Terceira, Azores

We drove into Angra do Heroísmo this morning. Historically, it’s the most important city in the Azores. According to Wikipedia, its official name is “Very Noble, Loyal and Ever Steadfast City of Angra do Heroísmo”, but it also goes by just Angra. It was hit by a major earthquake in 1980, was rebuilt and became a UNESCO site a few years later. It now looks amazing, one of the prettiest cities I’ve seen. It’s a small city with a population of only 35,000.

We started at the Fortress of St. John of Monte Brasil. We parked on the outskirts of the centre, cause it looked like paid parking in the core.

You can only see the Fortress from outside the walls, but it’s still a nice walk and interesting to see. Plus there’s good views of Angra from Mt Brasil.

We then walked around the cute little streets around the harbour. It looked like the same cruise ship we had seen in Flores was now docked here in Terceira.

We found a cafe for lunch, which was very popular with locals. We were lucky and got one of the last tables. Their brunch menu was really good.

We then walked down the main street towards the Museu de Angra do Heroísmo (MAH). Along the way we passed by the Cathedral of Angra and stopped in to visit.

The MAH was a really good museum. It had the historical context of Angra as you’d expect, but also had some art exhibits, and a former church restored. The church was more impressive than the cathedral we had just visited!

On the upper floor of the museum, we could hear the pipe organ in the church, and I wondered if it was a recording. It turned out that it was actually being played! I googled after, and the organ was built in 1788 by António Xavier Machado Cerveira, one of the leading Portuguese organ builders. The organist was the museum’s resident organist, Gustaaf van Manen. It was quite the treat to hear it being played. We had tried in Mexico City to attend a performance in the main cathedral but had a mix up. Here we got to hear it and it wasn’t even planned!

Anyways it took us about two hours to get through the MAH. It was almost 4pm by this point, so we walked back to our car in the on-again off-again rain, drove back and got ready for dinner. We had booked Restaurante Doze Ribeiras, the same place we ate at a couple days ago. It was excellent again, we were glad to have booked it.