Saturday December 26, 2015 – Recife, Brazil

We woke up at 7 am as the Mariner was sailing into the Recife harbor.  The captain must have made up some time as we were behind schedule but we ended up docking early.  Recife is an island south of the mouth of the Amazon River.  We had coffee and got our things and went to the theatre to exchange our tickets for the tour.  They actually called our tour number early, so we left to get on the tour bus.

Our guide was a talker and informative.  She talked non-stop for 4 hours.  We rode through some of Recife en-route to Olinda, another small island.  Small vans took us up a steep hill to a lookout point.  There we saw a cathedral and enjoyed a vantage point to look out at the Atlantic Ocean and Recife.

The church at Olinda overlooking Recife, Brazil

Inside the Olinda church

Beautiful view of the Atlantic from Olinda

A selfie at Olinda

 We made a shopping stop and then loaded on the small vans for the ride back down the steep hill.  We loaded back on the large tour bus and went to the Golden Chapel, an elaborate chapel used by the land barons.  We toured more around Recife and then headed back to the ship.

Another catholic church in Recife, Brazil - they are catholic but they don't practice

A religious display

The pope and his servants!

The monastery

Beautiful paintings on the walls in the monastery

A tomb inside the church

The altar

Recife is the 5^th largest city in Brazil and is spread out with high rises all along the coast. 

Tim and I had lunch upstairs on the pool deck and then relaxed for the afternoon.  He worked out again as he has started training for his Mt Kilimanjaro climb.  We had a late afternoon coffee and watched as we sailed out of Recife about 4 pm.  We have over 1,000 miles to travel to get to our next stop.  I didn’t realize how far north the Amazon was in Brazil.  We are looking forward to our Amazon adventure.

We went to Observation at 7 and listened to the piano player entertain.  I Gusti and Alexander took care of us.  While there we got to talk to entertainers Mikah and Poppy.  We enjoyed our talk with them.

About 8 we went to Sette Mari for dinner and got on the list to wait for a table.  It was about a 30 minute wait and we waited in Observation.  They called us for our table and we got a table by the window but it was all dark outside.  We skipped the appetizers and had mostly main course.  It was delicious.

We went to the cabin after dinner and went to bed.  A fun day in Brazil.  We skipped the show as it was a violinist.