Funchal – day 1

Emboldened by the fact that my previous thing looked OK when I posted it to Facebook I will get right into today’s exploits.

The day has been shaped so far by the weather forecasts – all of which predicted rain varying from heavy to absolute deluge from lunchtime as I write approaching 4pm it doesn’t look so bad out there.

After a really quite good breakfast we set about discovering where we were and walked the 20 minute walk down to the port/town centre from the hotel. On the way a very pleasant garden (with statue of Columbus) and a fairly clear idea of weather conditions

From there we made our way into the centre – this is Portugal so ceramic tile decorations are compulsory! As are startling buildings and a nice church.

The highlight of our morning was the market hall – a fantastic place, busy and full of produce – dried fruit was very popular upstairs and the fish hall was stunning – big fish (tuna we think) and a man with a very big knife!

We stopped for coffee on our way to the pick up point for the courtesy bus and popped into a supermarket for some bits and bobs we needed as well as, of course, picking up some lovely patisserie items for lunch.

Next on the agenda is the meet with Pedro (our Jet2Holidays Customer Helper) – we aren’t expecting a great deal but will attend out of politeness. Later tonight we are invited to a ‘get together’ with other guests (a free drink is involved) – again we will attend to be polite but must then dash off to tonight’s choice of restaurant for dinner which is called Beef & Wine (a fairly clear indication of what we might get!) More on all that tomorrow.