Skip to main content

Praia Da Vitoria


After a silly wild and quite late night last night - this morning we set the alarm hoping for sunshine so we could enjoy the delights of going ashore to have a wander around Praia da Vitoria on the Azores island of Terceira.

We were more then ready for landfall time.  This ship doesnt offer much in the way of pleasant outdoor space and to be fair its been ridiculously windy so finding a sheltered spot is pretty much impossible.

Praia da Vitoria is a very pretty little town... not more than a large village really and the influx of even a small cruise ship such as the Bolette is very noticable.  I hope it is good for trade rather invasive...   The streets are laid with beautiful patterns made with cobbles and the buildings are mostly white with pretty red rooves and blue and yellow paintwork.

We walked down the main street towards the marina and what looked like a big park. The sun held out for us and once in the shelter of the town we were sheltered from the unrelenting wind.

To the side of the park lay a terraced walkway built into the side of the hill. It led to a monument standing at the top .. it looked interesting and with little else to do in this unspoilt sleepy little place we set off up the terracing. It was quite lovely,  lots of wildflowers and a deep purple Morning Glory spilling over worn stone steps winding side to side covering about 15 levels.  There were little lizards darting in and out of the stone cracks. It wasn't hard going or as steep as it looked - (and that was my opinion so the munro walker in our party breezed it). The view from the top was splendid - right across the island - the highest point - the....... volcano in the distance partly obscured by low cloud.  It was windy on the top and the clouds scudded across the sky.  I'm still not sure if the statue at the top was Jesus or Mary but the view was amazing.  Coming down was actually harder than the climb up... the 'pretty' stone steps made for a uneven and potentially lethal descent but we took our time...

We had earned a coffee and we stopped at a little backstreet coffee shop before walking round the tiny backstreets back down to the harbour where we sat in the sun and had a beer.  Stunning outlook over the sea, boats bobbing about, lots of flower baskets swinging (more like hurtling) in the breeze.. (force 6 gale) it was very pleasant indeed.

It didnt take us long to explore the town so it was back to the ship where I thought I would swim... but it was too windy and we ended up sat in a pleasantly empty - amazingly quiet - observatory lounge reading our books.

Comments

  1. Jenny Russell11 July 2024 at 14:09

    Glad you're having a good time, even if the ship is a little small! Please do get in touch when you're back home - we're so looking forward to seeing you here in Sowerby. xxx

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town.  Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now.  The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art....  Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...
2 comments
Read more

verdant lushness

Its a never ending island hop... today we hopped of the boat at Kingstown, on the island St. Vincents and Grenadine. Once through the usual port duty free - cheap booze and diamonds to go milarkey we were straight into the town... crazy noisy smelly chaos... refreshingly no tat shops for tourists, just local markets and street traders all vying for local sales.  Music blasting from everywhere, cars (very battered and often very pimped) all over the roads - parked in the middle of the street, loading, unloading, chatting seemingly oblivious to the total traffic jam caused behind them...  We walked through this mayhem - the temperatures were rising probably about 30 degrees - tourists evident by trying to walk on the shady side of the street - even when we turned off the main drag and there were less people it was still like carnival time with music blasting everywhere. Its very atmospheric and mostly promotes a good vibe although I have heard '3 little birds' everywhich way a...
1 comment
Read more

Scotland part 2

The second half of the week continued in much the same vein.  We had one rainy afternoon which was actually quite nice to be holed up in the house with the rain lashing the windows.  It probably wasn't quite so nice for the two visitors that came on their bikes but they're tough cookies - and its only water- but I did feel sorry for them having to cycle six miles back down the track in the wind and rain, but given Scotland,  it wasn't as bad as it could be. The big quest for the 2nd half of the week was to find some deer antiers!  The chap that owned the house dropped in to visit - he was a very friendly fella and was chatting about how this was the time of year when all the Stags lost their antlers (he collected them and sold them) so after that we were on the serious lookout.   It's always been Fred's mission to find some dropped antlers....  The Monro baggers continued with the mission to bag the remaining three Monros... there is discussion as whet...
Post a Comment
Read more