Travel Tuesday on a Thursday - Man's 50th Birthday Trip - An Evening in Funchal Portugal

Due to a scheduling change in our itinerary, we were only in Funchal from 4-9:30 pm. To be honest, before this trip I had never heard of these islands, and had no expectations, so it was an ok port to be short. 

Given the timing, we ended up doing the hop on bus! Unfortunately, there was no time to hop off, but we did get the 1.5 hour tour. This allowed us to see a lot of the area, and learn some information in a very economical way. 

The hop on bus map!

Funchal is the capital of Portugal's Madeira archipelago. It has a population of just over 100 000 people. It was settled in the early 1400s and was survived a lot of pirates.  Sit back and enjoy a tour around the west side of the island. 

The cable cars that take people up the mountains

                    

Pirates mean there is a lot of fortification around the island

Agriculture is an important industry on the island they maximize the space for it. 

Wish I had time to explore the cemetary

The sun starting to set on the hills

The setting sun

Hills of grapes for wine

The sun setting over the city

Plantains are one of the major exports

This statue of Icarus to honour the death of workers killed building the city

After our hop on bus, as it was getting dark and things were closing, we found a restaurant in the harbour and had dinner. Generally we eat on the ship (easier for food allergies), but given this was a short port, we thought it would be nice to enjoy some local cuisine. 

A fun sculpture made of garbage with our ship in the background

Europe does food allergy menus so much better than North America. It is so much easier to eat out, even in places where the menus weren't in English. Here is a sample. You can see it lists all the common allergens that the dish contains on the menu. 

One of the major exports of Madeira is wine. I was excited to try a semi-sweet Madeira wine. It did not disappoint. 

I tried a Portuguese steak for dinner. It did not disappoint. 

After a nice relaxing dinner, we walked back to the ship. 

While it was a short port, we did enjoy our brief time in Portugal. Come back next week when we will take a break from site seeing to share the fun of Halloween (the Man's favourite holiday) on the ship.