{"id":3849,"date":"2026-02-01T22:39:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T22:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3849"},"modified":"2026-02-02T18:41:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T18:41:41","slug":"funchal-madeira-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/funchal-madeira-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Funchal, Madeira"},"content":{"rendered":"

As with yesterday’s port, Funchal is a place we’ve been to many times before, so we booked ourselves onto an afternoon tour to see its Botanical Gardens (which we’ve never seen before) and had a leisurely morning on board ship.<\/p>\n

After lunch in The Grill, we went to join the excursion, the meeting time of which was 1.45pm<\/p>\n

The bus ride to the Botanical Gardens only took 10-15 minutes. Once we got there, everyone was dropped off and shown which exit to be picked up from at 3.45pm. Unfortunately, a bit of a mix-up over tickets resulted in two coach loads of people standing around waiting for another 10- 15 minutes while things were sorted out.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, the gardens are extensive and a pleasure to walk around, with some great views across the city. I’m guessing February isn’t necessarily to best time to visit them, though; I had hoped for a little more colour, but there wasn’t a lot in flower.<\/p>\n

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We mooched around the garden for a couple of hours and were back on the coach at the appointed time of 3.45pm. All-aboard time was 4.30pm, and we left just after the Costa Fortuna had departed, at around 5.20pm.<\/p>\n

We’re now heading towards our final port, Lisbon, where we are due to arrive in two days time – so it’s classes again tomorrow. Unfortunately, the sea reamains rough and many areas of the ship – including The Grill – are closed (which is a bit of a pain because it means we have to order our meals through Room Service).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As with yesterday’s port, Funchal is a place we’ve been to many times before, so we booked ourselves onto an afternoon tour to see its Botanical Gardens (which we’ve never seen before) and had a leisurely morning on board ship. After lunch in The Grill, we went to join the excursion, the meeting time of which was 1.45pm The bus...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,28,38,37],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3855,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3849\/revisions\/3855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}