Funchal, Madeira

Today, we arrived in Funchal, Madeira.

Since we had no tour escorting duties, we decided to just catch the complementary shuttle bus into the town and potter around for an hour or so. The only thing on our agenda was to find a supermarket where we could buy a couple of large bottles of water.

I’ve been to Funchal lots of times before. Even when the weather is good, the very tops of the surrounding mountains are often hidden by cloud; today, it was not only sunny, but it was also very clear as well… very pleasant, in fact.

So; after a leisurely breakfast, we hopped on the shuttle bus and about ten minutes later hopped off on to the Funchal’s main street, where people sit out in bars making use of the town’s free wif-fi and the taxi drivers shuffle their cars forward by hand to save fuel. Workmen were busy taking down the last of the Christmas and New Year decorations, and dismantling the festive cabins; Funchal felt like it was slowly returning back to normal.

We wandered into the Cathedral, realising that we’d never been in there before due to it either being closed or there being a service on when we’ve visited previously. We also took a look inside a church attached to the University which we’d never been in before. For the princely sum of one euro each we were able to climb the steps to the bell tower and terrace, which gave us a different view of Funchal that we’d never seen before. It was quite satisfying to be able to find so many new experiences in a place were we thought we’d mostly seen everything there was to see.

Time was getting on, and we’d, so far, failed to find a supermarket, so we went into the Tourist Information office (which we’d struggled to find the last time we came here, only to discover that it was in front of us all the time… maybe we should have gone to Specsavers…). The lady in there told us that, yes, there was a supermarket only one minute’s walk from where we stood, and enthusiastically pointed to where it was on the map. Could we find it, though? Could we ‘eck as like…

Robin, the Whale and Dolphin lecturer (who was also with us on the Voyager last month), had told us that he’d been in a small Spar on the main street, which would almost certainly sell water… Honestly; I wonder if it’s just us… maybe we just have an inability to follow other people’s directions… eventually, we found it, but not until we’d both reached a point where we thought we couldn’t be bothered to look any more.

We bought two massive bottles of water, stashed them into the rucksack and headed for the shuttle to take us back to the ship. It was a short day today, with all-aboard time being 1:30, sailaway at 2pm.

It was nice to visit Funchal again, and to not have any escorting duties for a change. We now have two sea days as we head towards our final stop, Mindelo in the Cape Verde Islands, before heading West over the Atlantic, towards Brazil.