Josh and I woke up at 4:15 AM Monday morning to go to the
airport for our trip to Madeira. To support my assertion in my
first post about cabs being cheap, I'll share with you the cost of our taxi-ride to the airport
– 11 Euro after the luggage surcharge. After a spending a leisurely 2 hours
eating our boxed breakfast and killing time before our flight – Josh likes to
leave us a lot of time, we boarded our flight to Madeira. I should note that at
the point at which I am writing this, we have been personally called 3 times
this trip – before our NY to Lisbon flight, before the Sea Born boat ride (I’ll
get to that) and before our Madeira to Lisbon flight. Sense a trend? Oops?
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| Enjoying The View From Our Room |
We arrived in Funchal, the major city in Madeira (also
sometimes called “little Lisbon” according to my guidebooks) and checked into
our hotel, The Madeira Regency Cliff. After trying to upsell us on a suite and
us declining, they decided to upgrade us for free on the occasion of our
honeymoon. We had a porch with a beautiful ocean view and slept with the doors
open so we could fall asleep to the splashing waves.
Funchal was very touristy and a bit disappointing. Madeira
is super hilly so there were many beautiful views of the sea, mountainous
terrain, and infrastructure. We started by sitting at a tea shop for tea and cake at a beautiful square. We stopped at
Bordal, a recommended embroidery
shop to find ourselves a tablecloth for our new apartment. Turns out embroidery
here, while quite fine, is also quite pricey so we didn’t buy anything.
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| Monte Palace Gardens |
We took a cable car up to Monte and then explored the Monte
Palace Botanical Gardens (which they reminded us on every other telephone post
that it is one of the top 13 or 14 botanical gardens in the world, depending on
which sign).
Strolling through the gardens was relaxing and serene. After
waking up at the crack of dawn, the slow pace of the garden was the perfect
start to Madeira. We decided to skip the Toboggan ride back down to Funchal
since it seemed overpriced and very short but immediately regretted our
decision once we were far enough down the hill to make it not worth walking
back up. The way down was STEEP and 6 km long. After 2 km, we decided to cab
down the rest of the way.
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| Monte Palace Gardens |
Next stop – the Farmers market. Pretty touristy as well but
we had the chance to taste Poncha, a traditional Madeiran drink, which we
hated, and 6 different types of passion fruits that grow in Madeira, which we
LOVED.
For dinner, we tried a Turkish restaurant called “
Istanbul Restaurante” (they’re quite creative with names – the Indian restaurant next
door was called Taj Mahal Indian Restaurant). We loved the food and service and
ended up returning our second night as well!
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| Levada Trail |
The next morning, we joined a tour to walk along a Levada, or water channel for irrigation, called Valley of Paradise. The tour
guide was very funny and the walk was easy but lovely. The guide pointed out
some of the flora and fauna and made friends with a local dog.
The afternoon plan was to rent a car but there were no
automatic cars available on the island and neither of us can drive a shift so
we rearranged our plans and took a boat tour instead. The Sea Born boat ride,
which waited for us incidentally, was incredible! The weather was gorgeous and the
water, clear blue. I got a new perspective of the island by sea as I sat back with
Josh and sipped a refreshing local beer (Coral) while the wind whipped through
my hair. [Note: I’m not a big beer
drinker but it’s good stuff.]
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| Josh with our little SmartCar |
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Ponto Moniz
|
Our 3
rd and final day of Madeira, we finally
rented our car and drove around the whole island. Turns out we got a SmartCar
which was a tight fit with our luggage but I pulled a Ronnie and repacked
everything in our suitcases so that it all worked out. We started with a view
point from a neighboring town called Cabo Girao. Unfortunately, the sky was
pretty cloudy so we turned around partway up the mountain since visibility
wasn’t great. We continued on to Sao Vincete and admired the quaint town before
setting off to wander through volcanic caves formed by lava. The caves were
very cool and we learned a lot from the exhibition on volcanoes afterwards.
We then drove westward to Porto Moniz for the local natural
lava pools. I wrongly assumed they were warm in temperature but the name is
deceiving because it just means the pools are sitting on old lava but they were
freezing! We went swimming and befriended a pair of British brothers on
holiday. They gave us a tip for a great lookout so after air-drying in the
harsh wind (we didn’t have towels), we drove up for a look.
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| Traditional House in Santana |
Our final stop before heading to the airport was Santana, a
town that still has the original type of Madeiran houses – small, A-shaped
houses, painted red, white and blue, with thatched roofs. They were cool to see
but there are only a few left and its very touristy so it wasn’t our favorite
stop.
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| View from the Drive |
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| View Along the Drive |
Overall, the driving experience was slightly terrifying –
many of the roads are incredibly narrow and winding, at the edge of cliffs,
and intended for 2-way traffic. Josh did an excellent job behind the wheel. The
views were INCREDIBLE though. The island is so lush and green and surrounded by
perfectly blue water. The air was so fresh. We were so dazzled by the scenery
that we didn’t even mind that we never figured out how to work the radio.
We finally ended up at the airport and my phone ran out of
data and voice minutes – it really held out quite nicely since the car GSP
failed us and Google Maps came to the rescue. Anyway, we made the flight just
as they were pulling away the staircase for the back entrance to the plane.
Just in time.
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| This is the U-Turn we had to make when the GSP failed us... |
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