We disembarked the Noordam for the last time in Fort Lauderdale, Florida around 10:00. Since JetBlue rescheduled our flight for 19:00, we had some time to kill. We rented a car from Alamo (via Costco Travel) and drove to Everglades National Park. There are alligators everywhere in the park and they don’t seem to mind humans at all.  While Valerie and I were afraid to approach the gators, we saw other tourists walk right up to them and pick up their tails. On the drive back to the airport, we took a detour through Miami. Despite what CSI may portray, the colors in Miami are not super-saturated. Rather, the city reminds me a lot of the unremarkable urban sprawl of Los Angeles.  After a quick stop by the beach, we headed back to the airport and boarded our flight.  Our roommate Belinda kindly picked us up from the airport when we arrived at SFO.

Being stuck on a ship at sea for 7 days has its advantages. As we go about our daily activities (meals, shows, trivia, mixology class), we’ve met a lot of fun and interesting people from around the world. It will be sad to leave this floating paradise and return to the real world.

As predicted, it was very rocky the last couple days.  The captain changed course to avoid the brunt of the storm, but he could not avoid the 6 meter swells and 50 knot winds.  Also as predicted, Valerie spent most of the last two days in bed to avoid seasickness.  I did the same.

I love sea days. There is nothing to do but eat, sleep, relax, and enjoy the entertainment options available on the ship. But sea days have downsides too. Since we’re stuck on the ship, we naturally get less exercise than if we were wandering around lost in port. Since I’ve been gaining some weight recently, I’ve made it a goal of mine to ascend more than 100 floors (according to the FitBit) during one of the sea days. A quick sanity check of this plan revealed that I get tired after about 25 floors, so I’m not so sure that I will succeed.

The captain is warning us of “more than average weather conditions” due to a low pressure front unrelated to Hurricane Sandy. Valerie says she will probably spend the next two days sleeping to avoid seasickness.

Funchal, Madeira, Portugal is our last remaining port of call before Ft. Lauderdale.  It was raining a lot in the morning, so we stayed on the ship until shortly after noon.  The ship docked about a mile from the town, so we took a pleasant (although slightly drizzly) stroll to the center of town. One of the famed highlights of Funchal is the cable car to Monte followed by a terrifying toboggan ride down the hill. Since it was raining heavily at this point and visibility was low, we neglected to do either of these things and instead headed back to the ship.  However, many of our fellow cruisers did remark that taking the toboggan ride was one of the most exhilarating and stupid things they did in their lives and highly recommended it.

Cruise ships are full of food, lots and lots of delicious food.  And all this food is making me fat.  When the low calorie option for dinner is an all-you-can-eat buffet, it’s hard to keep off the pounds.  However, Valerie and I have some grand belly-reducing plans.  As I mentioned earlier, we usually take the stairs instead of the elevator.  We also plan to go to the gym during our remaining 7 days at sea.  And I try (albeit unsuccessfully) to keep all my meals to a maximum of three courses.

Our final stop in Spain was the port city of Cadiz. The highlight of our day was visiting the Camera Obscura in Torre Tavira. I have no doubt that Wikipedia would do a better job explaining what it is and how it works that I would, so I will omit such details from the blog. Suffice it to say, it was pretty neat to see it in action.

Later in the day, we ate some fried seafood tapas, took a bus along the beach (only 1 Euro per person), and finally took a long, long walk back to the ship.

(For ease of typing, I’m omitting all diacritics from my blog posts. Sorry if that causes any confusion.)

Our second stop in Spain is Malaga. Malaga also has a castle, but once again, it is more like a fortress than a medieval royal residence. As we walked through the castle, we heard loud booms from just outside the castle walls. Valerie thought it might be gunshots and I thought it was cannon fire. We were both wrong. Rather, a large group of protesters had gathered outside nearby city hall with signs, horns, and something that made a very large boom. I’m not sure what they were protesting, but they certainly made a lot of noise doing it.

For lunch, we found another Spanish tapas place while walking toward the Glass and Crystal Museum. The tapas were good, but not as good as Sento. Alas, by the time we reached the museum, there wasn’t enough time to take the tour, so we headed back to the ship in the pouring rain.

Our first of three stops in Spain is Alicante, Valencia. As we boarded the shuttle bus from the ship to the city, I was excited to enter a country where I thought I could (at least somewhat) understand the language. And then I discovered that none of the signs in Alicante are in Spanish, but rather in Catalan. Luckily, most of the signs had English translations.

We walked along the beach toward Santa Barbara Castle. The castle is situated on a tall hill just off the shoreline. Hiking up the hill probably would have been a lot of effort. Fortunately for tourists, authorities have installed a public elevator from the beach level to the castle. Since we had skipped Rothenberg and the Romantic Road, Valerie has been disappointed by the lack of castles so far on this trip, so I was hoping that this would fill the castle gap. While the castle provided a great view of the city, I think Valerie was disappointed by the lack of a great hall and other castle-like amenities.

We headed down the lift, walked to the main street, and walked around town for a while. On our way back to the ship, we ate at an amazing tapas bar that was recommended on TripAdvisor called Cerveceria Sento. It was probably the best meal of the trip.