Funchal, Madeira, Portugal —Nov. 7, 2024

 What a great day!  What a beautiful city Funchal is, built on mountain sides!  We took a tour of the city and then began climbing the mountain to our first stop — the crazy tobagans  they use to slide down the hill.  What a riot!

The town of Funchal has lovely tree shaded walkways and streets.

From the coast, one sees housing built all the way up the slopes.  Most homes have white walls and red tiled roofs.

Here are the tobagan guides. Sometimes these guys pull, sometimes they push and turn, and sometimes they ride on the way down the hill.

Then we climbed higher into the mountains, to a place where we sampled some delicious brandy and a cake that tasted of molasses and fennel, a favorite product of the island.  To get there we climbed impossibly steep hills in this bus with very serious drop offs!  Our guide told us that there are no bad bus drivers on Madeira. They are all excellent drivers (and indeed, ours was!). The bad bus drivers, she explained, are already dead. 😂 we found our stop at a little over 3000’.

We got so high that we were in the clouds!

Look at the two villages posed on the side of these mountains!

It is hard to get the perspective of just how steep this drop off is!  The road was excellent,  it barely wide enough for two busses to pass. We were no more than one foot apart.

After sampling the brandy, we drove back down to the city and the coastline and sampled a traditional wine called Momsie. We liked it well enough to buy a bottle to bring home.

Back in town, we visited a small, but pretty, urban park.