Monday in Funchal

Started with a visit to the ferry office to arrange for our Saturday day trip to Porto Santo, the other island of Madeira. Then a few miles walking along the sea promenade and then climbing back up to the main level for gardens with great views back to the main part of Funchal and residential streets back to the center. [Our hotel was right next to the cathedral tower seen in the photo before the pizza.] We hurried to get to a thin-crust pizzeria before they closed and had excellent pizza primavera with salad and tomato. Got some Levada tips from the waiter.

African lilies are everywhere.

Views of the center, getting closer and closer.

Excellent pizza with pepper being applied.

After a short nap it was time for dinner, a slight mistake due to Danny making the wrong decision in connection with a restaurant recommended by a waiter at our earlier vegetarian restaurant. He gave us the name Marisqueria. Danny found 2 beginning with that name, suspected that one was the correct one but rejected it because of many "terribles" on Tripadvisor. Chose the more highly rated one four kilometers away which turned out to be ok but nothing special, while the other one would probably have had much more atmosphere. We will try it on another day. [Taxi driver was a South African who has lived in Madeira for the last 12 years, happy to be in a place " where you won't get shot if you are wearing a nice pair of shoes." BUT after the meal, the walk on another promenade near the mistaken restaurant was nice and, best of all, it led to a lucky chain of events. First we drove back to the center in a 1999 Mercedes taxi, just like ours - except with a million kilometers! Best of all, the driver asks if he could let us off a few blocks short of our cathedral destination and we quickly agreed so as to have a short walk through the book fair which was taking place on those blocks. As luck would have it we passed a stage where instruments lying about and people seated indicated an imminent concert, which we later learned was all songs written by writers. We took seats and were treated to an hour of beautiful music! if I can figure out how to add video here I will put in a snippet to give you an idea of the sound.

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