Hello! From a rather warm and sunny Funchal, Madeira.

This is my third visit to Funchal and it never gets old. This is certainly one of the cleanest and greenest ports of call I have ever had the pleasure of visiting and today was no exception.

We left Oceana at roughly 9am and made our way straight into town with focus being on the cable car experience. Yes, my third visit and I had never until today experienced this rather terrifying (for me anyway) option on the island. We were very lucky, we made it to the entrance before any of the excursion passengers so we got straight in and off we went. It started out OK, some superb views but the higher we went the more my heart began to race. I am not very good with heights and this really did push me to my absolute limits but it truly was worth the anxiety just to get the views across the city. Words could never do it justice so I took a few pictures for you.

If you are due to visit then I would recommend this experience to everyone, even those afraid of heights because if I can do it then so can you! I reached a point about three quarters of the way up when I could barely allow myself to breathe in fear of the car moving too much but I still managed to get the camera out 😉

So….going totally off today’s port I know many of you wanted to know more about Oceana’s refit, well, I think from a walk around the ship the majority of the work was concentrated on the rather important area’s that passengers cannot see, i.e. her engine and other mechanical parts. However, Le Club has been thoroughly transformed from the dark and dingy venue that it was into something much brighter and certainly more inviting. All the carpet’s throughout are new and very spongy like which is nice under ones toes and her retail section has been brought alive with a fresh, bright and very vibrant new perfume and jewellery section.

There are some rather nice LED lights now that glow in rainbow colours around the midships pool area which at night really is beautiful especially when accompanied by the music from her new outdoor sound system. Overall the changes to Oceana have been subtle but concentrated on the area’s that really needed it; I am certainly not disappointed with her and have found nothing that affects my cruise so at the moment I am a very happy cruiser!

We leave today with five days at sea ahead of us before we reach the Caribbean, our first port of call being Antigua so I will check back in with you cruise-a-holics shortly!

Author: Danielle