne, was performing again. Seriously good vocal range, great song selection, and some funny asides to the audience that you seem to get a lot from northern entertainers. You can follow Nikki on Instagram if you’d like to see where she is in the world when you’re reading this.

Dinner was decent once more, although nothing in the main dining room on this Canary Islands cruise was ever spectacular. Cocktails were, of course, consumed as well.

And so for some unexpected photos of Gran Canaria, and certainly not the sort of photos of this island that most people would normally take if cruising in this part of the world. There’s not a lot to say about these pictures because they’re all just lights along the shoreline of the industrial port into which we cruised. We never got to see the passengers being disembarked from Ventura but it was nice to see just how many passengers on the ship were out on their balconies as we made this unscheduled diversion.

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series there will be a couple of quiet, relaxing sea days to suffer through and a meal at the Epicurean to endure.