Thursday, August 27, 2015

The beautiful islands of Madeira - a travel blog

Well, you must see it to believe it. Initially, I thought, an island must be really having nothing but sea on one side and beaches.. What else can it have?

The city is literally carved out of the mountains. Its quite easy to catch a look at these houses on the mountains.. they have the typical orange brick top, that is, they are thatched roof-houses. I was wondering how did these houses get on top of these slopes.. only to realise that, whoever built the city, have literally carved roads on these mountains. 







Something very common to every house is the huge balconies, the typical thatched roofs, a ventilator- the dark green one (almost 99% of the houses have this and only this kind of ventilator). The apartments have huge balconies and are extremely well ventilated, that is, they have sliding doors and windows along the length of the wall.. Almost 99% of the apartments you can see around in this place have this feature.

And the blue ocean will follow you everywhere..



And my goodness.. on the mountains, along with the houses, you can see banana plantations everywhere. No, in fact, there are banana plantations in a step-wise fashion on the mountains, and amidst these plantations, houses are situated. The houses are just flanked by these plantations.. and the size of these bananas is about 10 inches long!!










Its a picture-book city.. if you ever did a painting or planning for a movie depicting to set up a city, this is how it would be.. everything seems perfect, everything in the right place! There are tunnels carved into these mountains, and roads built for accessibility. And they have made the best of the place, by converting the entire island into a tourist spot. They have divided the island into different parts and the maps show different tours you could do. You can find a souvenir shop in almost every shop and every street.. which is quite remarkable.



Apart from the bananas, they grow grapes.. and from there comes their wine!! Vegetarian food- they do not know what that means.. so if you are a vegetarian, carry your food.. or survive on fruits, juice, dry salad and some yoghurt. Water is unheard of.. just kidding. They take more alcohol than water, so you have to pay for water!!