Days 5&6

Day 5

Last full day today.  First thing I did was go back to the market and buy a load of bulbs/corms/seeds and stuff, including a Madeira banana tree.  Not sure how well it'll do in Òbidos, but it'll be fun trying.  Afterwards I went back to the place where I had a lovely pot of tea before, but it was shut so I went next door and had a terrible cup of what turned out to be decaf tea at a table where my chair kept getting rocked every time anyone walked past and so I became very irritable, particularly as I had no-one to take it out on. Decided to walk up to the fort (Fortaliza do Pico) and visit some nice calming museums. This part of Funchal is really lovely, with big old buildings and lots of places to visit, although it's pretty steep and hilly in places, like the rest of Madeira. Unfortunately I arrived at lunchtime and everywhere closes for very long lunch breaks in Portugal because lunch is the most important thing in the world to the Portuguese.  After football, of course.

I found the Universo de Memorias, which was open, so decided to have a look around. This is a modestly grand town house which houses the collections of João Carlos Abreu, a Madeiran poet, journalist, actor, politician, writer, and traveller, who was an avid collector of ‘stuff’ whilst on his travels around the world. He’s now in his eighties and has donated many of his collections to the state  (I love rich eccentrics who do this). I’d never heard of him before and had no idea what to expect. He collected all sorts of things - both works of art and souvenirs - and the house is absolutely crammed. There’s a room full of silver table-ware, especially teapots, another full of jewels, three rooms full of horses (from huge wooden carvings to tiny tin models and everything in between) , a whole attic room full of neck ties and cravats and a bathroom full of hats. The walls are covered in masks and paintings and drawings of every description and the idea that he bought all this stuff (he started collecting aged 16) is mind-boggling. It only cost €3 to wander around. There is also a beautiful courtyard garden with a fountain and a  Casa de Cha where they serve Earl Grey tea in mismatched bone china. It was lovely.

Then I went across the road to the Quinta de Cruzes. The museum bit was still closed for lunch but the gardens were open, and were quite nice to wander around, particularly if you like archeological artefacts, of which there are many. There’s also a large orchid garden, which I imagine is wonderful when the orchids are in flower, which they aren’t really, currently. I’m not all that fond of orchids on account of the fact that I seem unable to keep them alive, despite them requiring absolutely zero attention.

Then I hiked up the final, very steep climb to the fort, which was a bit of an anticlimax as you can’t go inside (although the views are impressive) so I came back down the other side and found a restaurant with a nice back garden where I had a pleasant lunch of Bife Madeira and half a bottle of house white.

Then I went to the Casa Museu de Frederick de Freitas which is just below the Convent of Santa Clara, and which has three parts: a museum of azulejos (painted tiles), a lovely grand old house, and a small courtyard garden. I liked the house bit best.

After that I went to the Museu Municipal e Aquaria. This is a natural history museum and has life-sized models of all the fish and sea life found in Madeiran waters, taxidermy of all the birds and mammals and also all the insects, spiders and butterflies. I liked that a lot, although the taxidermy was a bit haphazard. The hare looked moribund, the rabbit was clearly roadkill and the domestic cat looked bloody terrifying.

Downstairs is a very poor aquarium, with a handful of fish, a couple of eels and a very lonely solitary octopus (*weeps*).

By now I was all museumed out so I slowly made my way back down to the seafront and had a literally humongous Italian ice cream.

Day 6

Up. Dressed. Packed. Checked out. Coffee at the market. Waited at bustop for bus to airport.
Approached by man, who offered to take me to the airport for the same price as the cost of the bus (€5).  Said he was taking three old people home from the market with their shopping to a village near the airport and if I came too he could charge them less.
As I followed this complete stranger down the dark steps into an underground car park I momentarily questioned the wisdom of my decision, but as I always tell my daughters, you must trust your instincts and my instincts were telling me this was a nice man. And they were right. I squeezed into his car with three very old, vegetable-laden and wobbly old people who practised their English on me and nodded and smiled at my Portuguese all the way to the airport. The lovely man delivered me to the airport, took my suitcase to the door and shook my hand.

Note to Daughters: Please do NOT follow strange men into dark underground car parks just because they ask you to, however nice they might seem.

#everydayisanadventure
#apotofteaisthenewrockandroll

Madeira Days 3 & 4

Day 3

Legs surprisingly not too bad this morning, so packed my backpack with too much stuff, including lunch (when exactly did I become a ‘packed lunch’ sort of woman, I wonder?) and set off West. Strolled through Sé and the Municipal Park (only one block large, but packed with trees and very lovely) and then climbed up through the Jardim de Santa Catarina, from where there is a great view back towards Funchal. Or at least there would be if you could Photoshop the fucking cruise liners out. 

Carried on west along the coast, getting diverted en route by a big sign on the pavement pointing down some steps saying ‘Biggest Collection of bulbs, plants and seeds in Madeira! Only 20 metres!’

I OBVIOUSLY had to have a look and as I peered through the windows of the glass-walked establishment, floor-to-ceiling full of plants, was startled by a very small and toothless, very old woman, leering back at me through the hanging plants and beckoning me in with a gnarled fore-finger. She reminded me very much of a witch I saw at our kitchen window as a child who everyone tells me I imagined but I definitely didn’t. 

Anyway, I was too polite (scared) not to obey her and in I went like a fly into a spider’s web. She was about 4 feet tall and built like a twig, and dressed in layers and layers of clothes, most of them hand knitted, and she told me in Portuguese how terribly cold it was, even though it was sweltering and I was wearing a T-shirt. And she smelt really bad. I don’t say this in a mean way, she was really old and very lovely, but she really did smell very bad. Then she insisted in showing me ALL of her hundreds of plants via a strung-together photo album, that had photographs of them from all over the world, with handwritten biro legends on the back of each one which she read out.  I couldn’t work out what it was all about, but it was important to her so I went along with it. I eventually managed to extract myself after holding both her hands earnestly and promising I’d come back on Thursday. I don’t actually intend to go back on Thursday and I feel a bit bad about that.

I trekked on.  Past Reid’s Palace Hotel, the big posh place that Winston Churchill used to visit, and Margaret Thatcher and Dennis honeymooned in (ugh, the very thought makes me want to pour bleach into my brain), that hogs a chunk of coastline and doesn’t let anyone near it, and then on to the uppy-downy, twisty-turny promenade that clings to the sea, past the Lido and the ‘hotel zone’ and then on westwards towards Praia Formosa and then Câmara de Lobos, a little fishing village I'd read about and which I was heading for. 

The weather here is very odd.  My iPhone weather app assured me all last week, and continues to assure me this week, that it was going to be raining all week.  Yesterday it was a bit damp in the morning but soon cleared up and today it was frankly scorching.  I was sweltering in jeans, trainers and a T-shirt and walking past people in bikinis and flip flops.  I told Richard about this and he reminded me that being inappropriately dressed is a family tradition.  This was coming from someone who climbed a snowy volcano in Iceland wearing daps and a Topman jacket. He's absolutely right, but I do wish I'd brought a pair of shorts.

To get to Praia Formosa the footpath takes you through a long dark tunnel through a rocky headland.  It was lovely and cool in there and I was inclined to loiter about and cool off but then I thought it might be a bit alarming to come across someone just loitering, if you were walking through there on your own, and then the thought of that creeped me out a bit and I practically sprinted the rest of the way.  Praia Formosa is a very long, very steep beach, composed entirely of huge pebbles. The first third and the last third have a sort of walkway built on the pebbles but the middle third doesn't for some reason, so you have to walk, or rather stumble, for a few hundred yards.  This was the final straw for my poor leg muscles, and when I stepped back onto the walkway at the other end, it was like my legs had become detached from my body.  I stopped and sat down to give them a rest whilst I ate my lunch.

I was now past the point of no return so I soldiered on another couple of miles to Câmara de Lobos.  This is a picturesque little cove with striped fishing boats, where Churchill used to set up his easel and do watercolours.  I sat in a nice little bar drinking a cool glass of white wine, contemplating my return journey and wondering how my legs would stand up to it.  

With the help of an audiobook (Love in a Cold Climate) to distract me from the pain, I plodded the four or five miles back and arrived in Funchal totally bloody knackered.  I was asleep by 9pm.

Day 4

Got up at something past 9am.  Didn't sleep all that well due to the fact that I was woken up by the pain in my leg muscles every time I tried to move an inch during the night. Decided to probably take it easy today, and wandered over to the big market, Mercado dos Lavradores, which is only a couple of blocks from my apartment. I love markets, and this one is particularly lovely, with huge weird veg and unbelievable things made out of cork.  But the best bit was the huge variety of bulbs and seeds and plants for sale (Witchy Woman's sign was a blatant lie).  I was so excited by the variety I practically had palpitations. I didn't buy anything because I'm going to go back tomorrow with a huge shopping bag. I can't wait.

Then I wandered up and down the old town for a bit - very pretty with lots of nice bars and restaurants - and as my legs felt OK-ish I decided to stroll up to the Botanical Gardens.  On the map it's about half the distance that Monte was and about a third of the distance to Camara dos Lobos.  So off I set.  Up the mountain.  Turns out that the road is SO STEEP that cars can't drive up it (they have to do the windy zigzag road instead) and you almost literally have to scramble up using your hands as well as your feet.  It was practically rock climbing.  

(I'd like to point out, indignantly, that I'm not unfit.  I run 10 miles a week and walk the dogs all the time.  It's just that my leg muscles aren't used to climbing - we don't even have any stairs any more.)

The Botanical Gardens are lovely if you're a plant enthusiast like me blah blah blah blah and then after a couple of serene hours I made the descent, during which I fantasised about being a fell-runner, or a downhill skier, or an abseiler, all of which I'm quite sure would be less painful than trying to walk down that slope. Had a wonderful pot of tea when I got back to Funchal, and then later, in the marina, I had an octopus salad which I regretted partly because it wasn't very nice and also because octopuses are sweet and highly intelligent creatures.

Madeira - Days 1 & 2

Day 1

Here I am on a little jolly on my own in Madeira. This is pay-back time for R's annual golf piss-up in the Algarve with his Monmouth mates. Not really, but it is quite tricky for us to get away together for any longer than a couple of days, what with us being slaves to four dogs, five cats and ten chickens, and having daughters who are increasingly and annoyingly bound up with their own commitments. Poor us, huh?

This isn't my first trip to Madeira (and it won't be my last). We were here for an Easter holiday when the girls were teenagers, and I've always wanted to come back and explore the gardens more, as there's only so much of that you can do when you have teenaged kids who absolutely HAVE to get a suntan, and don't know an agapanthus from an aquilegia. 

I arrived yesterday lunchtime after a smooth hour and a half flight from Lisbon, and an expectedly scary landing, due to the position of the airport.  Madeira doesn't really have any flat bits, suitable for an airport, because it's an old volcano and just erupts straight up out of the deep blue sea.  There aren't even any sandy beaches really, or at least very few natural ones, which is good as far as I'm concerned as it keeps all the particularly irritating tourists away (apart from the ones who arrive on huge cruise ships, that is). So the relatively new airport is sort of precariously stuck on the edge between the sea and the mountains and makes me a bit nervous.

I got a bus to the centre of Funchal where I'm renting a nice studio apartment. Funchal is a beautiful city on the south coast of the island, surrounded by mountains, and it's the third largest city in Portugal. Madeira is Portuguese, so the lack of culture shock on this visit was noticeable and quite nice - same language, same money, same shops etc.  I popped into Pingo a few doors down and stocked up on a few provisions, then walked the few blocks down to the sea.  After a long walk along the sea front, I stopped for glass of wine at the marina and watched the huge cruise ship Queen Mary II reverse out of the harbour. I was really hoping it would bash into the harbour wall and sink, because cruise ships are full of ghastly people and I'm not very nice, but it honked its horn ostentatiously and sailed off into the Atlantic.

Back in the apartment I watched MacMafia on my laptop which made my head explode.

Day 2

It was raining when I woke up.  When the bloke showed me around yesterday he asked that if I cook anything could I make sure I switch the extractor hood on AND open the Velux window next to the hob as the fire alarm is VERY SENSITIVE. I did all that but whilst my eggs were boiling a sudden very loud alarm went off which gave me a heart attack, and sent me scurrying around putting lids on things and opening all the other windows, before I discovered, on flinging open the apartment door, that it was the cleaner ringing my door bell (I'm on the third floor, no-one told me I had a doorbell).  Anyway, now I'm frightened of the cooker.

I decided to walk to Monte, which is right up on top of a mountain over-looking Funchal.  There're some lovely gardens there, one of which we visited last time we were here.  We got there via cable car from the seafront in Funchal.  It was absolutely fucking terrifying and Holly and I both came out in a florid rash, so this time I decided to walk.  I found the best road to take on my map - dead straight, about three miles long and, it turned out, relentlessly steep.  And I mean really steep.  About 1in 3.  Even cars struggle to get up it.  It took me an hour and a half, and I was sweating like a pig when I finally got to Monte. Also, the sun came out soon after I set off, which didn't help.

Wandered all round the very very beautiful Monte Palace tropical gardens for a couple of hours, then around the very lovely but entirely different gardens of the Quinta de Monte hotel, then the also very lovely municipal park of Monte. Soul soothed and pockets mysteriously full of seed pods and little cuttings, I wandered over to have a look at the other shorter cable car ride that goes from Monte down and across to the Botanical Gardens, but took one look at the massive ravine it crossed and thought Fuck That.

So I started my descent on foot, down the route used by the Carros de Cesto.  These are wicker basket 'sleds' that take two people and slide all the way down the steep road back to Funchal.  There are two guys standing on the back using their rubber-sole-booted feet as brakes.  It's good fun - we did it last time we were here - but also quite expensive, so I decided to walk again, what with it being all downhill an' all. Could literally hardly walk when I got back down to sea level and was finally able to disengage my rectus femoris (thigh muscles), and after I sat down in the marina for a glass of wine I couldn't get up again.  Walked back to the apartment looking like I'd shat myself.  Getting out of bed tomorrow should be interesting.