We recently went on vacation to the Azores islands of Portugal. I've been trying to decide on how to structure my posts about the trip and have now decided that I'll start with a high level post on a specific island that we visited and then follow that up later with a more in depth look at the specific destination or activity at that location. Today I'll start with an overview of the Azores and our first stop at Sao Miguel.
If you're not familiar with the Azores its a region of Portugal that is made up of a series of small islands knkwn as an archipelago. Its located in the mid Atlantic Ocean of the coast of Portugal and Morocco. See the red dots in the photo above to get an idea.
The location was appealing for us because there are direct flights from where we live in Canada that happen to be on the shorter side of the spectrum compared to other mainland Europe destinations. For instance, the flight was only about 5-6 hours compared to 7-8 hours+ of flight time for the mainland.
We spent 10 days (9 nights) in the Azores and visited three of the islands in total. We went from Sao Miguel where we spent 3 nights, over to Sao Jorge for 3 nights and then went to Faial for 2 nights before heading back to Sao Miguel for our final night. Overall I'd say that this was enough time to spend on each island, though I might have wanted one more day on Sao Miguel if I had the opportunity.
The map that I've included in the post is a bit confusing because it lists the capitals of each island instead of its name. I added that in myself to make it easier to follow. I hope it helps!
Like I said, Sao Miguel was our first stop. We left Toronto around 9pm on Friday evening and arrived at the capital - Ponta Delgada bright and early the next day. It was like 6-7am i think.
After basically pulling an "all nighter" on the plane, we picked up our rental car and hit the ground running to start our tour.
Renting a car is basically a must on any of the islands because taxis and public transit are very limited.
Most cars are manual transmission as well and the roads are extremely steep so that's something to keep in mind if you can't drive stick shift.
The island is so small that you can basically drive around the entire thing in only a few hours. On the plus side that allows you to see everything there is to see there in only a few days.
But then again, on the negative side you can basically see everything there is to see in only a few days. We kept busy for the 3 days there and we actually didn't exhaust everything there was to see so staying a little longer would have been worth it. In terms of time needed there, I think it all really depends on how many of the islands you want to see.
Something that I really liked were all of the look out spots. They were located all around the island.
They were also well marked by signs on the road and had parking spots, so it was very easy to pull over quickly to see a great view then jump back in the car to continue on to our destination.
This was sort of a staple activity for the trip at location that we visited.
Most of the photos in this post are the various looks outs that we came across on Sao Miguel.
The weather was a little cooler then we expected and we didn't pack accordingly. The air was chilly with the breeze at night and we had mostly only packed warm weather clothing.
My wife packed a lot of dresses but ended up having to wear the same two outfits (jeans and a sweater) for several days of the trip, especially in the begining.
I had a few pairs of long pants for the evening but my dress shirts were thin and made walking to dinner a little chilly for me. I basically had to wear my hiking jacket to dinner which was fine.
Most of the days were fine for shorts and a t-shirt other than the days that it actually rained.
We did have a few really nice days though and even though it was over cast skies for many of the days we were lucky that the clouds opened up periodically to allow us to see the views.
A really good resource for the island is the website "Spot Azores."
It's a series of cameras set up on each of the islands at all of the main destinations. They show the immediate weather conditions and visibility of the location.
You can use the site to check out a particular spot at any given time to see if the view is visible. That way you don't have to waste your time driving into the mountains to stare at a dense fog.
That happened to us on day one when we first arrived. Our look out spot was in the clouds so we pivoted our plan quickly and went to the town of Furnas to go swim in the orange water of the hot spring there. It worked out very well that day actually.
Overall I'd say that this was a very outdoorsy trip for us. We had planned it that way but its something to keep in mind I think if you plan to visit the Azores. We didn't see lot of indoor activities worth making a special trip for (I.e. museums, galleries, shopping...etc).
We planned to do quite a bit of hiking ourselves. We hiked in the tea plantations on the island which was definitely another highlight that I will do a post about down the road as well. Today was sort of just a high level introduction and overview of first island though.
I'll post more about the specific destinations in the coming days and weeks. So until then, thanks for reading!