Day 28-29: Sao Miguel Island

Thursday, August 22nd – our 4 week adventure in the Azores has come to an end.

It was so hard to believe it was time to say good-bye to our friends on Pico Island. We packed up (sadly), headed to the airport and caught a short flight to Sao Miguel Island.

 

Poor Andrew was running a fever today (run down?) so he slept every chance he got! Thankfully he woke up energetic and fever-free on Friday!

 

With the long trip back to Colorado, we had planned to stay in Sao Miguel for the night. This also gave us a chance to checkout one more island. Sao Miguel is the largest and most populated of the nine islands, and quite different from Pico. The international airport is located in Ponta Delgada, a city that wraps around a natural bay.

We had two rooms booked at the Hotel Talisman. The kids immediately discovered a swimming pool on the top floor so Jim and I trudged up the stairs to check it out. WOW! The kids failed to mention the unbelievable views from the rooftop pool! What a nice surprise.

So they jumped in for a sunset swim and Jim headed down to the bar to pickup some snacks and drinks. Now this is service!!

Kids were wiped after swimming so we ordered room service, tucked them in and Jim and I headed out on the town to catch a late dinner.

We walked down along the water and stumbled into a sushi restaurant (sushi colmeia). The owner immediately came over to talk to us and find out where we are from.

That is one thing about the Azores – just about all the tourists are European. There are very few (if any) American tourists. So whenever we went anywhere (and especially when we had our 4 kids in tow) we caught the attention of everyone! I think most thought we were visiting from one of the Scandinavian countries. They would be pretty surprised if we said America and then even more surprised when we said Colorado (“where’s your ocean?”)! Everyone was always nice about it but we definitely brought out the curiosity in most of the locals.

Turns out the owner of the restaurant grew up here and owns a couple restaurants and a small hotel. He built the hotel on the site where he attended school as a kid. And he named his restaurant after the school. He had also recently been to Sao Jorge and shared a bunch of pics on his ipad. I think he said the pics were from Faja do Ouvidor (although not 100% sure of that – it was west of dos Cubres). Anyway… pics were amazing (we need to remember this for next time).

After dinner we walked around the water a bit more. Found a Burger King (yikes!) and made a note to steer clear of that with the kids tomorrow. Then we headed back to the hotel. Stopped at a discotechque to see how late they were open (6am!) and then continued on. We got lost along the way as we attempted to navigate the small cobblestone streets (momentary freak out by me) but eventually found our way back to the kids. Phew!

Friday was our last day in the Azores and we didn’t have to be at the airport until 1pm. So we packed up and headed out with the kids for a little sightseeing in Ponta Delgado.

 

We also hit the big Azorean Souvenir shop. The store was great – with all of our favorite foods, décor and other items to remind us of our amazing vacation. We let all the kids pick one item so here’s what they came home with:

Jim found the canned tuna that he had fallen in love with on the trip – packed on Sao Jorge Island.

I picked up a few things… olive tray (yes Tricia… found one!), piece of basalt jewelry to remind me of all the lava rock and a couple books (because even amazon.com has a limited selection for the Azores).

After that it was a quick run back to the hotel to grab our taxis and head to the airport! We had a LONG day of travel ahead of us.

 

Although no better way to come back to Colorado than with a nice 'small' bottle of airplane wine! I wonder if we were supposed to share?