We like it here. It’s
a lovely place, lush and green with flowers everywhere. We’ve been loads of
times before, and we’ve been up on the cable car, around the church at Monte, visited
the gardens up there and come back down to Funchal on the sledges. We’ve walked the main streets, have spent hours
looking for Tourist Information, visited the cathedral and viewed the city from
the tower of the university church. We’ve
sat in the cafe on the main street, indulging in over rich cakes and watching
the taxi drivers pushing their cabs along in the queue. We’ve photographed the terrapins live in the
fountain of the council buildings, listened to folk bands during New Year
celebrations and walked the sea front through several periods of building
work. Each year has seen the city change
bit by bit, all for the better.
And today we were going to take it easy. No excursions to escort, just a bit of free
time to take a walk into town, have a look around, and pick up a few bits n
pieces from the Spar. Even though we’ve
been to Funchal many times before, there are loads of streets and places we’ve
not seen. One of them was a little park
on top the cliff which could be seen from the deck of our cruise ship, so that’s
where we headed.
We had a bit of job working out the best way to get to it
though. I knew there was a path and
stairs from the main road near the sea front, but we thought we could see a
quicker way. This was not quite the
case, and we ended up walking uphill with no way through. We got to the top, and thought we had found a
route.
But the route
involved a wander around the gardens of the Pestana Casino Park, which turns
out to be a very nice looking hotel. I
would say classy and expensive, but I’m not entirely sure it was, because when
we nosed through the windows at the restaurant, it didn’t look any more classy
and expensive than the Bistro here on the ship. The gardens and the pool were stunning
though, definitely classy and expensive looking, and we thought it might be a
nice place to stay. If we could afford
it!
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| View of the Magellan and Madeira from the hotel grounds. The sun did come out later |
After trespassing around the grounds for a while though, we
worked out we couldn’t get to the park we wanted to, so we had to leave and
walk along the road, and find the right park entrance.
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| Statue in the park |
As I said, Funchal is lovely. Lush and green with flowers everywhere, which
also encourages birds and insects.
From the park we took a little walk through the town,
finishing up at the Spar just next to the shuttle bus. We loaded up on teabags, water and coffee and
made our way back to the ship. Lunch
today was a hot dog and chips, out on deck in the warm sunshine of Madeira.
The ship is about to sail, so I’ll finish up and get this
blog uploaded. We have two sea days
until Mindelo in the Cape Verde islands.
As Peter says, “Bring it on”.
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