Madeira day 6 - Back to 1849

        We took advantage of this last day in Madeira to relax in Funchal and prepare for our next stop – Porto. We spent the first part of the day sunbathing and swimming - for the first time in our trip to Portugal - in the Atlantic Ocean 🌴. As any other beach on this island, Praia Formosa was no exception for the volcanic black sand. And this time when I say sand, I really mean it, the sand was very fine here. Initially we wanted to bath at the natural pools “Piscinas Naturais da Doca do Cavacas” but the price for the entrance only was around 5€/person (adult) and we decided we do not want to spend much time here and not bath more than once.

        In the afternoon we took the Funchal Cable Car up to the top of the capital. We took only a one-way ticket at the price of 11€/person (a round-trip costs 16€/pers). Before the departure of the gondola, there was a guy taking pictures of the people inside it and at the top you could retrieve it at the cost of…I think 10€, I am not sure because I was not really interested in it. The trip takes around 10 minutes and you have a beautiful overview of Funchal city. Once you get to the top, you can visit the Botanical Garden of which I’ve read very good reviews; we did not visit it because it was pretty expensive but I could confirm from the outside that it looked beautiful. We visited Igreja Paroquial de Nossa Senhora do Monte, the surroundings, the stores and admired the landscapes.

        The reason we took only a one-way ticket for the Cable Car was because we wanted to get back down though the most iconic activity in Funchal - Associação dos Carreiros do Monte – or on an easier spelling, hill slide on a basket 😁. Here you pay 20€/person and hop on a basket accompanied by 2 men dressed in traditional costumes who will push and control the basket on the downhill which is literally a street that is very smooth and very inclined. The experience is very exciting and authenthic, and takes you back to 1849 when this was the Madeirian way of transportation on the island. The road is 2km long and it is not straight, but full of serpentines so that the basket drifts at each corner – we were singing along Tokio Drift on our way down 😆 They even stop the traffic for the adjacent streets once you got closer to them. At the end of this crazy experience they took some photos of us in the basket with the two men besides us and we were able to buy a folder with them at an additional price of 10€.

        From the dropping point, there was still a long way down until the seafront. But the sun was already setting so we did our evening walk before getting back to the hotel and pack our luggage for tomorrow’s airplane to Porto 😊