Okay, so you’ll know if you’ve been reading these cruise travelogues in order that we had spent our first day ever visiting anywhere in Portugal on a tour of Lisbon’s aqueduct and reservoirs followed by a short walking tour of the city. All good port stops on a cruise must come to an end, however, so this post will simply cover a bit of the sail away from Lisbon with a cruise under the Ponte 25 de Abril suspension bridge, plus the evening’s activities for us which won’t surprise any regular readers in the slightest.
We needed a little bit of freshening up once we got back aboard Ventura as it had been warm enough on the walking portion of our day’s excursion ashore. The view from our balcony across the Tagus – the longest river in Iberia – was pleasant enough.
However, the general noise and smell was less pleasing because Guanarteme, an oil tanker, was engaging in bunkering.
We decided that sitting on our balcony wasn’t going to work as a result of Ventura getting topped up with fuel so we grabbed some food and drink on the top deck, then another drink in The Exchange before the time for the ship’s sail away came around.
The sun was getting low as MSC Virtuosa pushed away from the cruise port and made her way down the Tagus. Ventura pushed away and turned around (as we’d been facing in the opposite direction) very soon after.
It had been a popular day for cruise ships to pay a visit to Lisbon. With Ventura now fully turned around and facing west we could see that AIDAstella had been docked further along the port from us.
And we passed one more cruise ship docked at Lisbon as we made our departure from the city in the shape of Holland America Line Eurodam.
Sail aways are always lovely to be out on the balcony for, but they’re even better when they take place near sunset, and better again when you cruise under a suspension bridge. Our departure from Lisbon on Ventura was pretty gorgeous as you can see from the photos below.
I don’t take a huge amount of video footage when I travel but I did set up my phone to take time lapse videos of all the departures from ports on this cruise to the Canary Islands, so here’s Lisbon.
While my phone was filming that I decided to take some video of Ventura cruising under the Ponte 25 de Abril on my camera. It was a very last-minute decision so I didn’t attach the proper microphone, hence the bit of wind noise you can hear. If you’ve never cruised under a suspension bridge before then listen out for the high-pitched hum as we pass directly underneath the bridge and the noise of the vehicles driving over the top create a metallic vibration sound.
I liked the look of the Padrão dos Descobrimentos sculpture on the shore as we continued cruising down the Tagus. This is a 1960 permanent replacement for a 1940 temporary beacon erected for the Portuguese World Exhibition, honouring the Portuguese explorers. Each side of the monument features historical figures standing, with the lead person being Henry the Navigator. In fact, a lot of what we saw of Lisbon along the shore during this cruise away from the city looked very interesting and it’s a city we’d love to come back and see some more of.
A quick run through the evening aboard Ventura to finish this post off.
We decided to head to Havana just to have a drink or two there and see what the “rock show” by Pulse was like. We all have different ideas about what constitutes good music and good performances so let me be tactful and simply say that I’m sure a lot of people enjoyed the musical experience. Actually, being tactful is not one of my strong points and it’s not like anyone from the band will read this. It was dire. And we know it wasn’t just us who thought this as we would later in the cruise talk to some other passengers who started their conversation with a rant about how bad the band had been. So there.
With a little bit of time left before we fancied getting some food we dropped into the Tamarind Club where there was nothing scheduled, expecting a bit of quiet. However, the ship’s resident jazz vocalist, Nikki Jayne, made an appearance anyway and treated the small crowd to both some fabulous ,contemporary songs sung beautifully and some funny remarks. More on Nikki in a later post in this cruise travelogue series. She was a major highlight on this ship.
Food in the main dining room was okay. Nothing to moan about, nothing to get excited about.
We concluded the evening in Metropolis.
The next post in the Ventura cruise travelogue series will detail the day at sea between Lisbon and the first of the Canary Islands. As is traditional in these posts there will be a walk around the ship taking loads of photos. The evening sees us try another dining venue on the ship for the first time as well.