We left the hotel at a reasonable time. Here are some of the sights along the way as we walked down to the town.
Today we decided to skip breakfast in the hotel in favour of a local café. We found a lovely café full of locals near the cathedral and I had the typical Portuguese natas whilst Dave indulged with a filled Nutella fruit croissant.
We had planned to get the cable car up to the Monte area of the city, but the length of the queue was horrendous so, after a little research we had a change of plan for the day. We realised that two cruise ships had docked at 7 am this morning and this was a regular occurrence most days. On Friday only one cruise ship will arrive in the afternoon so this seems to be the perfect day to access the cable car more easily .
We were already near the old part of town so decided instead to visit the Sao Tiago fortress, an imposing yellow building on the eastern side of town. There were some amazing views from the various levels of the fort.
We found a beautiful viewing point by the stunning Igreja do Socorro, went inside and then wandered along the Rua Santa Maria, famed for the beautiful artwork on its doors. You can choose your favourite above!!
After this, we were quite close to the local market – Mercado dos Lavradores – which is known for its beautiful fish and vegetable stalls along with the typical Portuguese tile work that you can also see in the photos below. There were some very interesting fruits on display and beautiful flowers that we would not find at home.
We returned to the same street as before ( Rua Queimada de Baixo) for lunch as it had several very traditional Portuguese restaurants and ate in the Adega da Queimada. I tried the scabbard fish with banana and Dave had the espetada meat skewer. At the end of the meal there was a very heavy downpour
We then headed back up the hill. By this stage we had certainly done a very decent amount of walking (over 15,000 steps) and rewarded ourselves with an ice cream on our way back up! We booked in for the waterfall tour tomorrow, planned a packed lunch and dined in our hotel…..which is still quite bad!
