DAY 8–PONTA DELGADA

What day is it? Well, on Holland America, the floor mats in the elevators tell you what day it is, in case you forgot (and I always do). It is Saturday and we are finally in port! We arrived in the Azores, Ponta Delgada, around noon.  We exited the ship and explored the downtown area. Many of the businesses were closed.  We were told that they have a hard time finding people willing to work the weekends, even with cruise ships in port.  I went to a café that had Wi-Fi so that I could upload the first 7 days’ worth of blog entries and Melissa went shopping.  Later she joined me at the café and shared a Portuguese dessert crepe with caramelized pineapple, chocolate crackers and whipped cream.  It was really delicious.  Photo below.

We then puttered around and headed back to the ship.  This was our second time in Ponta Delgada and the second time we observed people swimming in what had to be very chilly water nearby the cruise ship.  Photos of the swimmers and a screenshot of the weather are below.  These people must really love to swim!

We ran into our new friends Bob and Cheryl and chatted them up.  Then it was back aboard the Nieuw Statendam. We had a quick snack and decided to nap.  But no sooner had we dozed off did we hear a knock on our door.  Our next-door cabin mates, Victor and Hollie wanted to know if we wanted to play pickleball.  Well, we did want to play pickleball and that is the story of how Don and Melissa finally played a pickleball match.  It was a lot of fun.  But by the time it was over, it was 8 pm and we were done for the night.  2 more sea days before we hit another port.