Day 5: Land
ahoy
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| A Sergeant Pepper moment. |
There are few places in the world where
you can really imagine a meeting between the north and the south. Sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar, with
the lights of Africa to starboard and the Rock of Gibraltar to port, happens to
be one of them. Last night, while this north
south juxtaposition came into sharp focus, my mother and I were actually enjoying
a wonderful Asian meal in one of the ship’s restaurant called, believe it or
not, East meets West. This rather bazaar unplanned coincidence set the tone for
a rather surreal evening. After our meal we went to what was billed as a Beatles
concert in the Britannia Lounge on Deck 8. I imagined it would be a rather tame
affair in view of the average age of those on board. However, with the benefit
of hindsight I have come to realize that the passengers on the Saga Sapphire
cruise ship are actually children of the 60’s. I need to check more carefully
what they put into those free drinks!
Almeria
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| A pool in the Alcazaba |
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| Our ship awaits. |
Anyway, the next morning we arrived
at our first port of call, Almeria. This Spanish town gets over 3,000 hours of
sunshine a year, apparently, and has the greatest number of cloudless days in
the whole country. Today was one of them. It was wonderful to finally be let
loose on shore and to see a few badly dressed people and dare I say it…children.
In the midst of all the happy mayhem of this sleepy Spanish town, we enjoyed a
nice sunny walk around the town’s splendid Moorish fortress known as the
Alcazaba. How can you not fall in love with a place that has a name like that? This Arab fortress was built by the Caliph of
Cordoba, Abderramán III in the 10th century and has three huge
walled enclosures.
But all too
soon, it was time to be press ganged back on board the Saga Sapphire for
cocktails as the tugboats pulled us gently out to sea.
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