Mad 4 Eira

Maybe the title is a bit misleading since Eira is a part of Helsinki. The place I’m writing about today is not in Finland, even though rumours say this place too had been visited by the Vikings. A little island in the Atlantic ocean, 520km west of Morocco, first inhabited by Portuguese settlers in the early 15^th century, with a current population of 250,000, politically Europe but geologically Africa. Yes, Madeira.

One thing I am often against while travelling is the concept of package trips. I don’t want a package trip with someone else making all the exciting parts of travel easy – I want to experience and deal with everything myself. But, package trips also have their definite pros, as I discovered when I embarked on my first ever “äkkilähtö”, what’s the term in English? ‘Sudden departure’? The kind of ultra cheap options you get if you’re ready to travel unflexibly tomorrow, or, latest, within a few weeks. My friend J and I had been considering Canary Islands, but in the end a handy deal to Madeira popped up. Flights there and back, seven nights at a three-star hotel including breakfast, airport pick-up and drop-off, 305€ per person. That is not bad if I say so myself.

So, what to do in Madeira? Here are some bits and pieces I did around Funchal, the main city in Madeira.

– Enjoy the plane views, ofc.

– Walk or run to the east,

past the Cristiano Ronaldo museum and the Cristiano Ronaldo statue with a very prominent and light-coloured crotch (the paint had started to wear off, assumedly due to rather intimately-minded fans) and the stray broken Cristiano Ronaldo masks flapping in the wind, and you’ll reach the scenic area where posh hotels loom over the never-ending horizon of sea. Did you know Cristiano Ronaldo is Madeiran? And that the airport there is literally named after him? I truly didn’t realise before that airports could be named after people who were still alive and kicking. (Pun intended… maybe.)

– Walk or run to the west,

higher and higher up, avoiding inviting-looking side detours because they are usually occupied with loud dogs which are either ownerless or leashless, maybe even both. Be entertained by the prospect of two buses meeting on narrow mountain lanes – a lot of reversing was witnessed.

– Walk (maybe not run) up into the city –

even ten minutes walk will provide you with splendid high-up views. Imagine what half an hour or an hour’s walk could do! I’ll spoil it for you, here are some views.

The main aim of my walk inland was to reach The Bridge, one of the most magnificent bits of human construction I have seen in my life. I went as far as I could, until the road was highway-style only for cars. At this point I gave up with a sigh, but found another way – away from the bridge – but going higher and higher.

And the views got progressively more phenomenal, the most memorable moment was on an atmospheric ledge on the side of a road. Epic views, such warmth, such happiness.

The sun was blazing, it was proper summer, and I was lamenting my choice of jeans.

This walk also included an adorable little café experience, where I skilfully ordered an agua and a leite com chocolate and enjoyed them in a sunny little picnic park area, surrounded by little endemic Madeira lizards. Gave me true Vietnam vibes of my random motorbike trips around the countryside.

– Spot cats. <3

– Visit the local farmers’ slash tourists’ market,

Mercado dos Lavradores, where the keen salespeople will try and sell you overpriced ananas banana (yes, truly a mix of the two) and all the different styles of passion fruit you could ever imagine. The word of the trip is “marakuya”, passion fruit in Portuguese. They had normal marakuya, lemon marakuya, orange marakuya, tomato marakuya, to mention a few. Take your pick.

And despite the colourful options, the love of my life aka DRAGONFRUIT was hardly any cheaper than in Finland! 19,90€/kg, meaning around 7€ per average dragonfruit. (Still, not 18€ per dragonfruit, as I found out a few days ago as I crazily decided to weigh one at the local K-Supermarket here in Helsinki… which safe to say, I didn’t buy.)

– Drink a marakuya milkshake

from the marakuya milkshake tuktuk on the seaside boulevard.

– Drink a marakuya juice.

I opted for a traditional coffee but my new friend T was wise enough to choose this beautiful passionfruit juice. I mean – can you think of anything that looks more refreshing!?

– Drink a marakuya (alcoholic) drink called Poncha,

you can buy it from the shops but I actually sampled it the same bright mid-morning as the picture above was taken when I spotted a jug of a divine-looking yellowy orange drink sat upon the bar, assuming it to be juice. It was Poncha, and I decided 11am is not the suitable time for Poncha, but the waiter decided to bring me a little taster in a shot glass anyways. Yum.

– Drink a marakuya (non-alcoholic) drink called Brisa,

basically it’s what flows in the veins of the Madeiranese where some other nationalities have blood.

– Eat queijadas,

these little pastries with a sweet cheese inside. I got one at a random café after one of my walks to pair with my Brisa (see above), choosing it as it was the only thing there in addition to a pastel de nata and I didn’t fancy a pastel de nata. Then I had another one at this super-cute Café Boutique Lido, this one covered – oh so traditionally – in what else but marakuya.

– Eat scabbard fish with banana.

The traditional Madeiran delicacy. I’m not always the fishiest of people, so I didn’t choose this without a proper think beforehand. Last summer I experienced a significant… lack-of-thought-process at a restaurant in Hanko, where I’d ordered a salmon salad without bothering to check what the “scampi” that came with it was – I had ended up with the most gigantic many-legged lobster-creature I have encountered in my life sat upon my skimpy portion of salad. I still cannot look at the pictures. ANYWAYS I didn’t want any other traumatic encounters this time.

My confidence in the edibility of scabbard fish was not enhanced by the fact that these are the pictures that come up when you google “scabbard fish” (and, perhaps even less encouragingly, if you put just “scabbard”, it comes up with a type of sword):

“Scabbard with banana” came with more edible pics, but I checked with the very friendly waitress that the fish “looks like this and not like this”. She laughed and assured me that my dish would not be a huge sabre-toothed carcass of “The Black Monster Fish”.

And it was very nice, even though sometimes I consider white fish to be quite bland. And for J, the best bit of the whole meal was apparently the grilled banana on my scabbard!

We ate this at the Restaurante Embaixador Madeirense on the restaurant street of the quaint Old Town, both of us choosing a 9,50€ deal including starters, main course and coffee or tea. Our main meals were brought with a selection of veg and carbs that we could spoon onto our own plates from the little shared bowls. So dainty, such a lovely time. Truly experienced the #santamariastreetdiningexperience. Definite recommendation for this place if you ever find yourself around there!

– Go up the cable car.

Whenever there’s a cable car nearby, it is necessary I visit it. So one afternoon we popped into one of them and admired the views around us as we chugged slowly up to the area of Monte, arriving 550m higher than where we started off at, and in a completely different climate. (This was the same day I’d lamented my choice of jeans on that scorching walk – well luckily J persuaded me that it may be a tad chiller up in higher altitudes, so I kept them jeans on. And cardigan and coat. Apparently Madeira, twice the size of the Isle of Wight in England, has sixteen microclimates.)

We decided to follow sign posts for a walk around the chilly mountainside, twas pretty majestic.

The friendliest cat we met was found upon a stone wall on this walk. Me and moggy made friends, and then we pondered whether to continue our walk up, but higher above there was a leashless loud dog, so we decided not to venture that way. We said bye to moggy and turned round. Cat greeted, mission completed.

While waiting for the last cable car we sat at a nearby cafe where I splurged and chose a slice of orange cake, not knowing the amount of accessories it came with, have a look. The cake was nice but the visual representation far better. And the views, well, can’t complain innit.

– Visit the yellow fort.

Sao Tiago is its official name, dating from the early 17th century. Ironically, this outside fort was the only place we had to show covid passes during our whole trip. Also featured funky crabs.

– Experience a monsoon.

Out of the eight days we experienced there, mostly with clear weather, one day was a constant sesh of non-stop flurries of torrential rain, then sunshine, then rain, then sunshine. The weather was so erratic it was usually bright sunshine and rain at the same time. I’m glad it was just one day.

Please compare these two next pics, first one taken on the monsoon day and the second one the day after. (Also spot the cats from earlier!)

– Experience an earthquake.

5 on the Richter scale. On the first night there. My first ever earthquake. We woke up and my first thought was that upstairs neighbours were having quite an active, er, romantic time. But as the shaking ensued I figured no human would have skills strong enough to rock an entire three-star hotel in this manner. Then it stopped. And I went back to sleep. The package deal organisers sent a text a few hours later informing us about the earthquake, and it featured in the news too. Apparently it “scared the locals”, but no lasting damage.

– Experience such strong winds

that there was a decent possibility of not being able to leave the island the day our flight was scheduled. Apparently not a rare occurrence in Madeira. We joined the crowds of people sitting outside the airport (was pretty atmospheric, right next to the sea) waiting for our plane to first prove its ability to land before we could go thru security. A bit later we happened to find ourselves on the rooftop plane-spotting terrace when I checked the Flight Radar page and saw an incoming plane, five minutes away… and it was ours. So we were able to watch it circle round the island for the third time, finally landing rather surprisingly smoothly. Hooray! Literally, seeing our plane in the sky after looking out for it thanks to Flight Radar info, was one of the most EXCITING moments of the entire trip. Ah. Such excitement. Would it land or would it not land!?

– Travel upon The Bridge.

On the way back, now that we were in a bus, I could be upon The Bridge. Forgive the bad quality of the picture of this momentous event.

– Visit Nun’s valley, and take a nice walk to the Cabo Girao scenic area. But more on these in future posts. 🙂

Tchau for now,

Emzy

xxx