So we woke this morning to a visit from the Ventura Cruise Ship docked in the port just below our place. It dwarfs the usual container ships and regional cruise ships. This one is out of England, has been at sea for a month, and is on their way home.
So the moral of this story is “Pay attention to your surroundings and use your head!” She says “let’s go down and visit the Electric Company’s office, get our account for the new house changed, and pick up some bread from Luis at the city Market. (Luis has known Sofia her whole life and treats us like family when we stop). So we zip downtown, split a café and sanduíche mista (ham and cheese on fresh bread) and then drive over to main street to visit the market.
Ship in the harbor…main street…didn’t put those two things together. Buses everywhere, cops giving parking tickets, literally hundreds of Brits taking photos of everything, hitting all the tourist shops, carriage tours, island tours, wine sales, little Azores souvenir stands … you name it. So I drop the missus (the cop understood me when I explained we weren’t stopping) and then circled the block…no small task on one-way cobblestone streets. But I did manage to find my bride coming back out of the market with fresh bread and fresh bananas and get her back into the truck — all without losing too much of my patience:)
So I need to heed my own advice…when you’re retired and not in a genuine rush to make an appointment, deadline or get to work…pay attention to your environment. A huge ship brings tourists…they help all our neighbor’s with livelihood and they help spread the word about how wonderful our island is. They also come ashore quickly and go everywhere. So give them a wide berth on days when the ships are in. And help them enjoy as well:)