Azores Islands, Portugal
Pico, Faial, and Sao Miguel Islands
Our 10 Day Itinerary
The Azores is a group of 9 volcanic islands formed around 900 miles off the coast of Portugal, in the Atlantic Ocean. They are known for their dairy farming, tourism, and unique wine growing region. We knew there wouldn't be enough time to visit more than 2 or 3 of the islands on our trip, so we did some research and chose Sao Miguel (easy to get to, biggest and more tourism), Pico (known for their wine growing, newer island with the tallest point), with hopes of potentially taking the ferry for a day trip to a 3rd island.
Fly Denver to Newark, Newark to Ponta Delgada, layover, flight to Pico
Gruta das Torres, Madalena Coast, Vinhas da Criação Velha, Scenic Drive
Cave Exploration, Ferry to Faial, Horta Beach
Pico Scuba Diving, Scenic Drive
Travel to Sao Miguel, Relax at the house
Scenic Drive, Cha Gorreana Tea Plantation, Furnas
Lagoa do Fogo hike
The Abandoned Hotel / Lagoa de Sete Cidades, Miradouro da Grota do Inferno, Mosteiros, Termas da Ferraria
Ponta Delgada to Newark to Denver
Day 1 & 2: Travel from home to Azores
We took an afternoon flight to Newark on United Airlines, followed by a 9pm overnight flight direct to Ponta Delgada, on Sao Miguel, the biggest island in the Azores. On our flight, our captain announced that it was actually the first direct flight of the season, so we were very lucky to have booked that!
Upon arriving, we were pretty exhausted, but had to wait through a long layover before our local flight to the smaller island of Pico. We decided to store our luggage at the airport (~$5pp), took a taxi to town and found a cute breakfast spot to have a bite to eat. We spent some time wandering around the town, enjoying the sunshine and admiring the European feel. The town is situated on the edge of the ocean, but protected from large waves by the port. People were out enjoying the weather and swimming in the protected area. There was no sand, so people laid down on the "concrete beach" on the edge of the water. Finally, it was time to make our way back to the airport where we caught our flight on the local Azores Airline to Pico Island. Pico is one of the newer volcanic islands, with a dormant stratovolcano reaching 7,000 ft. We pcked up our rental car and started making our way through the small and mostly vacant island streets to our AirBnb home. The home was a cute farmhouse, made of typical Pico style volcanic blocks, perched overloooking a field and the ocean below. We had enough room for everyone to spread out, which was great! We had stopped at the store for groceries on our way, picking up some fresh cheese, bread, fruit, olives and local wine for our dinner, as well as some breakfast items. We called it a night and looked forward to a full day of exploring tomorrow.
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Day 3: Explore Pico Island
Refreshed from a full night sleep, we enjoyed breakast in our rental home, and then set out in the car to start exploring the island of Pico. We were constantly surprised by the lack of cars and especially tourists on the road. As we wandered into more central roads, we climbed up and up, with great views of the sea. Unfortunately, Mount Pico was still hiding behind the clouds. We stopped in at Gruta das Torres, a commercialize lava cave, but they were closed due to a recently discovered fissue that needed to be inspected. We were able to watch their short video to get a feeling for the cave. We would recommend making reservations in advance, as they were also apparently booked up.
We traveled back down the road toward the town of Madalena, where we parked near the ocean's edge and walked out onto the lava rocks. Since Pico is a "newer" island, there no shortage of lava formations and almost everything seemed to incorporate the lava rock into its building. We took a lot of photos with the ocean spraying up onto the lava, then walked up the path toward the famous red windmill marking the UNESCO World Heritage wine region of Vinhas da Criação Velha. Here, similar to wine we have seen growing on the Greek islands, the vines are grown on the ground surrounded by walls of lava rock which protect the grapes from wind and also hold in heat. We ate lunch at the well-known Cella Bar restaurant. Everyone enjoyed the fresh prawns in garlic butter! We attemped to have a wine tasting at the Azores Wine Company, but they would only sell us wine by the glass, despite the place being almost empty. We found their tastings to be overpriced, but their by the glass even worse, because it turned out that they only gave us a small taste in the glass for the price of about 15 Euros! We complained about the false advertising to no avail and ended up leaving a negative review online. Continuing our drive, we headed back toward the house, taking the scenic road closer to the sea. We stopped at a locals bar and tasted their homemade wine while the kids got a few treats. Then checked out the Volcanic Arches path which took us to a viewpoint of an arch, over some interesting volcanic ground. For dinner, we stopped in our nearest very small town where we tried the restaurant Tasca. Fresh Pico-made cheese, and olives with fresh bread were tasty but the fish pasta was disappointing. Back at the house we enjoyed the amazing sunset from the field.
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Day 4: More Pico and Faial Island
Since we weren't able to visit the cave yesterday, we found our own cave adventure today. We had seen on the map that there was a cave just around the corner from the other one called Furna de Frei Matias. This one was a self-explore, but when we showed up at the parking, there was a couple with a guide arriving around the same time. We took our time on the path, following it up to a cone where you could peer down a hundred feet or so into the deep lava tube. It seemed to appear out of nowhere in the middle of the field. Nearby, there was an entrance to the cave and we saw the other people go in ahead of us. All we had were our iphone flashlights, but we made our way down and into the complete darkness.
The cave was a single lava tube with sparkly walls and challenging lava rock footing. It sloped down slightly, and we followed it until it tapered off almost a 1/4 mile in! We came out with a few scrapes - falling on uneven and sharp lava rock is not very forgiving. Running a little short on time, we raced to the ferry port where we had to buy our tickets for the Faial Island ferry only a few minutes before departure. Faial is the closest island and you can see it from Pico. A short 20-30 minutes later, we arrived in Horta. First thing on the agenda was to find lunch. We ended up walking for a while but finally found a seafood restaurant that was open for late lunch. A favorite again was the butter prawns, as well as the fresh cheese with bread. We also had some fresh fish and white wine. We relaxed for a while on the nearby beach where the water was cool but refreshing. After hanging out for a bit, we walked back into town and stopped at the famous gin and tonic bar called Peter's Cafe Sport. It was quite busy, and we tried their famous gin and tonics while the kids had a soda. A little overrated, but we had to try. We got a bite to eat at a evening market that was just opening up before heading back to the ferry. Unfortunately, the timetable online had been incorrect for the season, and we ended up having to wait an extra hour for the next boat. A few of us made a long walk to the grocery store while others waited. Finally on the way back to Pico, we enjoyed the sunset over the island. Many places were closed for dinner (it happened to be a holiday), but we waited for a table and had one of our better dinners on the island at O Cinco restaurant. We tried limpets in butter for the first time, had some curry and rice, steak and sandwich with fries.
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Day 5: More Pico Island
Today we had booked a morning scuba diving at a town nearby our Airbnb. Cody was certified last year, so he was able to join us on this one. The girls got to sleep in and stay at the house for the morning until we returned. When we arrived at the dive shop, we were fitted with 10mm full wetsuits, as the water is really cold. We were a little surprised to discover that our two dives would actually be starting right from the shore! We had a very short van drive over to the entry point and got started.
Although lacking in abundant sea life, the underwater geography from the volcanic activity provided interesting contours. The diving wasn't our favorite (it's hard to beat the Maldives), but the highlight was a small cave filled with thousands and thousands of small shrimp. There was a large grouper that was hunting in the cave while we were there, which added to the excitement. We did see a large octopus towards the end of the dive also. The water was very cold even with the complete wetsuit with hood and booties. Back at the house, we had some lunch and warmed up for a little while, trying to decide what to do. We opted for a scenic drive to the end of the island that we hadn't visited yet. Along the way, we stopped at a few viewpoints, admiring the ocean below. There happened to be a sushi restaurant along the way so we decided to stop for dinner. It was quickly filling up but unfortunately both the service and the quality left something to be desired. Continuing along, we stopped to get some ice cream at another small town and then cut across the middle of the island to get back. Tomorrow, we would pack up and head back to Sao Miguel for another 4 nights.
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Day 6: Fly to Sao Miguel Island
We had a mid morning flight out of Pico and were lucky enough to have a clear day and were finally able to see the summit of Pico! It's a tough hike up to the top of Pico and we were glad we had not tried to attempt it as we would have seen nothing but clouds before today. It was an easy short flight from Pico to Sao Miguel. We rented a car and were able to stop at a much larger grocery store where we stocked up on food to bring to our next airbnb house. We were surprised by how inexpensive and fresh the food was at the store compared to the US.
Arriving at the house,we found it had a beautiful view of the ocean up on the hill with an infinity pool. It was nice to have a luxury house with more modern amenities and we were excited to spend the next few days here. We had a relaxing afternoon enjoying the pool and the weather was quite hot. We found a restaurant in the nearest town, Lagoa, which was an italian restuarant, called Alma Latina. It was a fancy white table cloth place and we enjoyed their fresh pasta and seafood with lots of traditional Azorian appetizers. It seemed like a very popular place for the locals and we may have been the only tourists there. After spending the day traveling between Pico and Sao Miguel, we made plans for our coming days and which areas of Sao Miguel we would like to explore.
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Day 7: Tea Plantation and Furnas
On our first full day in Sao Miguel, we drove over to the other side of the island to visit the large tea plantation. Since the Azores was on the trade route across the Atlantic, tea was introduced here and it remains one of the only places to grow tea in Europe. As we crossed to the other side of the island, we entered more fog and mist. There was a lookout along the way that had a beautiful view of the coast from up on the cliff. The Cha Gorreana tea plantation was well set up for tourism. They had a whole walking tour where you could see the equipment in action from the steaming of the tea leaves, to the rolling and drying, and then into large bags. You could also sample a few of their teas and watch an informational video about the process. The factory was surrounded by tea fields that you could walk through so we spent some time exploring there, taking pictures and flying the drone.
After the tea plantation, we went into the narrow streets of another town to find a place for lunch. We came to find the Casa de Pasto O Amaral that looked popular. We ordered the local cheese with jam and bread, of course, and then some fresh fish, and a pot of rice and fish soup to share. We were all happy with the choices. We continued on to the town of Furnas, where they have a lot of hot spring geothermal activity. There was a sulphury area where you could see a lot of hot water bubbling out of the ground and other areas of hot mud. Traditionally, people have come there to cook large pots of stew and other things using the hot steam and water. You could walk around a little bit and see some water springs that were labeled with different temperatures and minerals. We tried to go to the hot spring pool, situated strangely inside a botanical garden park, but when we got there, they were trying to close the park for the evening so were no longer letting people purchase tickets. It was a bit of a drive back to the house, so we stopped in to relax and find a restaurant to have dinner at. We ended up going to a pizza restaurant in Ponta Delgada that also had other things on the menu so everyone was happy. We had the margarita pizza with some pasta as well.
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Day 8: Lagoa do Fogo and Beach Day
Today we explored one of the most scenic viewpoints on Sao Miguel, the Lagoa de Fogo. Unknown to us previously, this was the very last day that personal cars were allowed to drive up and park at this natural attraction. After today, you would need to park at a common parking lot and take the shuttle bus up to the top for the remainder of the summer season. We were thankful that we caught the last day and drove up the mountain. At first, it was very foggy and we couldn't see much at the lookouts. But things gradually started to clear up and we looked down on the volcanic crater lake below. It reminded us a bit of Hawaii with the lush greenery and steep slopes.
We decided to do the hike that went down to the lake shore, and we wondered if there was a path around the shorefront. After a steep hike down, the path turned into very slow going. Most people probably turned around at this point, but we wanted to keep going to see if we could get to the beach we had seen from above. THe muddy and narrow path made its way around the first peninsula. It was definitely not easy going and we had some unhappy hikers on our hands. Finally we reached the beach but swimming in the water was not allowed. We walked along the beach and flew the drone a few times over the lake. We made our way back around (finding a shortcut that saved some of the slow parts) and bcak to the car. We drove down and made our way back to the nearby beach town where we had lunch on the patio. More fresh fish of choice, steak, fries and salads with Azorian wine. Some chose to return to the house, while others of us went to the beach. It was a huge sandy beach, crowded with a lot of locals. We had a good time hanging out there for a while and it was hot enough that we had to get in the ocean several times. The water was cool at first but felt refreshing. After the beach, we stopped by the local grocery store and picked up a few extra items for dinner at the house. We wanted to enjoy the home and pool and have dinner there for a change. We put together a spread of bread, meat, cheese, salad and other items and made plans for our final day in the Azores tomorrow.
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Day 9: Lagoa das Sete Cidades
We had a really busy day on our last day in the Azores! First up, was another drive up to see a popular viewpoint called Lagoa das Sete Cidades. At the viewpoint, there is a rather strange tourist attraction which is an abandoned hotel. The hotel isn't technically open to the public, but lots of people enter it at their own risk. The inside is empty except for some scraps, and you can walk around to the eerie sounds of water dripping all around you. We spent some time exploring the inside of the hotel, walking up the old staircase to the higher floors. It was definitely creepy but the views were fantastic. We wondered how a hotel with this amazing of a view could have this happen to it? From the rooftop, we took pictures and flew the drone, and then made our way back out. If you ask the kids, the abandoned hotel just might have been the highlight of their trip!
After the hotel, we drove over to a nearby hike called the Miradouro da Grota do Inferno. This hike leads you to one of the more famous hiking images you will see from Sao Miguel. It starts out with a flat path walking through the forest and soon you come to a viewpoint where you walk down a more narrow path overlooking Sete Cidades lakes below. We made a loop of it but going back a different way, taking more time for pictures and droning again. We had hoped to find some lunch in the city at the edge of the lake, but didn't really see a lot of places to go so continued on to another small town called Mosteiros. It felt like we were the only tourists there as we sat down to a very small cafe. We tried a bunch of their seafood items including limpets in butter and garlic. The kids enjoyed some ice cream treats. Our final stop was at a very unique spot on the island called Termas da Ferraria. At this place, a hot spring comes out and meets the ocean in a little cove of lava rocks. People flock there to experience the warm water mixing with the cold ocean while waves come in and out of the cove. It is somewhat protected from larger waves due to the rock walls on both sides. There are ladders to help you get in and out, and ropes to hold on to while you ebb and flow with the waves in the warm water. The closer you get to the shore, the warmer it is and that area was more crowded. We swam for some time before finally getting tired and deciding it was time to drive back to the house. Our final dinner, we found a sushi restaurant in Ponta Delgada that ended up being very good. The next day, we would travel home on the same path from Ponta Delgada to Newark, and then on to Denver. Overall, we would highly recommend a visit to the Azores, as there is a lot to explore. You can easily see 2 islands in 8-10 days. The weather in mid-June was beautiful and warm, with very little tourists visiting at that time. It feels like a little undiscovered corner of Europe.
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