Today was a bittersweet last day of our trip. We started out by heading to the market, which is supposed to open at 7:30 – when we got there at 9:30, only a few stalls were opened. We have absolutely no idea about the timing of these islands. We can’t figure out what time people eat, or what days things are open or closed. Oh well, guess that’s a mystery for us to solve during the next trip to Azores!Anyway, we grabbed a pack of bolo levedos and headed to sete cidades, a pretty lookout spot with a bunch of lakes and craters. The last few days have been too cloudy so we were very happy that the skies were partially clear today. What we saw was absolutely breathtaking – it felt like we were at the edge of the world.
Author: rlevitsky
Nothing greater than hanging out in a crater
We started our day off right – with delicious fresh squeezed orange juice at Louvre Michaelense, a very hip restaurant. We also had toast – one with avocado and a poached egg (#millenials), and one with peanut butter, banana, and honey.
Continue reading “Nothing greater than hanging out in a crater”
🍍+ 🌊 +🍴 = 😊
As if our day wasn’t busy enough, we decided to visit Arruda Pineapple Farm. We saw greenhouses full of different stages of pineapple growth. It takes 2 years to grow a pineapple, and 2 minutes to eat one. They smoke the greenhouse for 9 days during one of the stages to stress out the plants and make them grow flowers. Then the pineapples grow! It was very hot in the greenhouses… There’s some sort of effect going on in there? Not sure what it’s called.
Hungry Whales
I’m sure everyone knows this by now – we like to eat. So we obviously signed up for a food tour of Ponta Delgada, with a company called Hungry Whales. We went this morning and not only got to taste a whole bunch of yummy things, we learned a lot about what we were eating, and the island!
Sao Miguel (for real this time)
We flew from Sao Jorge to Horta last night, and checked into our “hotel”, which is a lovely little loft apartment in Ponta Delgada. Of course we were very hungry by that point (big surprise), so we tried to go to a restaurant we’d heard about called A Tasca. It’s built in an old jail and is typical Azorean food. They were so busy, we couldn’t get a table – and we couldn’t make a reservation for the next night either. So we wandered around to a place called Taberna Acor, which ended up being lovely! Plus, someone local told us that while A Tasca is good, they didn’t understand the hype because it’s the same or similar food as everywhere else on the island.We ordered a cheese board, and they brought us SO MUCH CHEESE!!! Like… Enough for 5 people (we ate half of it). It also came with fig jam, olives, local honey, pork paté, and toasty bread. We also ordered the grilled squid (different than octopus!) and a sausage in the style of the island of Santa Maria, with Azorean pineapple on the side.
My hike with Mike
We stopped for a quick breakfast this morning and called a taxi driver to pick us up from Velas, the town near the harbour. The bakery we went to, Vertice do Triangulo, was great! Very oily but that’s what made it good I guess.
Insert cheesy title here
Ah, Sao Jorge. The land of more cows than people, fajas, cheese that is often imitated but never duplicated, and the nicest people we’ve met so far. Yesterday we left Faial on a ferry that took us to Sao Jorge, which took about 2 hours (it stopped in Pico first). Poor Michael got VERY seasick. Our dreams of sailing the high seas with Genuino for 21 months went right out the window. Maybe it’s something you get used to?
Pico on Pico on Pico
We loved taking pictures of Pico, and we had an extra day in Faial (which we saw most of anyway), so we took a boat to Pico for the day. It was a suggestion from our tourguide yesterday and he arranged for us to meet a guide there. Her name was Evalina and she had actually lived in Vancouver for 12 years. She took us all around the island and was so knowledgable about everything.
Dinner with our tourguide
Last night, our driver from the tour gave us a good price to take us 40 minutes from Horta to a restaurant called Aldina. We wondered what he would be doing while we were at dinner, considering there’s nothing else there and he loves this restaurant. Turns out, when he made the reservation, he made it for 3! Our tourguide, whose name we can’t remember (it’s ok, he thought Michael’s name was Dennis), had dinner with us which turned out to be a lot of fun!
Cows in the clouds
We’re having a fantastic time here in Faial. Today we went on a tour of the island. Our driver took us to the south side of Horta for an amazing view:
I Came, Azores, I Conquered 