Day 7 – A Toast to Madiera

First of all, I thought Madiera was a tiny island off the coast of Portucal.  It is not.  It is a series of rather large islands (think Hawaii and Cuba) off the western coast of Africa.  Northeast of it is the Azores and southeast is the Cape Verdes.  Madiera was discovered by Henry the Navigator in the 1400’s!!  It was beautiful, but very packed in at Funchal, the capitol city.

The boys had no desire to get off the ship and since I hadn’t done a good job of planning for each stop,  Ken and I agreed to let them stay on the ship while we explored the island.  We were sad we did this later.  We got off the ship (again fortunately docked without tenders . .yeah).  We picked up a taxi into town instead of walking about 2 miles or so JUST to get to town.  It was a lovely old world and compact town.  One of the interesting things about these island shopping areas in Europe is that they’re not just geared to tourists.  In fact, it can be difficult to find quality t-shirts at all.  These are the downtowns used by the residents mostly with the occasional ship making port.  Quite a bit different then the ports in the Carribean. 

After walking through town, we discovered the cable car up the mountain I’d read about (now I said I didn’t do MUCH research, but I did do some . . ..)  The cable cars here are nearly brand new.  We rode up the mountain looking into backyards and front yards along the way.  We were struck by how many shiny solar panels with stainless steel  tanks were posed on top of the terracotta roofs.  We also saw lots of cisterns; a common sight in an island home.   Madiera had some severe mudslides in the spring.  There was signficant evidence of washed our roads and reconstruction along the way. 

At the top Ken and I took a break to enjoy the view.  Sometimes it’s just nice to sit with a cup of coffee or tea and just soak it all in.   It was a bit cloudy.  What amazed me was how far out to sea we could see.  You could see the different waves far out, but you couldn’t tell where the sea ended and the sky began.  We spent a little time walking around, but decided not to do the garden tour.  We did finally find a touristy shop so we could buy a few things (like Madiera wine).  After about an hour, we took the cable car back down the mountain.

We wandered around town a bit longer,took a walk in a park,  and then took a cab back to the ship.  The rest of our day was spent relaxing on the ship and eating another wonderful dinner.  We’d be doing a lot of this for our next FIVE sea days!