We were homeward bound, with a flight today from Graciosa to Ponta Delgada via Terceira. We then have a couple nights in Ponta Delgada before flying back direct to Toronto. It’s a lot shorter than our epic four-day journey back home from Waiheke Island, New Zealand in 2023!
We had gotten pretty quick at packing up our stuff. We loaded up the car and drove to the gas station. There’s only two on Graciosa, right beside each other. They didn’t take international credit cards, which I knew from reading the comments, but we had enough cash on us. Plus it’s a small island, so despite circumnavigating the island, we only spent 9 EUR in gas.
Onto the airport. Our car rental folks were supposed to meet us at 8:30am, but we didn’t see them. We checked in for the flight, and decided if they didn’t show by 9am we’d just leave the keys in the car. However the guy showed up around 8:50, he actually worked at the airport and was just waiting for a break.
We had to dump our water before going through security, and there were no facilities airside. Our flight was delayed by ten minutes, which meant we had just 30 minutes to transfer in Terceira.
We heard the boarding announcement for our connecting flight while we were walking into the terminal in Terceira. Luckily we were familiar with the airport so I knew where to buy water in the short time we were there.
It was then another quick flight to Ponta Delgada. It was raining as we disembarked, and looked like it had just finished a downpour. We were wearing our rain jackets with hoods so we didn’t get too wet.
Our luggage made the tight connection as well. Our hotel was picking us up at the airport and had WhatsApp’d as soon as we landed that they might be a few minutes late (they had tracked our flight and knew when we landed).
We chatted with our driver on the ten minute drive to the hotel. Heather had read that we would arrive in the middle of the Festas do Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres (Festival of the Holy Christ of Miracles), the biggest celebration in the Azores. Thousands of expats return to the Azores just for this event. The big day was yesterday, with a five hour procession through town. Today was a municipal holiday (I had just tracked national holidays on my spreadsheet), so most things were closed.
We checked into the Casa da
Galeria, and went out for lunch. We stumbled across a popular burger place that got 4.7 on Google so tried it out, it was pretty good.
We walked to the centre and took some pics with cloudy backgrounds, and then went back to the hotel and relaxed. Later in the evening I went out for some small bites at a restaurant just up the street (Heather was still full from the burger place). It hit the spot, considering most other places were closed.
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