{"id":90,"date":"2014-02-10T23:52:59","date_gmt":"2014-02-10T23:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=90"},"modified":"2014-11-21T20:32:37","modified_gmt":"2014-11-21T20:32:37","slug":"monday-horta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/monday-horta\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday – Horta"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today, we visited Horta, the penultimate stop on our 6-week cruising marathon. Horta is a pretty little place, on the island of Faial, the smallest on the Azores Archipelago. We were berthed right at the end of the quayside, making a walk into town about 20-25 minutes. The weather was overcast and extremely windy, though, so most people made use of the shuttle bus that had been laid on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The weather wasn’t entirely unexpected. An announcement on Sunday evening from the Captain (it’s never good news when we hear his voice coming over the PA system) explained that a cyclone was heading in our direction from Newfoundland, and so we would be arriving earlier in Horta than originally scheduled. We would also be leaving earlier from our next port; 11pm instead of our planned 2am sailaway, due to a further storm coming in from a different direction… more on that later…<\/span><\/p>\n

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I’ve been to Horta before, a couple of times, but this was the first time I’d been asked to escort a tour there, which would be in the afternoon. I, therefore, spent most of the morning on the free wi-fi in Horta, and having a brief look around before getting back to the ship for lunch.<\/span><\/p>\n

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After lunch, came the excursion, to see the volcanic crater in the centre of the island. The blurb for the tour promised amazing, spectacular views across the crater; sadly, we saw nothing. Back home, I think I’d describe conditions as ‘claggy’. Claggy doesn’t quite do it, though; this was seriously mega-claggy! The cloud was so low that you couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of you, and the wind was howling. The bus stopped at the roadside, and a short tunnel led us to a viewing area. It was disappointing. Most passengers took it on the chin; the weather is something you just can’t plan for, and we were unlucky.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Back on the bus, we travelled through narrow lanes, and couldn’t see anything outside the windows. Even if it was clear, the windows also kept steaming up, so it all felt a bit depressing.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Then we arrived at a place where the lava from the volcano had swept down to the sea’ an open area, where a lighthouse stands and the curve of a crater reaches out into the ocean. And all was forgiven; it was spectacular, and people meandered around, walking right down to the water’s edge, where massive waves crashed dramatically against volcanic rocks. Everyone’s spirit’s were lifted by this; it was a shame that we’d been unable to see anything from the top, but this more than made up for the disappointment.The tour concluded with a very pleasing, but extremely windy, photo stop high above Horta itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The good news is that Marco’s Bistro is due to reopen, along with several other public rooms…. and possibly painting sessions?…… we’ll see……<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, we visited Horta, the penultimate stop on our 6-week cruising marathon. Horta is a pretty little place, on the island of Faial, the smallest on the Azores Archipelago. We were berthed right at the end of the quayside, making a walk into town about 20-25 minutes. The weather was overcast and extremely windy, though, so most people made use...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}