Adventures on a 7-day cruise on MSC Musica

We onboarded MSC Musica and Rita had arranged priority onboarding which meant that we did not have to stand in line at all. She knew I would like that. With a special class of cabin, one gets to onboard hours before others and this is exactly what we had. We onboarded at 10.00 AM, we had breakfast and our cabin is free for us to use at 02.00 PM. At 03:00 PM we have mandatory safety briefing. At 04:00 PM the ship will leave.

We have not visited Madeira before and I have to admit, we fell in love with first sight. We have seen tens of islands across Mediterranean, Caribbean, Hawaii etc and this made a huge impact on us. The island is clean, beautiful, green with hundreds of restaurants and top hotels you can choose from. We arrived to this island this morning overlooking Funchal and it is amazing to watch the houses being built on the hills. There is no flat land here, it seems everything is built on the hills.

We arrived this morning to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Island from previous fabulous island of Madeira. We decided to do an excursion that would take us first to the historical town of La Orotava. This city had amazing colorful houses built on steep hills and we had a chance to walk and enjoy the town.

From La Orotava we headed to Puerto de la Cruz botanical gardens and then finally to the heart of Puerto de la Cruz. This town has special meaning to me and my wife as we got engaged in this town 39 years ago. We have not visited the town since then so it was nice to relive the atmosphere once again.

We arrived this morning to Arrecife, the capital of Lanzarote. We decided this time not to participate in an arranged excursion but instead walk from the cruise ship to Arrecife downtown, which is very close (1.5 kilometers). The downtown has lots of cafeterias to enjoy, and the city is very walkable. We also liked the Lanzarote Marina watching beautiful boats in the docks.

Today we arrived to Fuerteventura, one of the 8 Canary Islands. We took an organized excursion with a bus and during the 4.5 journey we learned quite a bit of Fuerteventura island and its characteristics. It is very similar to Lanzarote, very dry and volcanic.

The captain of MSC Musica decided to sail to the island of La Palma one day earlier due to worsening weather. We were supposed to spend the New Year’s Eve at sea but ended up spending the New Year night docked at Santa Cruz de La Palma port.

The New Year’s Day we participated in an excursion where we were taken to a rum distillery as well as view sceneries overlooking the sea from very high locations.

The MSC Musica ship sailed back to Las Palmas throughout the night and when we woke up we were back in the Las Palmas port. The de embarkation was the smoothest that we have never experienced. The MSC team has really figured this out. The MSC terminal is also very nice and modern and extremely well located considering Las Palmas. We had booked hotel at AC Marriott which is very close to the port and truly walkable distance. We spent the day walking by the ocean front Playa de Las Canteras. Both Rita and I were pleasantly surprised how nice it was. Tomorrow we will continue our trip by flying to Madrid, Spain for one night enjoying Madrid downtown area.