Madeira

We have reached our first port - Madeira. Weather here is about 20 degrees C and sunny. Having been at sea for 3 days, land seems quite unusual, and the photo below shows the view of Funchal, Madeira's capital, that we woke to this morning (taken from our balcony).

Last night was the black and white ball, and so the tux was out again. Victoria was in a size 12 number from the Dorothy Perkins sale £25, bag from Primarni £3, same BHS shoes and hair slide from Alexis and Jon's wedding. (already counted the shoes and Alexis bought the slide so this was a posh outfit for <£30 - excellent.) We gave the captain's gala welcome a miss so we could have a formal photograph taken, and we were a little late than normal getting ready because Andrew had been to the gym, and Victoria to a yoga class!

Straight after dinner we retired to bed and were asleep by 11 in readiness for today. We were woken at 7 as we backed into the Funchal port, but dozed back off until 8 when we had to get up and collect our tour stickers for today's Levada walk.

We were a bit annoyed as it was advertised as a 3 hour walk but this turned out to be 2 hours with a 30 min coffee stop, but the walk was lovely. The Levadas are Madeira's irrigation system built so that even those with farms and homes on the hills can irrigate their vegetable plots - Madeira is largely self-sustaining, and anything not grown here is imported from Portugal and therefore expensive.

The walk was along the Camacha Levada and was very similar to some of the walks we've done in the UK - lovely wooded walk through laurels, oaks and willow. It was very like the walks around Cragside, just without conifers. Heavy leaf canopy so not much sunshine, and after coffee we set the trend by putting on our water proofs to keep warm. The walk was only 6km (3.7 miles - we've done 3 miles on deck every day anyway) and so we were dropped in Funchal by 1.15pm.

There wasn't that much to see in Funchal, although you will see from the pic it is quite big. We wandered around for a while, bought some Madeira wine for Christmas cakes and some other souvenirs, shared a local flatbread thing with chorizo and some roasted chestnuts for lunch, and wandered back to the ship by 3.30. We've since sat on our balcony overlooking Funchal while drinking a beer from room service.

We will not be going to the normal sail away party as we're going to have our own on our balcony! Tonight is just a smart evening (previously known as smart casual), so time for another Tesco's dress! Then another early night. Tomorrow we dock at Santa Cruz on La Palma. We have nothing planned there except to have a look around the town.