Our View For The Next Six Days

Unsurprisingly we slept like logs last night. It was the owners welcome meeting this morning, which involves coffee, cake and a welcome speech.

My parents upgrading the apartment this year, so we are staying in a room as big as our house!

We had to pop out for supplies this morning, as we forgot to pack our travel plug, and found an Aladdin's Cave of a shop which sold everything from chisels and hammers, to light bulbs and ironing boards. It also, thankfully, sold travel plugs. If it hadn't, bringing the laptop and camera would have been a waste of time!

We finally made it to the pool by mid-afternoon, and being British, the fact it was howling a force ten gale, but the sun was out meant we sat there on our sun beds no matter what! It wasn't cold by any means. One quick dip in the pool, and we were finally in full holiday spirit!

It is the first time I have visited the island as a bird watcher, so I am keeping a list. Without leaving the confines of the hotel really it is already in double figures. There are Grey Wagtails on the lawn of the hotel, and you can almost hand feed them like Robins back home. There are a lot of seabirds about, and we have caught up with Swallows and Swifts on their African Migration (Madeira is much closer to Morocco than it is to Portugal geographically).

We ate in the Real Canoa, which is another excellent restaurant just outside the hotel, and have booked a table for Friday so we can sit outside and have Steak On A Stone, which a local speciality, as well as the meat skewers.

Booked two trips today, tomorrow night we are out at the Casino. Saturday we are doing a nature safari in a jeep. I will hopefully put the pop bottle to good use!