A Trip to the Azores: Part One -

Hi all! We went to the Azores for a week at the beginning of December!

Ponta Delgada

We arrived in Ponta Delgada Saturday afternoon and checked into our hotel late-ish. After 6pm, anyway, since the desk staff had left for the day. No worries, they gave us self-check-in instructions that were easy to follow. We dumped our belongings in our room and went off in search of dinner.The Azores trip came about in early December because Marty is now under what I lovingly call “Portuguese house arrest.” His 90-day European tourist visa expired mid-December, so now he can’t leave Portugal until his AIMA appointment (that’s Portuguese immigration) is scheduled. We’re unsure if he can travel once he has an appointment date, but for sure he can’t leave Portugal now. So what better time to explore the country more, right? And Ryanair has direct flights from Porto to Ponta Delgada. One of the many, many things I love about living in Braga is how easy travel is from there. We walked six minutes to the main bus terminal, caught a 40-minute bus to the Porto airport, took the 2-hour Ryanair flight, then a short taxi ride to our hotel. It doesn’t get much easier.A bit less easy was walking the Ponta Delgada streets at night. The sidewalks are perilously narrow in the old city center; in places, we turned and hugged the wall any time a car passed us. But restaurants are abundant and we found A Grega just three blocks away. It’s a moderate-sized Greek place with the all-important criteria, it was open when we were hungry and had more than 4 stars on its Google Map rating. We spent about 60 Euros on appetizers, entrées, wine, and coffee, and it’s funny how often 60 Euros seems to be the prices we pay for dinner out, but it always includes all the trimmings! The food was good, even if I can’t remember what we had, service was friendly, and there was a decent sized crowd. 4 stars out of 5.

Next morning, we got ready to head down for the included continental breakfast. I always try to book hotels with breakfast included, since Marty and I have very different wake-up times, and I am happy to drink coffee in our room and just chill for a couple of hours until he wakes up and is ready to go. So at this point in the morning, all I knew for sure was that breakfast was included, although we didn’t see where the dining room was when we checked in.Well, I open the door to our room and I see this:

A large basket with a lid in a hallway. The hallway is a wooden floor, the walls are white.

They leave you your breakfast at the door! And it had all this!

A large breakfast spread. There are a variety of breads, fruits, eggs, and condiments. Glass jars for things like butter and salt. A couple of glass bottles for milk, juice, and water.

All of this food, just waiting for us in the morning. We were totally tickled, and it was quite a spread. It had this little sheet so we could customize it each day. For the entire week we changed it up (for example, one container of milk did us for several days, and we didn’t eat eggs every day). But it was absolutely lovely. A tour guide told us later that the basket is a traditional Azorean design, he used to have a small version in which he carried his lunch to school.I would honestly give the hotel a 5/5 just for that, it was a delightful experience. But the Casa do Contador was also lovely in many other ways. It had a charming stone lobby:

The room was quiet and comfortable, with a complete kitchenette, and the staff were very helpful and friendly. There is a pool out back (did NOT attempt in December), and a nice little cabana. My only note about the experience is that the risers of the stone stairs from ground floor to first were very tall, and a bit hard on my knees. I suppose I should make this an accessibility note for future reference, and if we stay there again I might choose a ground floor room next time. That, or see how well yoga is helping with my knees.One interesting thing about travelling in these warmer countries during wintertime is that the hotel rooms can be really warm with the hotel’s main heat on. I hate using A/C in winter, so it meant a lot of time with the windows open to cool down the room, then closing them for sleep because of street noise. I keep tripping over this fact, because the hot time of year is the worst for me, so I’m always making sure we have A/C and access to cool rooms when we travel. I just assumed travelling in the winter would be better for me, but then I hit this kind of reality! So I need to adjust my winter travel expectations and upgrade my packing list for lighter sleepwear.We paid $85.49 per night during the first week of December (I was still booking with my US credit card). I consider that a pretty top-notch bargain for the amenities, location, and that amazing breakfast. 5/5, would highly recommend it.On Sunday we got started exploring by wandering the historical center of Ponta Delgada and continued on and off throughout the week. All the buildings in the historical downtown mostly fit into a black and white theme. The rocks are all volcanic basalt, quarried locally, and then painted white except for the natural color left as the trim. It’s very striking.

Ponta Delgada has three botanical gardens and we managed to see two of them during our trip. I gotta say, I just love trees. 🙂 What can you expect from someone who spent summer vacations on the British Columbia coast, lived in New England for years, and spent my final U.S. tenure in the shadow of Kitsap County’s giant Douglas firs? Ponta Delgada gave me some big trees to enjoy. My favorite finds were the banyan from Australia (we saw so many of these when we lived in Barbados, it felt right at home), and the kauai from New Zealand. Kauai have straight trunks that don’t narrow at the top, as you can see, and this makes them prized in building Maori canoes.

Banyan, from Australia.

The author's spouse in front of an New Zealand Kauai tree.

Kauai from New Zealand. Yes, that’s Marty for scale.

I love how we can sit and just be mindful in these gardens. I called my sister for her birthday, it was fun telling her where I was. After the second garden, we got coffee at a place advertising “American style coffee.” Now, I love the quality of European coffee. But sometimes I don’t want a tiny espresso, I want some volume so I can sit and sip and go “Ahhhhh” for a while. So we checked out this place. American style coffee in this case did mean volume, but it also meant chemical-tasting flavored syrup, too much whipped cream and overly sweet. And the lady running the place was friendly and chatty, which was to Marty’s taste, but I’m an introvert who was low on energy after a day’s walking around. So I won’t name or rate the place, it didn’t suit me.This has been a challenge for me since arriving in Europe, and I’m still working out how to handle it. Turns out one of the things I loved about living in a couple of large cities is how anonymous I get to be. I would get my coffee, sit at a cafe table or in a park, and then just read my book or do some journalling, and mostly be left alone. There are exceptions of course, there are always people who feel entitled to your attention and can’t be hinted away. But that’s not the problem here. People are friendly and incredibly helpful, and seem genuinely curious about us and why we decided to live here. And very often I am open to that exchange, I want to be a good expat and a good ambassador for … North Americans? Canadians? For whatever it is that I am. But there are times I just want to be left alone and not talk, and I have not yet figured out a way to achieve that in a gentle fashion, in a public space. Luckily for the moment I can throw Marty in front of me like a conversational human shield, and it works a chunk of the time. Anyway, back to wandering around Ponta Delgada. Here’s a picture of Cafe Central, another coffee shop where I was mostly left alone.

A photograph of Ponta Delgada featuring a coffee shop named Cafe Central. A large white church is in the background.

It was such a gorgeous central place I think we stopped here almost every day. A panhandler came by, we demurred. We watched them set up the Christmas market that we visited later in the week. The same panhandler touted us again. We said no again, a bit less politely. As we walked back to the hotel we saw the guy in one street, then as we turned the corner we saw him again the next street over. Was he an Azorean sprinter down on his luck or something? No, apparently these are twins, and they are a rather famous local fixture. I gave one of them something next time, because hey, I pay for my entertainment.

We celebrated the anniversary of our first date on Sunday. We celebrate it every year because it took us five years to get married. The hotel recommended Mariserra and that’s where we went. I had my usual grilled octopus. Marty had something translated as “hunk of meat,” which turned out to be a very good steak. The Azores is one of the very few places in Portugal where beef is both plentiful and fairly inexpensive, because that volcanic soil is great for cattle ranching. It was raining on and off, as we watched the bay get darker while we ate great food and toasted 41 years of our history together.