Saturday – Ponta Delgada, The Azores

It was Tracey’s last day on the Marco Polo; with a her flight for home not due until 3:15pm, we opted for a gentle meander into town, and a walk along the harbour front. This would give us plenty of time for all the necessary paperwork and housekeeping to be completed, ensuring no slip-ups – the airport is only a 10-minute taxi drive away from the port.

Ponta Delgada is a curious, but architecturally very beautiful place. We checked out the ornate ‘City Gates’, consisting of three large arches and a lot of flags, and paused to photograph the fountain that tirelessly does its fountain-business in front of a very important building (not sure wha the important building is… come to think of it; all buildings in Ponta Delgada look rather important. We stopped to look at a large square, populated by many of the strange trees that they lop off, and a down-and-outs, then, across the road from that, we look at the Fort. It was all very pleasant, made all the more pleasant by a Wall’s Magnum from an ice cream vendor on the promenade.

We were back at the Marco Polo for lunch, and after lunch, and a few hearty goodbyes, I waved Tracey off in a taxi, and made for the free wi-fi……

About 30 minutes later, I got a text…. followed by a telephone call…. from Tracey…..

The flight had been cancelled.

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from all the cruising, and in particular, Tracey’s coming and goings at airports, one should always expect the unexpected….. so, try hard as I might to sound completely surprised…. I just couldnn’t muster it.

Thirty minutes later, Tracey was back at the port, sitting with me outside one of the free-wi-fi bars, relating the story…..

I’m sure Tracey will tell it much better in her own blog, but the gist of it was this; the flight had been cancelled, and they claimed at the airport that that they’d tried to get in touch with her, but didn’t have a telephone number to tell her that it had been cancelled, and that they wanted to put her on an early one (something past eight, this morning). Despite all of this, they clearrly hadn’t tried very hard to contact her; we’re pretty suure they did have her mobile phone number, and her email address, but no messages had been sent. Anyway; the next flight would be at 9pm this evening, and because it had been a flight cancellation, they assured Tracey that they would arrrange overnight accomodation in Lisbon, and all taxi journeys in between. Instead of arriving in London tonight, she would be arriving Sunday morning.

So; we had a few hours to kill. Sadly, it was all a bit too late to do anything particularly creative with that time. Had we known the flight was going to be that late, we would probably have taken a taxi out to one of the crater lakes, but there you go…. the unexpected.

So we whiled a way those hours hanging around the port, using the wi-fi and eating burgers for dinner. At just before 7pm (Tracey had been told she had to be at the airport for 7:30pm at the latest), we repeated the hearty goodbyes of earlier, with accompanying explanations to people we met of why Tracey was still here. Walked up to the taxi rank end of the terminal, only to find there were no taxis. Earlier, we’d been told that if we needed a taxi, we should speak to the security guard by the ship, and he would order one for us, so we walked back the whole length of the terminal….. only to find…. no security guard…….

Oh…. yes… there he was – hiding behind a corner – and when we asked hime to order a taxi, he sent us back to the other end of the terminal, to see a different security guard, who would order us one…..

…One further length of the terminal, and more repeated, hearty goodbyes, accompanied by explanations of why Tracey was still here……

Finally, I can confirm that, at approximately 7:10pm, I waved Tracey off in a taxi for the last time.

At 7:15pm, I was back on the Marco Polo, watching the new ‘Les Miserables’ film in the Marco Polo Lounge. Having recently heard good reviews about it, my curiosity was piqued enough to get me along. Sadly, my interest was insufficient enough to keep me there;  I stuck it for about an hour, until I simply couldn’t take any more – I just don’t get musicals, and this one seemed particularly annoying.

Further texts have confirmed that Tracey made the plane okay and, at the last call, was on her way to Lisbon.

Suddenly, the cabin seems a bit empty……….