São Miguel Island, Azores

It was our first sunny day on São Miguel, (luckily we had sun today, it was also our last day here). We were waiting for a sunny day to visit Caldeira das Sete Cidades, which is the classic view of the Azores.

Had breakfast and then headed out west. We had driven this route a few days before in complete fog. This time around we could see the scenery! We didn't stop at any of the miradouros on the way up, cause we wanted to get to Miradouro da Boca do Inferno in case clouds rolled in later. The trail to the miradouro starts at Lagoa do Canario. The roadside parking lot was overflowing, we ended up parking on the side of the road a few hundred metres away. The more popular sites have all been overflowing with rental cars, and it's just starting to get into busy season. A side effect of the rainy weather over the past few days is that we haven't seen that many tourists at the miradouros. The Azores limits the number of tourists that can visit Islet of Vila Franca do Campo, they should probably be doing the same thing for other sites on the island.

So we parked and walked to Miradouro da Boca do Inferno. The view was amazing, but overflowing with tourists. Had to wait my turn to get to the front of the miradouro to take a pic.

We then drove a little further to Miradouro da Vista do Rei. It was similar to the views we had from Miradouro das Cumeeiras, just with more tourists. We decided to head down towards Feteiras instead of continuing along the main tourist path towards Sete Cidades.

The road down was beautiful, the roadsides covered by a sea of hydrangeas. Heather used my camera to take pics through the windshield as we drove.

We went back to Sunset Poço da Pedra for lunch, on the west end of the island. There was a funeral taking place as we drove up, with a procession and band walking through the narrow streets. We waited for the procession to pass, and then carried on.

Lunch was really relaxing overlooking the ocean. The natural pools were busier (today was Sunday), with groups of friends taking turns diving 10m from the rocks into the pools.

We got back home and got ready for dinner. There wasn't anyone at the hotel who could call a taxi for us, so we walked all the way into town, about an hour. It's mostly along the waterfront except for a five minute stretch. About half way we got held up by a band for the 2nd time today (!) this one looked like it was for a wedding.

We had dinner at Singular Bistro, the same place we had had dinner on Friday. They were busier today. We sat at a table outside, but then as we cooled down from the walk over, we started to get cold so moved inside. Normally when we go on vacation it's winter in Toronto, and so we try to have dinner on a patio on our last night. However this time it's actually warmer in Toronto and there'll be lots of patio opportunities when we get home :)

On our way home we heard live music coming from the main plaza so wandered over and watched for a while. They were quite good, and seemed to be playing their own material. Later we saw a billboard featuring the band (they're playing a concert here) and figured out the band was Caetano Veloso.

We walked back along the waterfront, a nice ending to our vacation!