Ponta Delgada, part 2

Looking beyond the garden wall, you could see the gardens in people's back yards.

 
We stopped to smell (and take photos of) the roses.

  
This garden displayed a wide assortment of plants from other regions of the world. The bark of this tree looked sorta like elephant skin.

 
In the upper corner of the garden behind a wall, there were a number of Azorean native plants. They were beautiful and I was puzzled why these unusual and lovely plants were not more prominently featured. Unlike the islands in the Pacific, there were no indigenous people here, so they were pristine when the Europeans discovered them.

 
Up here we are even with the clock tower.

 
Two sides of this building had an odd mural with the question, "Get it?" This building had become a dinosaur.

 
The second garden, Jardim Antonio Borges, contained a number of stone structures... and oh yes, some flowers, too. Antonio Borges was an amateur botanist whose garden was donated to the city as a park after he died.

There is a high school across the street and the kids came into the garden on a couple of occasions while we were there--probably between classes.

 
The sizable grotto dug into this part of the garden with its stone covered bridge was unusual.

 
From inside that covered bridge and the maidenhair ferns growing in the seeps in the walls of the grotto.

 
This Australian fig was huge with impressive buttressed roots.

We'd walked by this cemetery on the way to Antonio Borges Garden, but this time we stepped into it to take some photos.

 
We first thought that maybe some of the people buried here worked for the railroad because of these tributes where a photo is sealed behind a plastic fisheye plastic lens and protected from fading with the visor that looked like a railroad lamp. Two problems with that theory: 1) there are no trains here and 2) there were too many of them.

 
Some images were understandable, but why Cinderella was on the roof, we couldn't guess.

 
From the cemetery chapel looking out toward the fancy white and black gate. Then it was on to the gardens around the presidential palace, called Jardim do Palácio de Sant’ana-this is the presidential seal.

The Sant’Ana Palace, a 19th century construction, is presently home to the President of the Regional Government of the Azores. The gardens are open for certain times during the day for a fee and the guards record driver's license # and other the detailed information of the visitors before they are allowed in.

 
A beautiful snail on a lichen-covered tree trunk. We attempted to walk up to the level where the two men dressed in black were standing to get a closer look at the palace. They waved us back.

The carriage house and greenhouses are behind the palace.

 
The carriage house is mostly offices now, but the stable stalls were left in place on the first floor.

 
More beautiful flowers and a tile motif over a slow-drip fountain.

We headed uphill from the gardens.

 
I love talking to the gardeners.

This large stone structure is now surrounded by pasture.

 
There was a whole field of bird of paradise plants. The residences up here were quite grand.

Nasturtiums grew like weeds.

Over the centuries, cows have made shelf-like trails to the top of this hill.

A vegetable garden was next to the horses.

At the top of the hill, the road continues to the next town. And so this was our last port and Dean's pedometer showed that he'd walked 730 miles over the 4-month cruise. Dean's Log: Ponta Delgada.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time aboard the ship, too, so here are a few highlights of shipboard events.