Azorean Adventure!
Day 1:
On Monday we had planned to rent a car to see some more of the island since that’s really the only way to properly get around. there are a lot of tour groups to do activities with, but we wanted to abide by our own rules and be able to stop at other places we found interesting along the way. We rented our car from Autatlantis in Ponta Delgada, and ended up with the most adorable SmartCar (automatic transmission at €60 for 2 days! aka CHEAP) . I’m now obsessed with them, but that’s a whole other story. It really helps to have a compact car there too because some of the streets can be very narrow. Our first stop was Sete Cidades and exploring the abandoned Hotel Monte Palace that overlooks it.
We probably spent close to two hours wandering through the hotel taking photos and exploring - it must’ve been quite something back in the day. After that portion of exploring we hopped back in the car and drove toward the natural pool near Ferraria, we got a bit turned around on the way there, but we made it and it was so worth it! Pack water shoes though, it’ll make it so much easier to walk on the sharp lava rock.
Post-pool dip, we headed out to Chá Gorreana, one of the two tea plantations on the island - both are the only two tea plantains on the continent of Europe. This was some of the best tea I had ever tasted, in the 1800s the Azoreans brought over a tea expert from China who showed them how to grow and produce it for drinking. The way the temperature and soil is there has never been a need for pesticides or chemicals to be used - so it’s all organic and is supposedly some of the purest tea you can drink (which means the best possible health benefits), and it sure was tasty!
And that’s a wrap for day 1!
