A week in Madeira

Our trip to Fun­chal, Madeira wasn’t planned, and it came about through the cir­cuitous route of a can­celled 3 week hol­i­day in Japan, but that’s another and much less excit­ing story. Book­ing last minute, we opted for a one week Thom­son (TUI) pack­age, with flights and hotel included, which is very unlike us. But we needed a hol­i­day, had to book it fast and it had to be some­where hot, not too expen­sive and inter­est­ing; Madeira fit the bill perfectly.

The Thom­son flight landed on a Fri­day evening, the plane bounc­ing once on the run­way which juts out into the sea, raised up on its enor­mous stilts. The balmy Eng­lish weather we had over Easter was much the same as Funchal’s, a hot sun with a cool wind. Madeira’s peaks rose up and were topped with thick cloud.

A brief coach trans­fer took us to our hotel, Vila Vicen­cia. Through tun­nels, over con­crete bridges and deep val­leys and into Fun­chal, with its white­washed houses and ter­ra­cotta rooftops. Hotel tower blocks stood tall in the dis­tance, as the build­ings dot­ted them­selves over the hill­tops, peter­ing out as the roads con­tin­ued upwards and inland.

We stayed, rather unsur­pris­ingly, in the hotel zone, but Vila Vicen­cia was very dif­fer­ent to its sur­round­ings. A set of three con­verted houses, it’s a hid­den gem amongst the mon­sters. Sur­rounded by tightly packed lus­cious gar­dens and with a quaint, timely and sun bleached décor, it ekes out its own slice of per­son­al­ity amongst the face­less. It’s cer­tainly not five or even four star, but it’s small enough to know the other guests and to make friends.

The room was for three, and we enjoyed the extra space of a liv­ing room and bal­cony. Wooden wardrobes and creaky beds con­trasted the flat screen TV. We brought our own tea, we knew we would have a ket­tle, and a fridge for the milk.

Acquainted and unpacked we headed into Fun­chal for our first night, albeit a lit­tle chill­ier than expected. We passed the famous Reids hotel and the kitschy Casino. The restau­rants were all very sim­i­lar, clearly geared towards tourism, many had resorted to our most hated of things; restau­rant touts, not to men­tion menus with poorly pho­tographed pic­tures of meals. Very unsure of our­selves, and starv­ing, we stopped at the first place with a bit of char­ac­ter and a menu that detailed dishes; Chalet Vicente.

Unaware that por­tions here were gar­gan­tuan, we ordered mains and starters and ploughed into a gar­lic bread that could have served four. One of Madeira’s many spe­cial­ties is Skab­bard (Espada), a deep sea fish caught in only a few places world­wide, it is served with locally grown banana and pas­sion fruit. The sweet fishy com­bi­na­tion is par­tic­u­larly tasty. And every meal seems to come with pota­toes and boiled veg­eta­bles, whether its appro­pri­ate or not.

Fin­ish­ing up our bot­tle of house red, we were stuffed and intox­i­cated, and we stum­bled home to our nearby hotel with its firm but com­fort­able beds.