Cruise The World With Us 2026

Saturday, January 10, 2026 – cruise day 6

Featured photo is of Madeiran wall lizards. We saw these at one of the stops on today’s excursion on Madeira.

Today’s excursion was a 7-hour trip. Lots of stops and lots of things to see. Most remarkable as we started was the fact that the area near the coast has steep hills and they are covered with adobe-like buildings with clay tile roofs. Building in this area requires engineering. Our bus had a mixture of German-speaking and English-speaking passengers. Rather than have one guide who would convey information separately in both languages, there was a guild for each language and receivers and headsets to hear each. Our guide was Louisa.

The first point-of-interest on this tour was to be the cliff at Cabo Cirao – the highest cliff in Europe. On the way to that spot, we stopped at another high vantage point reached via narrow winding roads. You’ll find a couple photos from that area which include the obligatory tourist-trap souvenir shops. Hey – the average income for the residents of Madeira is $800-$900 a month so they look to tourism as a major source of income.

Cabo Cirao has a platform with a glass floor so you can see the area below – 1,900 feet below. We walked gingerly onto the platform and took a couple photos (including the required selfie). The weather was clear, so we had a good view of the area below which is farmed. The area along the walk to the platform was landscaped with many bird-of-paradise plants and tall grasses – very pretty.

At the entrance to the walk was a man playing an accordion and singing in what I assume was Portuguese. Across from the entrance and near where our bus parked was a rock wall that was covered with small lizards called Madeira wall lizards. One of them was trying to eat a piece of a banana. The banana piece looked huge next to the lizard (see today’s photos).

From Cabo Cirao we drove to the O Lagar Steakhouse Restaurant to have a typical Madeiran lunch. As we entered the restaurant, we saw it was still decorated for Christmas with many red poinsettias. There are a couple photos of same in today’s offering. Lunch was interesting. We sat at long tables with 10 on a side. Food included a puree of vegetable soup (orange in color – don’t know what it was but it was tasty), lettuce salad with tomato and onion, garlic bread, Madeira wine, French fries, polenta, beef seasoned with bay leaves and garlic and on skewers (which were hung over the center of the table), wine, coffee or soft drinks and pudding type desserts or fruit cups. The meal was nice, and the beef was fun to take off the skewers using a knife and fork to slide it onto a plate beneath the skewer. I included a photo of the setup in today’s photos. Incidentally, Madeira wine has a long history with the United States. Click here to read about it. We were told that every President has toasted with Madeira wine except Donald Trump because he does not drink alcoholic beverages.

I took several photos from the parking lot at O Lagar’s that included a bunch of bananas growing across the street, a tree made from empty clear Vitalis bottles, buildings in the area of the restaurant and greenhouses across the valley. After lunch we traveled to the business district adjacent to the port of Funchal. We had time to explore that area on our own, so we walked down the main “drag” toward the Funchal Cathedral. There is a large amount of basalt on Madeira that is used in the paving of the sidewalks in the area we explored. You’ll see the black and white of the sidewalks in today’s photos. It reminded me of the sidewalk at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. Cabs here are yellow with a blue stripe.

As we walked the sidewalk, we came to Christmas stands that sold different types of food (for the most part). Having just finished lunch, we didn’t have the urge to get food. However, as we reached the area near the Funchal Cathedral, we found a shop selling gelato. We didn’t have to twist Kelsey’s arm to convince her to get a scoop – she chose one named Venezia which included stripes of chocolate, raspberry and mango.

We changed direction and walked toward the wharf where we saw both MSC Magnifica and MSC Musica docked. We also spied a sign similar to one from Salvador, Brazil for the island of Madeira (and of course took a selfie with it).

The show tonight was “The World of PAzz” – a combination of jazz music with photos taken by World Cruise passengers. I didn’t attend because I don’t agree with the way photos are selected. I did contribute photos during the 2025 cruise for a couple sessions but stopped after we left Valparaiso, Chile. This first PAzz session was an introduction of the program and used the top 100 photos selected during the 2025 World Cruise. Jan told me there were 2 of my photos in that group – 1 of a juvenile Chilean cowboy and the other of the lighthouse at the End of the World (Ushuaia, Chile). Jan wants me to submit photos this trip, but I’m not interested – I’ll continue to take them for our pleasure.

We ended the night at a party for World Cruise Games in the Onyx Lounge. Each of the 4 groups – Air, Water, Fire and Earth – had their leaders dressed in appropriate costumes and demonstrate the group cheer. There is a photo with Kelsey and Jan standing in front of our leader Pia (their backs to the camera).

You can view photos from today here.