Funchal – day 5

Another very pleasant day today (which apparently is a Saturday!) all the better for being only lightly planned. It also helped that the weather remains warm, sunny and very calm.

Our first port of call was Blandy’s Wine Lodge in the centre of Funchal. It is no surprise that you can’t avoid Madeira wine on this island (my evening Negroni at the hotel has it substituting for the vermouth) and one of the recommended activities is the tour of the main producer. A very reasonable €15 a head gets you a 45 minute tour of the facility which covers all you will ever need to know presented, in our case, by an entertaining young woman.

Towards the end of the tour the museum had personal letters from Churchill, thank you notes from various European royalty (including Princess Margaret) and a bottle of 1954 Malmsey (as old as me but worth more probably!

Finally there was a tasting of the two extremes of Madeira – Sercial (the dry one) and Malvasia (or Malmsey). Both nice but still not to our taste.

Stage 2 of the day was a visit to Casa Museu Frederick de Freitas who was a collector of various things (including teapots & mugs!) and is pretty much as he left it.

Adjoining the house/museum is a museum of well…. tiles. Populat round these parts this was a collection from around the world. One of those supremely focussed & well laid out museums the do. One job really well.

Quite exhausted by our packed morning we decided to lunch out again and went back to the Italian where we ate yesterday. Having sampled the pizza we were keen to try the pasta for main course this time but started with bruschetta. Unexpectedly this came warm and with a melted cheese topping but was really very nice. Mains were lasagna for me & cannelloni for Ally and both were excellent. I decided to got the whole hog and have a dessert. Sobramesa de Casa (literally house pudding) was a curious (almost) trifle but topped with chocolate mousse. Sounds awful but it was very good. The picture is our chosen wine which was very good – mind you the Portuguese wine has been the highlight of this holiday for us.

You can see in the background that Xaramba is a simple place – the (tiny) chef working the oven, one young woman doing drinks and whatever else needed plus the waitress whose calm approach was outstanding. Shortly after we arrived a group of ten (unexpected) turned up and were taken the the stride of the small team. Even when each person wanted to pay separately!

Tonight we will have an evening tipple in the outdoor terrace bar here at our hotel and, since we stuffed ourselves earlier, the lightest of snacks.

Last day tomorrow and we have no idea of what we might do – probably not very much. One thing for sure is we will dine at the hotel since many places will be closed as it is Sunday.