Exploring the city

Funchal

We were even later today, starting at 1045.  Today, we will explore Madeira’s main city of Funchal.

I decided we would head to the furthest point of interest on the western end of the centre.  That was the Christiano Ronaldo Museum.  We paid EUR5 per person to enter and I immediately realised it was a mistake.  It was full of trophies he had amassed from his career.  Fortunately, Kim needed the toilet, so the money wasn’t completely wasted.

We reparked the car closer to the centre and found a local café again for lunch, without tourist-trap prices.  After, we wandered around the pedestrian streets, visited the cathedral and then the market.

At the fish section of the market, they large tuna, very long fish somewhat like barracuda but black and moray eels.  Moray mornay anyone?

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Crazily steep road

We’re not big on visiting gardens and Funchal has two.  The Botanical Gardens and the Monte Palace Garden.  For tourists, they may be accessed by cable car; one ride for the first garden and two rides for the second.

The Monte Palace was more highly rated so we opted to drive there and see if we felt like entering once we got there.  The drive was a struggle for the Citroen C3 going uphill on a continuous 2km stretch that had a crazy gradient.

We had to make a stop when the car overheated and the clutch smelt like it was burning.  We had to pull off to a side road as the car would have difficulty starting from stationary on the steep hill.

Towards the top, traffic changed direction as well, for some reason, adding to Kim’s stress.

For anyone that’s interested, our route started on Rua das Dificuldades, then Rua do Comboio and then Caminho de Ferro.

On this steep road, there were people doing sleigh rides downhill.

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Monte Palace Garden

We had lucked on parking a lot on Madeira and our lucky streak continued.  We paid the EUR15 entry for Monte Palace Gardens (with free wine tasting) and commenced our exploration downhill.

We spent about an hour in there.  The garden was gorgeous but the view of the city was better from where we had parked the car.

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Rest of the day

We returned to our accommodation around 1600 and took dinner at Santa Cruz waterfront.  For a prime seaside location, I was surprised the dining and prices wasn’t more premium.  The food was good down-to-earth fare and cheap.

Today had seemed like the hottest day.  I felt like I needed a swim but I’m sure that the Atlantic waters here would be a bit chilly for me compared to Zakynthos last week.

I had expected to do some swimming here but after Zakynthos, my standards have changed.  It’s not a bad thing as it forced us to do all the other things that makes Madeira interesting and special.