First Port, Funchal, Maderia, Portugal

Our first port was a mystery to us.  We thought it would be a very small island with a few people and a small town.  We were wrong.  It is a group of small and large islands.  Funchal is a beautiful city.  The rest of this big island is covered with communities of red tile roofed homes and buildings.  Beautiful to see.

We did not take a ship excursion.  We really just wanted to walk around and see what the place was about.  The area around the port is tourist central, but the further you walk the more local it becomes.  We headed back towards the port and stopped at a very nice cafe.   All the tables out front were taken, but when we looked up we found they had a balcony.  We lucked out with a table overlooking the area and got to watch the people go by and use their wifi to do some emailing and banking.

Not having access to the internet for 10 days was actually nice.  A few times we wished we could look up some info about the places we going to visit, but found if we asked some of the seasoned cruisers, we would get good info.

We met many people who had been on 20, 30, 40 OR MORE cruises.  Don't think we will be doing  more than a few, but I can see why some people would do that.

Here's some pics of our walk around Funchal.  It's a beautiful place and I would not mind going back and renting a place for a few months to learn more about it.