Madeira 2014, part 1
Although I often mention that I have dreamed of going to some destinations for years, I think that this does not apply to any travel as much as it does when it comes to my visit to Madeira. I absolutely have no idea why and when it was that Madeira first occurred to me as a destination or why it kept being in my head for as long and so often. I even had a very clear idea as to which time of year I would like to go this Portuguese island that is located in the Atlantic Ocean west of the shores of Morocco and north of the Canary Islands that belong to Spain.
Be as it may, I finally made the decision during the summer of 2014 and the plan was to go to Madeira during that autumn. I had to do some digging in connection with the plane tickets since not only is there no direct flight from Belgrade, but rather, in order to get any reasonable price, I had to accept that I would spend an entire day running around European airports. Thus, going there I flew via Munich and Lisbon, while I returned via Porto and Zurich. But, I wanted to go to Madeira and I had to be ready to make a sacrifice in the shape of a large number of airplane changes.
At that time I was not very proficient with booking accommodation via internet, so I engaged an agency for the purpose and thus without any real awareness of the place I accepted the reservation at a hotel in the capital of Madeira – Funchal.
On paper everything seemed fine, while in theory it was also good that during the month preceding my journey I had a lot of work, significantly more than usual. This is good because my income is directly linked to the quantity of work I do, since my main hobby in life is travelling, which requires money. On the other hand, on a more practical level, this was a horribly exhausting experience, since I worked like crazy during that month (not a single day off and working from early morning until late at night). For this reason, my trip to Madeira has stuck in my memory, among other things, as one of my travels on which I went far too tired.
To start with, in order to make the airline connection by flying all over Europe, I had to get up at 4 am, having slept little and poorly. In other words, on top of the already piled up exhaustion, I had additional acute tiredness. Still, at the airport of Munich where I was supposed to wait for 5 hours they waited for me with a proposal to fly to Lisbon by an earlier flight and have more time there. At first sight, this seemed like an excellent idea.
However, over time I started to find airports quite boring and in this case I did not dare look for a quiet corner where I would try to fall asleep since I was so tired I was afraid I would not wake up on time and could miss my flight. For this reason, in a rather zombie-like state I walked around the airport with brief breaks to rest and/or eat or drink something.
Luckily, this was all happening at the airport of Lisbon so I treated my tiredness and stress by eating two custard tartlets – pastel de nata. When this pastry is well made it is then one of the best desserts in the world. This is a tartlet consisting of wonderful puff-pastry and custard cream. Yummy! But, taking into account that my tiredness and stress were very big, I also had to buy tarts from Sintra, Queijadas de Sintra, which I fondly remember ever since my visit to Sintra, Portugal, back in 2004.
When the time came for us to board the plane, something happened that I had only occasionally heard of in the past – the flight was overbooked! For those who have not come across the phenomenon, it means that more tickets were sold than the number of available seats. I must admit I was a little worried as it seemed like playing bingo, you never know who is going to be drawn, but in the end I successfully boarded the plane. There I got a seat next to a talkative Portuguese man and in order not to be rude I tried to keep up some kind of conversation, but in fact all the time I had the feeling my face was made of rubber. That was the level of my exhaustion.
And then, as if none of this was enough – my luggage did not arrive. Ouch! I had to wait for everybody to pick up their luggage and in the end I was almost the only one at the airport. I reported all the details linked to my bag at the lost-and-found counter, as well as the address of my hotel in Funchal. In the end it occurred to me to ask if they had something that would be a first aid sort of thing. As it turned out they did, but they obviously were not in the habit of volunteering this information. The pack included a tooth-brush and tooth-paste, comb, basic toiletries in small packages, as well as a large t-shirt that was supposed to be used as a pyjama. Far from ideal, but after all this was only the first aid.
When I was through with this, I caught a bus that runs to the centre of Funchal. The system is such that I told the bus driver which hotel I was staying at and then he advised me where it would be best for me to get off in order to take a taxi. It was not too late, around 9 in the evening, but I still wanted to get a taxi to the hotel since I had no idea whatsoever where the hotel was and this turned out to be a very good decision since the hotel was actually high up on a steep slope. The taxi-driver took me round and round, which taxi-drivers like to do when it comes to unsuspecting tourists, but I did not mind this for already then I could see that Funchal was indeed a beautiful city.
Finally, having arrived in the hotel, I checked in, took the key to my room and went up, since my room was on the top of the building, left my “things” there, i.e., only my small backpack which I used as my hand luggage, and then I went down to the ground floor again in order to go out and make a circle around the hotel and get some water for me. At the same time I wanted to get the first idea about the surroundings.
Still, I was delighted when I returned to my room since I could finally go to sleep!
The next day I woke up a little earlier than what may have been ideal, but in fact I had slept for some 10 hours! In addition, when I remembered my lost luggage it was a good-bye to any further sleep. So, I got up and to start with I enjoyed the view from the top of the building in which the hotel was. As it turned out, there was a spacious terrace with a small pool on top of the building and my room which was a bit tucked away and which by itself had no view to speak of was entered precisely from that terrace, so until the end of my stay here I would often sit on that terrace and enjoy the views from there.
Then I went down to the ground floor of the hotel in order to have breakfast, but even more importantly to check with the airport what the situation with my bag was like. Well, there was no change and the people at the airport had no information about it. Feeling rather down I went back to my room. Before going down for breakfast, when I was on the terrace looking at Funchal, I also saw a fantastic rainbow on the other side. What was particularly interesting about that rainbow was that almost one hour later it was still hovering above some parts of the city high in the hills.
I came to Madeira for eight days with an intention to make this an autumn mini-vacation during which I would rest a little and go sightseeing a little. I also planned to rent a car for three days in order to be able to visit other parts of the island, so that I don’t spend the entire time in Funchal. The island of Madeira is around 56 km long, while in its widest section it has around 20 km, so my plan made sense.
Since I was very nervous because of the lost luggage, I decided that the best thing was to go down to the city and to start with the sightseeing, rather than sit at the hotel and wait for somebody to call me from the airport. A partial problem to my plan lay in the fact that my guidebook to Madeira was also in that lost luggage, which meant I had no idea of what I was supposed to see in the city, but for starters it was clear that I had to go down the hill. The previous night when I arrived in the centre by bus and later during the taxi ride, I could see that the city was exceptionally beautiful, so I thought it was quite fine to use the first day just to walk around a beautiful place.
So, the first thing I did was to leave the hotel and head down the hill. As it turned out, there was a museum close to the hotel, Quinta das Cruzes Museum, which I visited later on, but on this occasion I just peaked into the museum’s courtyard.
Then I simply continued downhill and there, in front of me, I could see the bell tower of St Peter’s Church, Igreja de São Pedro, founded at the end of the 16th century.
I also planned to visit this church later, so this time I just walked past it looking back in order to see it once again from another angle.
The main reason why I wasn’t visiting anything now was that I realised it was a Saturday and the shops would not stay open for much longer. This was important as I also realised that I should prepare myself in case my bag did not arrive at all. I had only the clothes I had travelled in the day before and they were for the slightly cooler weather and not for the temperature and air humidity that predominated on Madeira that day. Still, while I was going towards the central parts of Funchal, I could not resist and had to take photos of some sights I noticed around me.
Thus I saw a cat that was peacefully watching the world around it from the end of a fence or rather the world passing by BELOW it.
Here, close to the cat, I came to the Funchal Municipal Garden (Jardim Municipal do Funchal). This garden is located in the place where there used to be the Convent of São Francisco (Convento de São Francisco) and it was founded in 1880, with the first plants brought here from Paris and Porto. The garden covers the area of almost one hectare and it contains plants from different parts of the world. In 1992, an auditorium and an amphitheatre were added to it and this can be partially seen in the photo below.
Still, since I had to go shopping, I only took a photo of an interesting tree. During those days, there were a lot of tents in the garden, because some kind of a local fair was organised there.
The next thing for me was to enter a small shopping mall. The idea was to buy a couple of t-shirts, but in those shops there I did not find what I really wanted. On the other hand, completely by accident, I came across some light cardigans that I thought were missing in my wardrobe and these here were made of a VERY good blend, while the price was more than good. All in all, I left the mall without t-shirts, but with three new cardigans and was very content. It is important to know how to reduce the stress level and one should never miss out on an opportunity for that, especially when it comes out cheap.
Without the necessary t-shirts, but supplied with currently completely unnecessary cardigans which I put into my small backpack, I continued with my walk around the centre of Funchal and thus I got to one of the main streets which generally follows the shoreline, but what is more important is that along this street there is a wide pedestrian plateau.
Walking slowly along this wide plateau, I passed by the back side of Saint Lawrence Palace (Palácio de São Lourenço). This is in fact a combination of a palace and a fortress the construction of which started in the 16th century. Today, it houses the official residence of the Representative of the Republic for the Autonomous Region of Madeira, as well as a kind of a military museum. Still, I just passed by there and got to the nearby building of the Bank of Portugal, the central bank of Portugal, i.e., its branch office on Madeira. This is a very beautiful and impressive building and right close to it there is a monument to João Gonçalves Zarco, a Portuguese explorer who first declared the island of Porto Santo a Portuguese territory (1418-1419), which he then also did with Madeira (1419-1420).
Namely, although it was known that there was an island in this area (it was drawn into some nautical maps already back in 1339), these two islands were uninhabited until the first half of the 15th century. Then, in 1418, Zarco was storm blown to an island in the Atlantic, thus he was saved, and for this reason he called the island “Holy Harbour” (Porto Santo). From there he saw another island in the distance and later he “discovered” it, too, naming it with the Portuguese word for wood (madeira) since the island was covered in dense vegetation and it also had a large quantity of streams and small rivers. Because of these favourable conditions for life on the island, in 1425 Zarco started with the colonisation of Madeira together with his “colleagues”, fleet commanders.
When you stand in front of the monument, you can nicely see a street leading towards the shore, a half of which is a part of the pedestrian plateau, after which starts a proper street for cars.
Just a short distance away, there is also the cathedral in Funchal or Sé in Portuguese. It is interesting that the cathedral is one of the few buildings that have remained the same as when they were first built and its construction which started at the end of the 15th century was completed in 1514.
The most important elements within the cathedral are its wooden ceiling and the choir. Here are a couple of photos on that subject including the gilded altar.
I did not stay in the cathedral for too long and when I got out first I made a circle around the cathedral itself and then I returned to the square from which the cathedral is entered.
By now it was already the time to go to one of the numerous cafés/restaurants that exist in a pedestrian street that connects the square in front of the cathedral and the wide avenue that runs along the shore. Namely, as I’ve said, I had on me the same clothes in which I left Serbia that was getting ready to enter winter and that wardrobe was slightly thicker than what would be optimal for Madeira. Thanks to its position, Madeira is one of those places with “eternal spring” and its average daily temperature is around 20 degrees C. It seemed to me that the air humidity was also high or perhaps I was just too hot, so I felt a little uncomfortable and needed a break. On the other hand, it was a good thing that I was absolutely in no rush whatsoever.
After a nice and comparatively long break, I continued with my search for t-shirts and soon I found what I wanted, buying along the way some underwear and slippers. I clearly had in my mind an intention to go back to the hotel in order to wash the new pieces of clothes, as I don’t like to put on freshly bought things without washing them first (who knows where they’ve been). Still, before returning to the hotel, I decided to walk around the centre a little more. My next destination was a famous local farmer’s market – Mercado dos Lavradores. I don’t know how I knew about it, but I did know it was some 10 minutes of leisurely walk away from the cathedral.