Hotels, too, run another gamut, from the simple, covers all your bases, penny price-wise like Pestana Quinta do Arco, to the ones that make their own wine. Guess which one I’m going to harp on about? Quinta das Vinhas is right there, on a slope in the balmy south-west, gazing down at the ocean, defying gravity, its inclines covered in OCD-pleasing vines, churning out the good stuff. And you get to try the very good stuff of their labour, in a flight (it’s a wine-y term!) going from the just-squished (there is also a word for this but I was already several sheets to the Atlantic wind) to the refined, even better stuff, which is fortified for your pleasure. It’s this oomph that gives Madeira wine its USP, and who are we to argue. Shakespeare was fond of it, apparently, and he wasn’t exactly an under-achiever.
And we barely got to Funchal, the capital of our fabled isle, did we? And Funchal Old Town really is a funky ol’ town, worthy of a long weekend – or a shorter one, what with the door-to-door stats being one of the myriad attractions of this island – with its overflowing markets, cobbled streets paved with cafes and cute boutiques, restaurants that range from local and dinky to international and hip, and a cluster of very cool indeed hotels; the just-opened Savoy Palace is your go-to for mega-glam, Reid’s Palace for old-school ritz, while Quinta da Casa Branca, Castanheiro and The Vine are more boutique, more intimate, perhaps more you. But we’ll leave that for another time. Christmas, maybe, when all the pretty lights make the old place pop. And the temperature hovers around 20 Celsius, so you can get those lovely Lindas out and everything, no matter what Santa says.
Because that’s Madeira. Some people go to do glorious nothing, some people to do it all. From Mary and David to the bright young things, from mindfulness in the clouds to bouncing up and down mountains in a four-wheel drive, to lunches with views to rocking the Old Town in all the right sunglasses and-who-gives-a-damn… what was once the reserve of sun-seeking snow birds in Lorraine Kelly’s autumn/winter collection spending the supper of their lives watching Highway to Heaven marathons is now vibrant terrain for anyone/everyone/even us. Madeira is a revelation. Tell all your friends.
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