Bob:

After two active days, and particularly after hiking back down the mountain in Funchal, I was more than ready for a day at sea. On cruises, the days at sea allow us to rest and catch our breath just as the special "break" days that we insert on land tours do. Losing an hour each night meant that we would arise around 8 a.m. instead of 7 a.m., and that meant that we had to get down to breakfast in order to have time to eat, wash up back in the cabin, and make it to the 10 a.m. arts and crafts session on time.

Monika:

Bob:

The arts and crafts were quite varied throughout our cruise on the Atlantica, and for the morning session we were scheduled to make the basic pieces of a mobile. Those pieces turned out to be clear plastic shapes in the form of an egg, a star, a teardrop, and a sphere. We each were given four shapes and then could paint them with any pattern we wanted. I painted my egg with vivid stripes in the different primary colors available, but then later donated it to Monika to complete her mobile.

What I really focused on was painting a map of the world inside the two halves of a plastic sphere. Sandy had the idea of just painting in the land masses in brown, and then later painting over the entire interior with blue to color in the oceans, and that's what I decided to do. The detail work required took almost the entire hour, and I had to project the shapes of the continents as I would see them on a map to be able to do it. But of course since they were painted on the INSIDE of the globe, when I finally completed and assembled the halves, everything was in a mirror image of the real Earth!

While I was waiting for my "mirror-Earth" to dry, I took a teardrop and painted clouds on top and the waves of a blue sea on the bottom. The idea is that I will find a teeny, tiny model of a cruise ship about one and a half inches long and put that inside the teardrop, kind of like a ship in a bottle. The plan for my mobile is quite simple: the cruise-ship-inside-the-teardrop on one side of a balance arm and the mirror-Earth-globe on the other side to represent our voyages around the world.

Monika:

Bob:

I needed to find that tiny cruise ship model and I knew there were some in the ship's gift shop, so we went there after the class. Those models turned out to be too big, but since we were already up forward, we opted to continue forward and explore the inside of the bow of the ship a bit on our way back to the cabin. The first thing we came across was a video arcade complete with an air hocky table and eight to ten of the fancy digital arcade games ranging from shooting games to motorcycle racing. I was struck by the contrast of the totally artificial entertainment inside the arcade and the ever-changing view of the real world passing by just outside the portholes. Why would anyone prefer the artificial worlds?

Monika:

Bob:

Just down the corridor from the video arcade was a small but very pretty chapel. I was surprised and cheered to find two very well-done and beautiful panels of stained glass at the back of the chapel. They depicted Moses parting the Red Sea to let the Israelites escape Egypt and were some of the nicest modern pieces I have seen. It's good to know artists still work in that difficult but very durable and unique medium.

The niches or alcoves along the side of the chapel were each filled with a saint, and the alcoves themselves were gilded. In the entranceway, a statue of the Virgin Mary was placed in front of a picture of the crucifixion of Christ.

The only problem with the chapel, as it turned out when I talked to Debbie about it later, was that it was too small to hold all the congregants who wanted to attend mass on board ship, so the masses had to be held in the main theater, I think she said. But for small services or maybe a small wedding of say 50-100 people, that chapel would be ideal. Wouldn't it be neat to have the wedding on the first day and then enjoy the rest of the cruise as a honeymoon?

Monika:

Bob:

At dinner I showed the completed mirror-Earth globe and ship-in-a-teardrop ornaments as Sandy and Debbie has seen me struggling with it and were wondering how it had turned out. During the meal we chatted with our tablemates both about the ports we had just visited as well as our plans for visiting Malaga the next day. We all agreed that the Hop On Hop Off bus for 17 Euros was probably a better deal than the ship's shuttle bus service that was being offered for 22 Euros. The shuttle bus service only stopped in three places and ran every 20 minutes whereas the Hop On Hop Off bus had fourteen stops and (supposedly!) ran every 15 minutes.

Monika: