Canary
Islands
to
Lisbon
April 18 – May 1, 2025
Introduction
We had been trying to decide on our next adventure: where should we go this time that would be a bit different? Somehow, the thought of the Canary Islands came up and that sounded good, so we started investigating cruises there. I first found a Windstar cruise, but at 18 days, it was somewhat longer than we wanted to be gone and it was on the expensive side. Then, in talking to our friends, the Clarkes, we found that they were going on a 10 days cruise on the Oceania Marina, starting in the Canary Islands and considerably less expensive than the Windstar cruise. Some of the ports would be a duplicate of our 2022 land tour in Spain, but enough different to be interesting. Plus, we would have friends on board.
Overall, it was a good and fun cruise with the normal ups and downs standard in any cruise. The downs were partly due to weather issues, partly due to an apparent allergic reaction on my part, and partly due to a photographic equipment accident. But, more about those in the actual report.
As with the past few reports, this will be a largely daily log of our travels, excursions, and activities, broken up into manageable size “Chapters” of a couple of days each. There will also be a separate chapter on our cruise ship, the Oceania Marina.
The “Set-up”
As usual, we made all the cruise arrangements through the “Vacations to Go” travel company and James Bingley there provided the same excellent service as he always has. I made the airline arrangements directly through Delta and the Tenerife Island Botanico hotel reservations directly with the hotel.
Oceania Marina
This cruise would start on the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands (Spain) and end in Lisbon, Portugal. Since we had never been to the Canary Islands previously, I booked flights a couple of days early to allow us time to look around some, prior to boarding the ship in the port of Santa Cruz, Tenerife. Because we had visited Lisbon previously, we scheduled a return home immediately after the end of the cruise.
Getting There and Back
Once again, we had connecting flights in both directions. In order to get to the Canary Islands, we had to first fly to Madrid, Spain and then from there to Tenerife. On the way back we would be returning via the Boston airport. The flights all went surprisingly well, with on time or early arrivals and no problems making connections. We visited several of the Delta lounges to help pass the wait time.
On the Atlanta to Madrid flight, we were in Delta’s “Premium Select” seats, sort of like what used to be “First Class”. While not as nice as Business class or Delta-1, it was reasonably comfortable with decent service, although the food was less than exciting.
As a private pilot, I like this type of position display.
We had about 2 hours in Madrid and, even after a slight luggage mis-cue (we did not have to claim and re-check our luggage, as I thought we would) we had plenty of time to get to our flight on Air Europa to Tenerife. The slightly long walk from one terminal to another even gave us a little exercise. The flight to Tenerife was about two and a half hours and arrived right on time.
On the approach to Tenerife: It was more developed than we expected.
We arrived at the Tenerife North airport (TFN) which is the preferred airport for domestic flights. (Our flight was between two cities in Spain, and thus domestic.) I had arranged a private transfer from the airport to the hotel and we quickly found our driver in the relatively small airport and were delivered to the hotel in about 30 minutes.
On the return flights, we had a private transfer from the ship at the Port of Lisbon to the airport, only about 20 minutes away. As usual, the ship got us disembarked rather early (8:00) and on our way, getting to the airport more than three hours before time to board. There was a little confusion navigating the multiple lines and checkpoints in the Lisbon airport and some parts of the terminal were very busy and crowded, but we got checked in and to our gate fairly quickly and sat down to wait. We did have a somewhat last-minute change of gate, but otherwise, all went well. We again had the “Premium Select” seats, so reasonably comfortable since we would not be sleeping on this flight.
Leaving Portugal, heading out over the Atlantic
The food was slightly better on this flight, although still a bit disappointing, but at least the flight attendants were reasonably generous with their wine. The arrival into Boston Logan airport was on time and customs/immigration clearance went smoothly. We again had a nice long walk to a different terminal for our connecting flight so we got a little exercise after sitting on the flight. We did have access to a Delta lounge to make our wait time a little more comfortable and the outbound flight was right on time.
Departing Boston, a very compact city and airport.
On this flight I had requested a hamburger for the meal service and I think this was the best meal I had on our flights. Again. The flight arrived into Atlanta on time, we got our bags, and then we took another long walk to the somewhat new pick-up area for the Uber and Lyft type services where we quickly got a Uber ride home. It was good to get home.
The Itinerary
We’ll take a quick look at the full (planned) itinerary here.
Cruise Itinerary:
|
Date |
Port or Activity |
Arrive |
Depart |
|
Mon, Apr 21 |
10:00pm |
|
||
|
Tue, Apr 22 |
7:00am |
5:00pm |
|
|
|
Wed, Apr 23 |
9:00am |
6:00pm |
|
|
|
Thu, Apr 24 |
At Sea |
|
||
|
Fri, Apr 25 |
7:00am |
6:00pm |
|
|
|
Sat, Apr 26 |
10:00am |
7:00pm |
|
|
|
Sun, Apr 27 |
8:00am |
8:00pm |
|
|
|
Mon, Apr 28 |
7:00am |
7:00pm |
|
|
|
Tue, Apr 29 |
7:00am |
5:00pm |
|
|
|
Wed, Apr 30 |
10:00am |
|
||
|
Thu, May 1 |
Disembark |
|
And, so you can get a better perspective of the locations of all these places, I will be using the map below, inserting it at the beginning of each chapter.
Map of the entire area covered on the cruise.
Enough of the “preamble”, let’s get moving. We’ll start with a look at our ship, the Oceania Marina. Although we had been on a Oceania cruise just a year ago, this ship (the Marina) was significantly different and larger than the prior Oceania ship (the Sirena). After taking a look at the Marina, we will start the journey with our arrival at the hotel in Tenerife.
Chapter by Chapter
Chapter 0: The Oceania Marina
Chapter 1: Tenerife and Embarcation
Chapter 2: La Palma, Madeira, and Casablanca
Chapter 3: Gibraltar and Almeria
Chapter 4: Malaga, Cadiz, and Lisbon
Some closing thoughts
In General
We were a bit surprised at how developed the Canary Islands were, and how heavily populated. While certainly not crowded, there were more people and commerce than we expected. The number of banana plantations there, both large and small, also surprised us. Of the other places visited, Casablanca was probably the most surprising. Like the Canary Islands, it was more developed and modern than I expected, but the more surprising thing was that, at least in the areas we visited, how clean, modern, and welcoming the city was. There were certainly some hints of the old world, like the market, but overall, it was a very nice city to visit. Most of the other ports of call were places we had been to previously, so there were no real surprises. Well, except for that power outage in Malaga which surprised everybody.
As usual, there were some problems or hic-ups with our trip, such as my camera accident and missing the port of Cadiz, but, for the most part, the cruise and our visit to the Canary Islands went well. While Oceania and the Marina treated us reasonably well, we still prefer smaller ships and especially the Windstar cruise line for its more personal and social atmosphere. That said, the itinerary and the timing of the cruise are still going to be the major factors in future decisions on what cruise to take. As I write this, we have just made reservations for another cruise on the Marina in December, visiting the Chilean Fjords, Antarctica, and Falkland Islands. Stay tuned for that trip report!
I hope you enjoyed this trip report. If you have any comments or corrections, please send them to me at: mhammoc@bellsouth.net