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Published: January 14th 2011
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Our port in Portugal was entitled Funchal, a small island just off the coast. This island and the island of Tenerife were similar; both towns were built on a volcanic mountain. However, while Tenerife’s roads were hell for me, due to them being so crooked, this islands roads were almost all straight, which meant I would not be getting sick again. Our day started off the same as the previous one, waking up at 7:45 we proceed to breakfast and then departed on our bus.
Our bus ride up the mountain to our first stop of the day, which would turn out to be a church, would be extremely picturesque. The island was beautiful all around us was the most beautiful fauna and flora, it felt as if you were in a rain forest or the Garden of Eden. There were hundreds of different species of plants each with a different pigment of color, for example, some had a dark green long stem with a light green flower at the top, another had a green stem but had dark red flowers, other colors included blue, lavender, orange, yellow, etc. Finally we reached a church at almost the very top
of the mountain. The outside of the church held an amazing view of the town below, a sea of green all along the mountain side along with white specks here and there, which were peoples houses, and finally the deepest blue, the endless ocean. After taking a few pictures I then walked into the church. In the church there was a beautiful altar of pure silver, hanging from the ceiling were crystal chandeliers, which when the sun shone on them sparkled the most beautiful colors on the walls.
Next, our tour guide took us to our next exciting point of interest, which I was extremely excited about. Before cars started arriving on the island the people did not have any way to go up and down the mountain, until they decided to use hammocks to carry people by having to men carry the person up the mountain. However, this presented a problem, because lets say the person was over 300 pounds, the two men who carried them could not possibly carry him or her all the way up the mountain. Luckily a solution was found, in the form of wooden box called a toboggan, which is a small wooden
sled shaped like a small couch. Attached to the toboggan were two ropes, which the men could hold on to and pull the sled up or down the mountain. However, if you were going down the mountain then the two men would ride on the back and steer left and right with their feet. Basically the whole thing was a really cool rollercoaster. The best of all this was that we actually got to try toboggan down the mountain. Overall it was barrels of fun, I only wish it was a little faster though I think we might have flipped over. Anyway after getting to the bottom of the mountain from our amazing toboggan ride we then proceeded to further down the mountain to main part of the city.
However, before reaching the city we stopped at one more viewpoint, which held another great view of the city, but also beautiful garden. There is decided to take some crazy pictures of me climbing trees and pillars. Eventually we departed for the city where we would have another really interesting experience.
There we had some free time to shop and also try some of the brandy wine, which Portugal is
known for. They had four flavors of brandy wine, dry, semi dry, semi sweet, and sweet. I only tried the semi sweet, which was really good after you drink the brandy it feels like there is a small fire in your stomach where you could roast marshmallows.
After buying a 15-year-old sweet brandy wine some of my friends and me decided to go to the local market to kill some time. The market consisted of two floors the bottom had some clothing shops along with people selling orange juice, marmalade, bread, and flowers; while the top floor had people selling fruit, spices, and nuts. On the top floor you could actually try some of the fruit they were selling and let me tell you it was delicious. They had something called passion fruit, which was an extremely sweet fruit, it tasted like a banana, raspberry, blueberry, and strawberry all mixed together. However, since they were really expensive, for each one it was 15 euro, I decided not to buy one. Though I could have spent the rest of my life on this island we had to go meet the ship and depart for our next port.
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