Day 21 - Fri - 10/17/2025 - At sea to Funchal, Portugal

Once again we had a very short night as the Seattle Mariners playoff game started at 2:30am.  Unfortunately we lost and the game was over around 5:30am.  We caught a short nap before the 7am alarm went off to give us enough time to prepare for the 8am Bible study.  After the Bible study we had our customary LIDO marketplace breakfast.  At 10am I attended Franz Schneider's enrichment lecture on Murderous Minds: Psychopathic Killers featuring an analysis of the Hillside Strangler and the Unibomber.  It was interesting and he pointed out the difficulty in finding and convicting criminals with mental issues.


As the cruise is coming to a conclusion, I did some research on our post cruise hotel and learned that the Ramada on FL84 we have stayed at the last 5 years or so is no longer a hotel but is now used for low income housing.  So I found an alternative down the street at the Holiday Inn Express which is actually quite a bit closer to the shopping center that we like to frequent when we are in Ft. Lauderdale.  The reason that we are staying overnight in Ft. Lauderdale after the cruise is that the tickets for a Sunday night flight home are way more expensive than flying on Monday evening.


Before lunch I participated in the Officers vs. Guests beanbag tournament (think cornhole). I scored 3/4 attempts to put the bag in the hole.  It was a fun activity.  Every sea day there is a different competitive activity between the officers and the guests and they are very popular.



After a light lunch, we attended Pauline's repeat talk on Life at Sea.  While the main presentation was the same, the questions from the passengers were much more interesting.  Angela had a 3pm Pop Choir rehearsal so I stayed in O'Malley's to save good seats for us.  This venue is way too small for this type of presentation, but we made the most of it.


Franz Schneider gave his last presentation of the cruise on the topic of Lessons from Neuro Science.  It was pretty interesting and the O'Malley's venue was packed.


Before dinner we relaxed in the stateroom.  While it was dressy night, we didn't dress up.  After dinner we attended the MOBO song show in the Princess Theater.  It was really good and the place was packed.  We found ourselves back in O'Malley's to watch the last part of the Emerald Tide set of Irish music before retiring to our stateroom.  Our Mariners play at 12:08 local time so we might have a short night again tonight.  


Tomorrow is a port stop in Funchal which is a city on the island of Madeira, Portugal.  It's our last port of call before the crossing. We've visited this city a number of times as it's a frequent stop on transatlantic crossings.  For this trip, we're going to focus on the city sights.  On our last transatlantic, we missed this port due to weather conditions. 

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