Friday, July 28th

We had another shopping morning with another visit to the Mercado dos Lavradores. We purchased some typical Madeiran products, like the bolo de mel, a local dessert made of honey, and of course a few bottles of Vino de Madeira. We purchased also a frango asado (roasted chicken) with roasted potatoes for our lunch.

In the afternoon, we visited Santa Cruz, a nice village on the coast west of Funchal, near the airport. It's a very pleasant place, with a nice and clean stony beach. We enjoyed the sun and the breeze while Shaila had fun with the carousels and other facilities for children. The village is made mainly by little white houses with red brick-tiles roofs. Characteristics of these Medeiran roofs are their angle tiles, which have shapes of animal or human faces, or geometric figures that remind Chinese pagodas roofs. In front of the church, some masons where renewing the floor, using a typical local technique consisting on drawing geometrical patterns using white and black oval stones (taken from the beaches).

Back to Funchal for our last dinner in Madeira, we returned to our favorite restaurant, the Gaviao Novo, where our friend Ricardo reserved us the best table. We choose two wonderful pargos (a delicious fish that in Italy is called pagaro) and then started our dinner with gambas a l'ajillo (shrimps fried in olive oil with garlic). The grilled pargos were simply superb! We finished our dinner with maracuja pudding, which deserved a standing ovation! So we said goodbye to Ricardo, who even gave us a bottle of Madeira wine as a gift.

Saturday, July 29th

This was the day for our departure back to Italy. We said goodbye to Mr. Abel, who has been a really nice host during our holiday. Then we returned the car to the airport and took the flight to Lisbon.

This was a perfect holiday for our little baby and us. Madeira is a little island, but can offer a lot of interesting places and activities to the tourists. The nature is wonderful, the climate is one of the best you can find, the food is great and the people are nice. Can you ask more? We really enjoyed our stay and definitely recommend a trip to this wonderful island.

End of Travelogue

Stefano Dighero Genova - Italy