Enrico's Travel Blog

Friday Docked at Cidade do Funchal, Maderia, Portugal Cidade do Funchal, the City of Funchal, is the capital, largest city and a municipality on the Island of Maderia. It is part of Portugal. The settlement of Funchal began somewhere between 1420 and 1425. The first settlers named their settlement Funchal after he abundant wild fennel that grew here. The name, Funchal, is formed from the Portuguese word for fennel, funcho, and the suffix -al, to denture a “plantation of f

Thursday On board the SS Mariner in the Atlantic Ocean on our way to the port of Funchal on the island of Maderia, Portugal located about 450 miles off the coast of Morocco in Africa. Good morning. Our iPhones changed to Portugese time, an hour earlier but the ship won’t change time until tonight. We didn’t realize this until later this morning. I got up and headed down to the coffee connection at just before 06:00, at least according to my watch. The coffee connection wa

Wednesday On Board the Seven Seas Mariner docked at to Málaga, province of Málaga, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, España Málaga is probably best known as the birthplace of Pablo Picasso. Unfortunately, since we booked this cruise very late, we were unable to find any shore excursions we wanted to participate in. So, instead we will take the shuttle into town and walk around for a while. We had placed a breakfast order before going to bed last night. They delive