Day 2: Funchal

It was a bright sunny day when we woke up in Madeira this morning.

We explored the breakfast buffet in the hotel, which turned out to be quite extensive, then set out to walk into the centre of Funchal.

We began by following the promenade which we'd explored a little of in the dark last night.

It was lovely walking by the sea in the sunshine.

It was surprisingly warm and humid though and I was soon regretting my decision to wear long trousers!

The hotel we're staying in is located around 4km outside of Funchal, so it took us the best part of an hour to walk into the centre of town.

Funchal is the sixth biggest city in Portugal, with a population of around 106,000 people.

Several thousand extra people were being added to that population count today, thanks to these two large cruise ships sitting in the harbour.

Madeira is more built up and touristy than the Azores but some things feel similar, like these patterned cobbled streets.

Also these bright, white buildings.

This one, in the centre of town, was the cathedral.

It had a lovely patterned tiled roof.

We made our way through various squares and side streets until we reached the bottom station of the cable car, which runs from sea-level Funchal up to the suburb of Monte in the hills above the town.

There was a seriously long queue for the cable car when we arrived. Luckily, it was gondolas so the line moved quite quickly and we were soon high up above Funchal.

It felt noticeably cooler up here than it had at sea level.

We stopped for a quick drink, then made our way towards the Monte Palaces Tropical Gardens.

This is a large botanical garden, high on the hill above Funchal.

As well as plants and trees, it's full of beautiful Portuguese tiles.

And some quite odd sculptures!

We followed a display of tiles which was illustrating the history of Portugal.

This one marked the building of the famous Belém Tower...

...while this one showed the Spanish Armada.

This part of the gardens had an oriental theme.

There were lots of large pots...

...and a little waterfall.

There were also these rather scary-looking statues...

...and some more pretty tiles.

The gardens were fascinating but situated on a slope that led firmly downhill.

We kept making our way downwards, conscious of how much uphill we were going to have to get back to the gondola station.

After a while we caught sight of a pool below us.

To our surprise we found that it was home to several flamingos

Although there were obviously a lot of people here from the cruise ships, the gardens were big enough to swallow them up so it never felt too crowded.

And although it's November, we still found some colourful flowers in places.

When we reached a viewpoint at the end of the gardens, we could look down towards Funchal and the sea. The cruise ships looked smaller from up here!

This part of the gardens was dedicated to flora of Madeira and we found some examples of traditional houses from the village of Santana.

We also found some banana trees!

So many bananas

At this point we had to turn around and begin the long climb back up towards the exit.

We travelled back down into Funchal via the cable car (which still had a long queue, this time to get down!) and then began the walk back along the sea towards our hotel.