Day 2, Furnas & the Eastern Coast

Day 2 began with PJ waking up way too early but ready to go, so we went to breakfast in the hotel and then off to explore! Our first stop was the pineapple plantation where we got to see how pineapples are grown in greenhouses and how cute and squatty their particular pineapples are. We tasted some of their famous pineapple liquor and learned that pineapple hot sauce exists! It was rainy today so it was a good day to go to Furnas to explore and relax in the natural hot springs there. I have done my research so we did not go to the popular ones and instead went to a place that had 5 different springs off the beaten path. The man who greeted us even asked us how we had found them! Love those places. After relaxing in each of the springs (each one was a slightly different temperature and depth), we decided to go to the popular tourist spot to have lunch. All of the guide books and my research online said we had to try this particular place and stew. The stew is famous and neat because it is cooked in the ground for 5 hours and then served for lunch. The area is so volcanically active that it heats the food! It's actually pretty neat. And well, how it tasted... let's just say, we asked for mustard and hot sauce and ate about a third of the stew plate! The beer was good ;p

After lunch, we were pretty exhausted, but we knew that we had limited time on the island and so instead of heading back to the east coast the next day, we would try to cover a lot of ground and drive the entirety of the eastern coast and stop on the northern coast on the way home at the only tea plantation in Europe!  The views were stunning from the coast and the windy road was nauseating but felt as if we were driving through a rain forest. It was really cool.

The tea plantation, Cha Gorreana, was neat to walk through and see how they process everything. They have a tasting at the end and we tried their broken leaf and green teas. They were either both really tasty or we were really thirsty! We bought a few bags to take home and back to the hotel we went.

We were tired after a long day in the car but knew we wanted to go somewhere nice for dinner as it was Saturday night and we both knew that Sunday night would be hard to find a place to eat. We tried to have the hotel make a reservation for us at a steak place that PJ heard was very good but they were all booked up. In our limited Portuguese we didn't quite know what to do, so in smart fashion, we called Amex, had them recommend a few places and they made a reservation for us at a restaurant closeby that we could walk to! Dinner was at 9pm. It was very good and there went another 18-19 hour day!

Azores

The surprise trip to Europe is in fact a group of 9 islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean called the Azores, which are part of Portugal. They had always been on my bucket list of places that I wanted to explore, but I didn't think that they would be up next!

On the way to the airport for a sad and meaningful pilgrimage that my boyfriend was about to embark on with one of his brothers, driving his grandmother’s ashes to their final resting place next to her husband, he called me and explained the following, I am paraphrasing: I wanted this to be a complete surprise, but I need your help and ideas. I want to go on a weekend trip in the next few weeks, but there are some guidelines we have to follow. 1, it has to be out of the country. 2, has to be a direct flight, less than 8 hours. 3, it has to be to a place that neither of us have ever been to before. 4, affordable and where we could possibly use amex miles. Well this seemed to be a tall order as between both of us, we have been to many places around the world. His initial thoughts were for us to go to Brussels as neither of us had been there and we both like beer and chocolate. While he flew to the west coast, I got to work and opened up google maps. The possibilities were endless, yet most of the places that neither of us had traveled to were just a bit too far. While we were on the initial phone call, I mentioned some islands that I couldn’t remember the name of but ones that I had always wanted to go to, so I looked them up and low and behold, they are the Azores and they are a part of Portugal. In the past, the islands were a challenge to get to, only accessible from Portugal and had many layovers. Recently, Azores Airlines has emerged from SATA and now flies direct from three places in North America… Boston, Toronto and Oakland. (random enough?!). I began to get excited, but he was still flying so I couldn’t run the idea by him! I composed a detailed e-mail laying out different options of flights to Brussels, Paris (because, well its Paris, even though both of us have been there), Azores, Casablanca Morocco, and even a couple of places in the US, just in case. Now it was the waiting game until he landed and could read my e-mail.  He said that he had looked at places in the Caribbean too, but they were all quite expensive this time of year.  Was I nuts for suggesting we fly to these Portuguese islands for a weekend and go hiking around volcanos, relax in hot springs, explore tea plantations and eat yummy Portuguese food? Maybe. Maybe I should have just found a city in Europe that we could have explored and not an island?! Maybe we could just go to a beach and relax for two days. What fun would that be?! I may have been second guessing all of my options as this weekend getaway seemed to mean more than just a getaway and I wanted it to be special and a place that if we ever wanted to go back to, we could. Even though he didn’t give anything away and kept a surprise, sometimes you just know!

He safely landed on the opposite coast and was off and driving with his brother. A little while later, an e-mail came in that said the Azores sounds like it’s the winner! Yay! He loved the idea. And off we went planning a weekend trip to the Azores for the following weekend. We also began a crash course in Portuguese so that we could try to understand and say a little bit of something. Between him speaking Italian and me, French, we were hoping we would be able to get by. As soon as he returned from his pilgrimage, we bought our tickets, arranged a hotel, booked a rental car… all booked after quick extensive research, and to Portugal we go!

Last minute trip to Europe!

Planning a last minute weekend trip to Europe for next weekend! Stay tuned for photos, details, advice, and a packing list!