Island City: Funchal Madeira Portugal

Continuing with our trip to Portugal brings us to the city of Funchal, the largest city on the island of Madeira.

It's located very close to the airport in Santa Cruz (about a 20 minute drive away) and also to two hikes that we wanted to do on the island, one of which I discussed in a previous post.

The city made for a natural and obvious base camp for us for the two nights and two days that we stayed there.

Upon arrival I got the immediate impression that the city was very clean and tropical looking.

Large hotels surrounded by various species of palm trees and tropical flowers really reminded me of a resort, or what I imagine a place like Hawaii would be like.

It's also a major port for cruise lines. At least that what it appeared to be judging by the very large cruise ships that we saw docked in the harbor.

I don't know what cruise lines they were but they were big ones. P&O... Portugal maybe?

We arrived in the city at mid day after our morning hike near Canical. One of the first things that we did was stop for lunch and drinks in a little restaurant near our hotel.

The risotto and fish dishes were very vegetable forward, which made for a nice light lunch on a hot day.

Beer and white wine always helps with that as well.

After lunch we walked down to the harbor where we saw the cruise ships,

and then up some stairs to a few public gardens that were full of tropical trees and plants.

Walking through city gardens is one of our favorite things to do at any place that we travel to.

Plus they are usually free and anything that's free is always a bonus on vacation.

There were several different gardens located in the downtown area and they were all quite large, with water features and fountains in each.

The flowers and plants were super colorful

and the gardens themselves were quite pretty.

There must have been some sort of flower festival taking place when we were there because there were large flower designs located on one of the promanade

and there were ladies dressed up in flowery dresses posing for photos.

After exploring the gardens

and walking the promanade we went into the old town, though it really didn't appear to be that old.

Maybe it just wasn't run down enough for me.

One historic building we saw was this old church, the Funchal Cathedral.

It was built in the 15th century and is one of the only remaining churches that dates back to the city's early colonization. Source

Tall uniform arches

lovely gold plated statues

cast iron accents

and dark rich woodworking,

are just some of what you'll see upon entering.

Moving on from the cathedral we headed a little further to the old fort thats located at the center of the old town, down by the ocean.

It's big and painted bright yellow.

It really shines in the sun light.

São Tiago Fortress was built in 1614 after a severe pirate attack on the city claimed the lives of many of its inhabitants.

You can walk to the top to get a decent view of the city

and the ocean.

There is a restaurant located in the Fort as well that we ate dinner at. I wouldn't recommend it though because it wasn't a great experience. I'll get into that another time perhaps.

This wasn't something that we did in the city but I read about it online before our trip and we ended up seeing it while driving back from one of our hikes in the afternoon.

Apparently you can toboggan down one of the steep mountain roads of the outer city. Two men push and guide the sled down the slippery steep roads. They've been worn smooth and slick after so many years of sleds passing over them.

The workers stop traffic briefly for the event, but we drove behind the sleds for quite a while in our car.

I took some photos out the car window while we waited.

The last thing that we did in town after dinner was walk through the harbor to see all of the boats.

The old pirate ship was cool to see - perhaps a tour boat and a little nod to the islands history.

We were on the island in May and it was quite warm out even at night. I felt fine in a t-shirt and my wife seemed okay in her light jacket.

We also felt quite safe in the city walking 20 minutes or so back to our hotel.

Well thats it for now. If you are interested in seeing more of our trip to Portugal than stay tuned, theres more to come. Thanks for stopping by.