Day 13 - 12/02 - Manaus - Day 2

After making lemonade yesterday, we woke up eager to do our scheduled city tour. Today's excursion would keep us close to the ship and give us opportunity to see local sights.

Herman and his assistant, John, met us at the terminal and we walked out to the tour bus. Our first stop was the vegetable market where our main takeaway was how many Brazil nuts grow in pod. We walked over to a fish market and wrapped up our market tour with a visit to the craft market.

Manaus was built on the fortunes of the rubber industry of the late 1800's, and our next visit was to the palatial house of one of the biggest of the rubber barons. After a bankruptcy following the collapse of the rubber industry, the house became a government office building. It now is a home to cultural events.

We wrapped up our tour at the opera house or Teatro Amazonas which was completed in 1896. It's a spectacular structure and still in use today. After the tour concluded, I found a barber in the terminal building and got a haircut for $5US. We then walked over to the Cathedral, but it was closed until 3:00pm. We took a stroll along a shopping street but found nothing of interest, so we retuned to the ship where I enjoyed a salad for lunch and waited for our sailaway at 4:00pm. Promptly at 4pm, there was a long blast of the ship's horn, and the Volendam slipped away from the dock and rotated counter clockwise to head down the Rio Blanco to join up with the Amazon about 45 minutes later.  

Tonight's LIDO dinner theme was a South American meal that was quite good. The evening entertainment was a trio from London called the Flyrights, a Motown group. They were really good. Afterwards we finished out our evening in the stateroom watching the Seahawks/Vikings on Monday night football.

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