After the tour with HitTheRoadTours on our first day in Funchal, we decided we weren’t going to do much – a relaxing week in prospect. So we walked around Funchal and I took lots more pictures of doors which weren’t there (or I missed) the last time we visited. We also went up to Monte in the cable car and looked around the gardens at the top – so having covered a good 5 miles around the gardens, it wasn’t relaxing at all.
We stayed at Albergaria Dias – a small family run hotel in Funchal old town. We were able to walk through the hotel garden, out the back door and straight into the old town, full of restaurants and bars. Senor Dias and his family are excellent hosts and we really enjoyed staying there.
Our journey up on the cable car gave us the opportunity to see the haphazard nature of the devastation caused by the fire here. How one property can be totally razed to the ground leaving a nearby one intact is beyond me.
It’s quite amazing how the north side of the island can be cloudy and rainy, yet all the bad weather falters at the top of the mountains and leaves Funchal alone – no wonder over 100,000 of Madeira’s 268,000 population live in the Capital. The tuc-tuc seems quite a popular way of sightseeing here – we haven’t used one, maybe next time.
The two guys playing cards just near to where the cable car leaves from looked as though they were enjoying themselves but I’m not sure about the other two in the centre of Funchal. Just after I’d taken that photo, the guy in the flat cap got up and walked off.
Strolling through Funchal one morning, we heard some good jazz standards being played and we sought it out. Juan Caldarado and his band were keeping a good number of people entertained – excellent stuff. Just nearby we came across a lovely market stall in a square. The quality and diversity of the produce in Madeira is amazing. Thiago from HitTheRoadTours was telling me that the climate and soil quality give them the opportunity to produce 4 crops of potatoes a year. Useless fact or interesting – you decide!
The doors are coming……..