A Week in the Azores: Sao Miguel West

September 4, 2024September 13, 2024 / Maria / 4 Comments

Continuing on from my blog posts about Portugal, we had a lazy morning in Lisbon and treated ourselves to brunch before starting the second part of our trip. We had ~2 weeks and decided to each pick a location to visit for 1 week. Emily’s choice was the Azores, which is a group of Portuguese islands in the middle of the Atlantic. They seem to be a popular vacation destination among Europeans, but I don’t think the rest of the world has really discovered them yet.

In contrast, the other popular Portuguese island is Madeira, which is located off the coast of Morocco. Me and Seth had an awesome time exploring Madeira in 2012, but the rest of the world has discovered it now and it’s heavily over-visited. That’s not to say the Azores isnt’t a popular destination. We visited in the tail end of shoulder season, so it was still busy without being overly crowded, but we could tell the tourism was about to pick up.

The Azores are made up of several islands, each with unique features to explore. We opted to visit Sao Miguel Island, which has the largest city, Ponta Delgada, and seems to be the hub. It’s a direct flight from Lisbon (2.5 hours) and we arrived around 3pm. If you stay in Ponta Delgada, you might be able to get away without renting a car, but I definitely recommend it. There’s limited transit and the easiest way to explore the island is by car.

We picked up our car and were immediately intimidated by the narrow streets. The highway system is pretty good, but the town streets are extremely narrow, so be prepared to drive slow and stop frequently to let other cars pass. We opted not to stay in Ponta Delgada and had a nice B&B booked in the tiny village of Porto Formoso. The Azores are very hilly, with lots of steep roads. Our B&B was located on one of these roads, but had the most beautiful view of the beach from the balcony (see above)! It’s a gorgeous location and I’m glad we decided to stay there.

We didn’t have too long to settle in before driving to the nearby town of Ribeira Grande to stock up on groceries. We found a nice restaurant near the beach and had dinner while we watched the sunset. It was a beautiful day, but we were quickly distracted by the menu. The Azores is known for its seafood and we intended to take full advantage of that fact! We were advised to always get the special because that is generally the freshest fish. In this case, the special was a spread of 3 grilled fish and vegetables to be shared between 2 people. It was absolutely delicious and we added a plate of limpets as a starter. I’ve only ever had limpets in Madeira (it’s a shellfish) and they were as good as I remembered.

Since the Azores are located smack dab in the middle of the Atlantic, the weather can be pretty variable. The key to a successful trip is to do your best to try and plan around the weather. The island has installed webcams at all the major viewpoints so that you can check the visibility before visiting. We knew our first day was likely to be the best weather of the trip, so we had to decide what to prioritize. I was most excited about Sete Cidades, so we decided to do a road trip to the west side of the island on Day 1.

It was a beautiful blue sky day, but there were some clouds hanging around the Sete Cidades viewpoint, so we decided to hit up some other attractions on the way over. The island isn’t that big (it’s maybe ~2.5 hours to drive lengthwise), and there are frequent pull-outs on the roads for visitors. We stopped at several viewpoints along the drive and had our first proper stop at Ponta da Ferraria.

Ponta da Ferraria is a rocky point on the west end of the island that has a salt water hot spring at low tide. The hot spring naturally flows into the ocean and when the tide is low enough, it turns into a big hot pool. Low tide was around noon, so we arrived at 11am and did a short walk down to the pool. It’s all black volcanic rock in this area and there’s a small inlet where they’ve installed ladders to climb down. It wasn’t busy when we arrived, so I’m glad we went early because when we left at noon, it was very crowded.

This is the only salt water hot spring I’ve ever visited, so it was a cool experience. It’s a little more chaotic because of the waves. The rock naturally acts as a barrier, but the tide still sloshes you around a bit in the pool. But it’s great for temperature control. It’s very hot near the inlet, and cooler as you move out towards the ocean. We soaked for a while and then continued on our adventure for the day.

After some more viewpoints, we stopped into Sete Cidades town for lunch. Since Sete Cidades is one of the main tourist attractions, I thought the town would be a bustling touring trap with lots of shops and restaurants. This was not the case as all. There’s only really 2 restaurants – the one in town is highly rated, but was full – so we opted for the restaurant on the lake, which is scenic, but very poorly rated. Mostly it’s just very busy, so it’s not great service, but it is what it is.

Sete Cidades is essentially a giant crater with a series of lakes inside it and tons of viewpoints around the perimeter. I really wanted to hike around the rim of the crater, but it’s a long hike without 2 cars (~20km), so we opted to sample a little bit of everything in Sao Miguel rather than go all in on one hike. But I still think about this hike, so I might have to go back for it one day.

After lunch, we drove up out of the crater to visit Miradouro da Boca do Inferno. This is probably the most iconic viewpoint on the island, and it was my favourite part of the trip. It’s a short hike to the viewpoint, and you can stop at Lagoa da Canario along the way. As a heads up, none of these lakes are really swimming lakes, so plan to do your swimming at the salt water beaches. The view from the Miradouro is absolutely incredible and we hung out there for a while before continuing our tour.

We visited a few more viewpoints and then drove to Mosteiros for the rest of the day. It’s the most westerly town on the island and we spent time at Mosteiros Beach in the late afternoon. It’s a gorgeous black sand beach and to our surprise, the water was quite warm! It was only ~18-20 degrees while we were in the Azores. We thought it would be a bit chilly, but it’s so humid on the island that we were still sweating every day. Likewise, we thought the ocean would be too cold to swim in, but it was comfortable, you just have to be wary of rip tides at a lot of the beaches, so we stuck to the shallows. We finished the day with another seafood dinner and then returned to our B&B for the evening.

On our second day, it was pretty cloudy in the morning, so we did a short walk to the Porto Formoso waterfall and to check out our local beach – Praia dos Moinhos. There are tons of beaches all over the island, but we were definitely partial to ours, which is one of the better swimming beaches because it doesn’t have a ton of surf. It was totally empty in the morning.

Our next stop was Caldeira Velha, which is a natural hot spring in the middle of the island. This was the one thing we should have booked in advance as there is timed entry to the pools. We paid for entry later in the day and visited Salto do Cabrito, which is a popular waterfall nearby. Everyone parks at the top of the canyon and walks down, without realizing you can drive almost all the way to the waterfall, so that’s a tip if you visit.

After Sete Cidades, the viewpoint at Lagoa do Fogo is probably the next most popular viewpoint. It’s near the hot spring, so we decided to drive up and hope for the best. It was still pretty cloudy when we got there, but the clouds moved around a lot and we caught a glimpse of the lake. It wasn’t ideal conditions, but we were happy with what we saw. I’d recommend hiking down to the lake, which is a short walk, but we didn’t have time before our hot spring entry. We were able to drive up to the viewpoint, but during the summer months, they close the parking lot and you have to take a bus shuttle to visit after June 1st.

The Caldeira was really nice – it’s located under the forest canopy and there’s 3 hot pools cascading into one another, plus one cold pool with a waterfall. It’s great for hot/cold therapy and we switched back and forth between the two, enjoying our hour lounging in the pools.

But our favourite part of the day was returning to Porto Formoso in the afternoon to go to the beach. The clouds continued to hang around Lagoa do Fogo, but it was a gorgeous day along the coast (a common phenomenon on the island). It’s a sandy beach, with a few beachgoers, but overall, it was pretty empty throughout our trip. We spent the rest of the afternoon lying in the sand and swimming in the ocean.

We returned to the B&B and enjoyed a bottle of wine on the balcony before walking to the only restaurant nearby, Mare Cheia. Porto Formoso is tiny, so I definitely would not have gone to this restaurant if it wasn’t a 5 minute walk away, which would have been a real shame because it was the best food we had on the island. We ended up eating there twice!

Once you’re seated, the waiter brings out a platter of raw fish to show you everything fresh that they’re serving for the day. It’s fantastic! So me and Emily each picked a fish and then they grill it fresh for you! We got the limpets again because I’m a little obsessed. It was worth it and these were even better than the other restaurant. It blows my mind that the limpets are like $20, but you get 2 dozen of them! It was a perfect end to some pretty perfect weather. Check back next week (Part II) to hear about some of the less than perfect weather!

A Day in Sintra

August 14, 2024September 13, 2024 / Maria / 2 Comments

It would have been nice to sleep in after our Taylor Swift concert, but our travel time was too limited and we had too much to see! We didn’t get up super early, but we wanted to go to Sintra before leaving Lisbon, so we had a hotel breakfast and then went to the train station to try and catch a train to Sintra.

Sintra is only 45 minutes outside of Lisbon and it is a popular tourist destination. There are a few options for how to get there and we just relied on Google to select the best one. Getting the train ticket was a little confusing and we were tight on time – the automated machines are very outdated, so I recommend just lining up to get a paper ticket. By the time we caught the train and got to the main station in Sintra, it was around 11am.

Sintra is an interesting place – there’s a small town with a very quaint historic centre, but it felt more like a collection of historic sites scattered around the surrounding mountainside. The roads to each site are very narrow and winding, so the traffic can get quite bad. Sintra is a full day excursion, so I definitely recommend getting there earlier than we did. I’d aim for 9am rather than 11am.

An earlier arrival would have allowed us to get at least one historic site in before the crowds, but no such luck. There are 5 key sites people like to see: the National Palace, Regaleira Park, Monserrate Park, Pena Palace, and the Moorish Castle. If you include the historic centre, then I guess there’s actually 6 sites. The cheapest way to get around is to buy a day pass for the two tourist buses (one pass). One bus goes to the National Palace/City Centre, Pena Palace, and Moorish Castle, while the other bus also goes to the National Palace/City Centre, and the two parks. The first bus runs really frequently (every 10-15 minutes), while the second bus runs every 30 minutes.

Given that there are so many sites, it’s recommended to get timed entries online. We booked the Regaleira Park online, but it’s just general admission all day and there was no line, so it didn’t save us much time. But we also had timed entry to Pena Palace and I don’t think we would have been able to go into the palace without pre-purchasing that ticket.

Because our timed entry to Pena Palace was at 2:30pm, we decided to do Quinta da Regaleira first. This was a bit annoying because we just missed the bus and the next one was late coming, but we made it to the park shortly before noon. The park is really nice and we liked exploring it, but one thing I found was missing in Sintra was large scale context. There was information about the interesting features in the park, but the signage failed to answer the general question “why is all this here?”

Quinta da Regaleira is basically a huge park with all kinds of unique engineering and architectural features spread out around the park. We later asked our tuktuk driver about it and he explained that the land has had various wealthy owners over the years who have built up the infrastructure, particularly when it went through the ownership of the freemasons. At some point, it was designated as a park and is part of the greater Sintra UNESCO world heritage site, which was established in 1995.

There is a lot to explore in the park, but I would say the two most striking pieces of architecture are the Regaleira Palace and the Initiation Well. The Palace is an ornate building that I believe was constructed as a country home in the 1800’s. The Palace is cool, but the Initiation Well was a much more compelling piece of engineering for me. The rest of the tourists seemed to agree and we had to queue for about 30 minutes just to walk into the well.

It is a large circular structure with an ornate design and staircase that descends into the earth. It feels very deep when you are going down into the well, but it is built on the hillside, so the perspective of entering from the top of the well contributes to this sense of scale. Once you reach the bottom, you can explore a series of tunnels through the hillside and then you eventually pop out further down the mountain without ever climbing back up any steps. It’s a bit disorientating, but a very cool experience.

When we finished with the park, we decided to give ourselves a lot of time to get to Pena Palace. There’s no overlap in the two bus lines, so to avoid taking 2 buses, we opted to take a tuktuk instead. We thought this would be the faster option, but I’m not really sure. Likely it was faster than waiting for 2 separate buses, but it still took quite a long time because the traffic around the mountain is one way, which means it takes a considerable amount of time to get from the Regaleira to the Palace at midday.

That said, we had a lot of fun in the tuktuk. It was mildly terrifying, but our driver was very enthusiastic and brought us to a few lookouts along the way before dropping us at the entrance. From there, it’s a 10 minute walk up the mountain to get to Pena Palace. The Palace is extravagant! It’s set atop a rocky outcrop and is painted in bright yellow and red. It’s a striking building and 100% worth visiting. Anyone can walk up to the palace and walk around the grounds, but you have to have an entry ticket to go into the palace.

We got there just in time for our 2:30pm entry. To be honest, it’s cool to walk inside the castle, but the outside of the palace was visually more interesting to me. The building itself is striking, and you can do a circular walk along the battlements of the palace, which is very cool. I’m glad I got to do both, but if you miss out on the timed entry, I still think it’s worth walking around the outside of the Palace. The building was originally a monastery, but at some point it was taken over by the Portuguese Monarchy as one of their homes. It was incredibly busy. I think it’s always busy, but I’m sure the inordinate number of Swifties visiting the city probably made it worse.

Our last stop of the day was the Moorish Castle. You can see Pena Palace and the Moorish Castle from all over Sintra and I’m glad we decided to do both. It’s just a 10-minute walk along the road to get to the Moorish Castle from Pena Palace. It was a lot later in the day by the time we got there, so we had no trouble just buying a ticket at the gate and it was relatively empty inside (in comparison to Pena Palace at least).

I think the Moorish Castle was probably my favourite of all the sites we visited. Unlike Pena Palace, which had been converted from monastery to Palace, the Moorish Castle still retained most of its history. It’s the oldest site in Sintra and was constructed in the 12th century. It was primarily a military establishment, but over time it was abandoned as people moved down the mountain to live in what’s now the historic centre.

The Moorish Castle was my favourite because it felt very old. There’s an ancient chapel and it’s encircled by tall, stone walls and battlements. You can walk around the perimeter of the castle and it felt like very classic castle architecture. The views were amazing and I felt like I was walking around something much more grand. While Pena Palace wouldn’t have existed when the Moorish Castle was built, today there’s a fantastic view of it from the walls.

We finished the day by taking the bus back to the historic centre. We did a little bit of exploring and sampled Ginja, a local cherry liqueur that’s sold in the street in an edible chocolate cup. It was sweet and we purchased some to take home. I definitely think the historic centre is an attraction on it’s own. It has a lot of beautiful buildings packed onto the hillside and there are tons of little shops and restaurants to explore. So I definitely recommend making time for it if possible.

We found a restaurant for dinner and dined on Feijoada stew and salt cod. During our walking tour in Lisbon, we learned that Newfoundland has actually been borrowing a lot of its cuisine from the Portuguese. Salt cod is very popular in Portugal and we had to listen while our guide explained the process of salt drying cod in the sun and told us that most of Portugal’s fish comes from Norway or Canada, which we are well aware of. So Emily had the cod in Sintra and I had Feijoada, a dish I last had in Brazil. It’s basically a meat stew, but I was intrigued to find a lot of salt meat in it, something also frequently used in Newfoundland cuisine!

We also sampled the Vino Verde, which is “green wine” and is unique to Portugal. The wine is not actually green of course, it’s a white wine, but the grapes are picked earlier, which is where it takes its name from. After gorging on food and wine, we caught the train back to Lisbon and got back to our hotel around 8pm. So it’s definitely a big day to go to Sintra, but it was a very eventful one! Next up is our trip to the Azores!

Taylor Swift in Lisbon

August 7, 2024September 13, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

It’s been a very eventful year for me from a traveling perspective. I went to Patagonia in mid-February with Seth and then 3 months later I took another 2 weeks off to go traveling with Emily. Our original plan had been to go to Greece last September, but then something came up and we cancelled that trip. So I ended up with two major trips back-to-back, which was somewhat overwhelming, but also awesome, so I can’t complain.

The reason we cancelled our original trip is because Emily got tickets to see Taylor Swift in Lisbon! Like most people, we failed to get tickets to see Taylor on her US tour and couldn’t afford the resale tickets, so Emily signed up for a ton of presales in Europe and managed to score 4 tickets in Lisbon! The tickets were for May 25, so we planned a whole trip around the concert. We had a little over 2 weeks and we planned to start in Lisbon for the concert, and then we each picked a destination for the subsequent 2 weeks of the trip. Emily picked the Azores and I picked Marrakech, so stay tuned for that!

But first off, Lisbon. We were traveling from opposite sides of Canada, but the easiest way to get there was for both of us to meet in Toronto and then we caught a direct flight to Lisbon. It was an overnight flight, so we got as much sleep as we could and arrived in Lisbon around noon. It’s only a 3.5 hour time difference for Emily and she managed okay, but it was an 8 hour time difference for me, so my body had no idea what was going on.

As soon as we landed in Lisbon, you could feel the energy. Our pilot welcomed all the Taylor Swift fans to Lisbon and our uber driver started off by saying, “the traffic is really bad today! I don’t know if you heard, but we have a big concert happening this weekend”! We got dropped off at our hostel in central Lisbon, where we had booked a private room. The temperature was around 24 degrees, which we thought would be perfect, but it’s quite humid in Portugal, so it felt a lot hotter.

We took a quick shower and then decided to go out exploring the city. We easily could have gone to bed, but that would not have helped the jetlag, so we pushed through. We meandered through the city and wasted no time sampling some pastries. Our cousins, Andrew and Emma, were using our other two tickets for the concert and were at the tail end of their Europe Trip, so we met up with them and toured the Lisbon Cathedral and went in search of dinner.

Taylor was playing her first show the same night, so as we walked around the city, it was easy to spot all the fans. The streets were filled with women dressed in glitter, sequins, and cowboy boots. Everyone was smiling and there was just a really great vibe in the city! Europe actually has ticket resale laws that limit price gouging, and Emily tried to convince me that we should get tickets online for night 1 too, but we opted to catch up on sleep to prepare for our concert instead.

The next day, we did a walking tour in the morning to learn more about the city. It’s actually my second time visiting Lisbon, but the first time was in 2012 and I honestly remembered nothing. We learned a lot about Portugal’s history, of which I didn’t know that much. Like most of Europe, Lisbon is a very old city and was originally settled by the Moors, which is a term used to apply to Muslim Europeans, Arab, and Berber people. Lisbon was part of the Kingdom of Portugal for a long time, until Napoleon invaded in the early 1800’s, and the Portuguese monarchy fled to Brazil. The history is already a little foggy, but it was a pretty short lived occupation, and the monarchy returned until revolution in 1910, when the last king and his heir were assassinated.

The most interesting thing I learned was that following the revolution, Portugal lived under dictatorship for 50 years between 1926 and 1974. It was the longest European dictatorship and it ended in 1974 when there was a military coup known as the Carnation Revolution. Since then, Portugal has been a modern democracy.

Lisbon is a very hilly city and we visited several historical spots. It was also interesting to learn about Lisbon’s history of earthquakes, the biggest of which was a 9.0 earthquake that occurred in 1755 and leveled most of the city. There is still some architecture left which predates this earthquake.

After the walking tour, we returned to our hostel to get ready for the concert! There were other Swifties on our walking tour and we’d learned that the previous night had been a bit of a disaster in terms of venue management. The concert was late starting because there hadn’t been enough security to process all the fans. People had to queue for 3+ hours in the hot sun to get into the stadium. So we decided to go pretty early to the stadium and were prepared with sunscreen, hats, and water.

We met Emma and Andrew on the Metro before the concert, but fortunately, we didn’t have any trouble accessing the stadium for our concert. They’d resolved whatever kinks had been present the previous evening and we were able to get in the stadium with no issues. Our seats were in the lower bowl and we were super lucky to discover that we had end row seats right next to the bathroom. Plus, our seats were under a bit of an overhang, so we had shade from the sun too! The bathroom situation at the concert is really interesting. At our stadium, all the sections were blocked off from one another, so there were only 4 bathrooms that we could use. 3 of the 4 bathrooms were male – the stadium has designated 1 of the male bathrooms as female, but fans seem to have made the decision that all bathrooms are unisex during the concert! We loved it because, of course, there’s a lot more women at the show.

The concert was obviously fantastic! It completely lived up to all the hype and we had the absolute best time! It’s just such a great vibe. Everyone is really happy and friendly. I’ve heard some European fans are mad about the number of North Americans coming to the show, but we didn’t experience that at all. We wandered the concourse trading friendship bracelets and generally had a great time talking to fans from all over the world!

Taylor’s stamina for the show is incredible. I barely had time to pee during one of the transitions, so I don’t know how she manages with all the wardrobe changes! It’s hard to pick a favourite era because they are all wonderful. I loved the anticipation at the start of Lover; the energy of Red; and the vibe of Folkmore. It’s also incredible to watch her perform her new TTPD songs, but the surprise songs were probably the highlight of the concert for me. Before the concert, we’d all fantasized about our dream surprise songs. Emily wanted anything from Fearless, Emma wanted Long Live, and I said I’d die if she sang You’re on Your Own, Kid.

She started with a mash-up of The Tortured Poets Department and Now That We Don’t Talk on the guitar, which was great. But I couldn’t believe it when she started playing You’re On Your Own, Kid on the piano!! I know she plays this song a lot, but I couldn’t believe I was so lucky as to get my first pick! I admit, I did tear up a little. Then she did a mash up with Long Live and Emma died a little inside too!

It could have been pandemonium trying to get the train home after the concert, but it was pretty orderly all things considered. We didn’t know that merch wouldn’t be for sale in the venue (only outside), so Emily and I lined up for merchandise after the show, but I’d recommend getting it before if you have the chance. Fortunately, we were right by the exit, so we beat most of the crowd.

I know it’s not affordable to see Taylor Swift in North America. We paid under $200 CAD each for our tickets in Lisbon, so pairing the concert with a holiday was 100% the way to go. I never thought I’d fly so far away to see a concert, but it was an experience and I would definitely do it again! It’s Taylor’s Summer for sure! Check back next week to hear about our experience in Sintra.

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Adey Sisters

A Week in the Azores: Sao Miguel West

A Day in Sintra

Taylor Swift in Lisbon