São Miguel Island, Azores

The weather was getting better (the forecast just called for clouds, but no rain), the first day without rain in about a week.

We drove east to Furnas, the last of the main three craters in São Miguel. It’s home to Parque Terra Nostra (botanical gardens), thermal baths, and a fancy hotel. Hotel guests get access to the gardens and baths, non-guests just pay a small entrance fee.

It was sunny when we arrived at Furnas so drove up to a viewpoint at Miradouro do Pico do Ferro. It was a nice view, but not as photogenic as some of the other viewpoints on the island. We could see the bubbling mud below, as well as the covered holes where restaurants slow-cook stews in the hot water. (It’s a touristy thing to pre-order a lunch, but supposedly it’s very heavy so we passed).

Drove back down into Furnas and to the gardens. It was close to 1pm so we had lunch first at the hotel's patio bar. It was relaxing, overlooking the botanical gardens with birds chirping away in the trees.

The gardens have a marked walking path that takes you through the entire place, about 45 minutes. First you pass by the thermal baths. The baths here are a muddy orange / brown from the minerals, you can't see through the water. We were just here for the gardens, so continued on our way. The gardens have a wide variety of plants and trees, but not many were flowering. I'm not sure if we were just here at the wrong time, or if it's more of a gardens for people into plants. We found the thousands of hydrangeas growing by the roadsides more pleasing to look at.

So we finished the walk and got back on the road. Our next destination was the Gorreana Tea Factory. It's right off the highway and a popular tour bus stop. They have a self-guided tour through the production process (they have all the old machines here). At the end you can sample a couple of their teas. It was okay, I'm sort of partial to Ceylon tea from Sri Lanka.

We were losing steam so decided not to see the other tea place down the road (Tea Porto Formoso), and instead just went back to our hotel.

We had made reservations for dinner at Singular Bistro. However the couple we've been chatting with at the hotel had had dinner at Tasquinha Vieira and really enjoyed it, and so had booked a table for us for tonight, thinking we might like it too. So I Messenger'd Singular and asked them to change our booking there to Sunday night.

We took a taxi to Tasquinha Vieira, arriving about 7pm. They were getting busy. We had a couple appetizers which were excellent. For mains I had the lamb and Heather the fish of the day (parrot fish I think). Both were excellent too. Unfortunately it then took almost 45 minutes for us to get our bill, which put a damper on our opinion of the restaurant. Finally were able to pay, and then found a little bar to have an after-dinner drink. We had found the taxi stand so we could now get a taxi on our own to get home (taxis are otherwise only hail-able by phone; they don't drive around looking for fares).