In May, Austin and I took a 14 day Disney Cruise Line repositioning cruise across the Atlantic Ocean from Florida to Madeira, Cadiz, Gibraltar, and Barcelona, then drove to France to see several caves with pre-historic cave art.
The first thing I can say is that Disney Cruises are totally awesome! The ship, the Disney Magic, was beautiful, the food great, the entertainment was amazing, and of course the Disney Characters are everywhere. Secondly, sailing across the ocean is an incredible experience. We had six days at sea before sighting land. Fortunately, we had excellent weather and the seas were calm, but in any case, the experience of being in the middle of the ocean is amazing.
Our ports of call were great--we first went to Disney's private Caribbean island, which as in all things Disney, is the ideal of a perfect island, with gorgeous plantings, crystal clear water, white beaches, and play areas for kids and adults.
Madeira, Portugal is a lovely city full of flowers, with a cable car ride up to Monte. Cadiz is an old walled city in Spain with forts and a huge, interesting market. Gibraltar, "the rock", is a little slice of England where you can visit the famous barbary apes, take a cable car up to the top of the rock, and tour WWII defensive tunnels. We loved Barcelona for its interesting architecture, good food, extensive car-free pedestrian walking areas, and its amazing, huge market.
From Spain we drove into France, stopping at the walled city of Carcassonne, from which we then traveled to the Dordogne. This is a very beautiful region of France, known especially for foie gras, walnuts, saffron, truffles, and beautiful little towns clinging to the side of the river. Our main interest was visiting several famous caves in the area which contain pre-historic cave drawings. It was quite amazing to stand next to drawings, hand-prints, and footprints made by our ancestors more than 25,000 years ago.
We also visited Chartres cathedral on our drive up to Paris, from which we flew back on the business class airline, Open Skies.
