A short post to complete our first visit to the autonomous Portuguese island of Madeira.
While we’d had excursion plans ahead of the very first time we were supposed to visit Madeira, for this occasion we’d decided we’d just walk around Funchal and take the cable car to the hills around it. Rain had affected but not completely thwarted that plan but the weather improved over the rest of the day and we’d enjoyed the artwork on the doors of Rua de Santa Maria as well as visiting the cathedral and having some drinks along the waterfront. At the time of writing this we do have further plans to return to Madeira where a broadly similar day is planned as we’ll be travelling with my in-laws who really want to ride the cable car and hunt down a specific brand of Madeiran wine they like.
We returned to Caribbean Princess and with this being a Princess Cruises ship and us having a balcony we made use of our Ocean Medallions and ordered a snack and drinks to the room so we could sit out, enjoy the last of the sun before sailaway, then enjoy the views of the sailaway itself. We do like that you can order a limited range of food and drink items to your room – even if the range appears to be shrinking year-by-year – but ordering hot food is generally ill-advised as by the time it’s been plated up, sat on some side waiting for a member of staff to be summoned for it, then delivered to your room via all the back entrances and stairwells connecting the ship, lukewarm is about the best you can hope for. You can have convenience or you can have excellence, but you can’t have both.
We’d noticed what appeared to be a school sailing lesson taking place with lots of small yachts just outside the harbour entrance and it was interesting to then see motorised dinghies shepherding them all further out to sea just as Caribbean Princess was untied from the dock and given the okay to sail away from Funchal.
In addition to some adults in high visibility vests who may have been port officials or teachers wanting to see us off and waving happily (everyone waves to and from ships; that’s just the way it is), we also spotted what were clearly immigration officers walking along the breakwater and keeping an eye on the cruise ship and the water around, presumably just to make sure nobody decided they couldn’t bear to leave the hilly, rainy island behind.
So that was our day in Madeira done. As I’ve mentioned, all things being well we should be back in late 2026, this time aboard P&O Ventura.
The evening meal was apparently the “Chef’s Dinner” on board Caribbean Princess. We both opted for the same starter and I’ll leave you to work out what else we chose using your amazing deductive powers and the following pieces of photographic evidence.
We’ve got just one more port of call to make ahead of the Atlantic crossing part of this transatlantic cruise and in the next post in this series we’ll arrive at Santa Cruz de Tenerife and go for a walk to the Auditorio de Tenerife and Castle of St John the Baptist.