Made it to Madeira!

The day began at 3 50 am. Our flight took off from Birmingham at 8.30 am. In between times we'd had the passenger assistance experience, which was ...interesting. I'd booked a wheelchair for GG because of her hip replacement and broken wrist, and because I knew that I wouldn't be able to carry all her luggage as well as mine. At one point we were taken, wheelchair and all, to the tailgate of a large lorry. I became apprehensive that it would be refrigerated, but when the door was opened, it turned out to be carpeted, with seats for passengers and a clamp for the wheelchair! This was as surprising as finding a TARDIS inside a public toilet! From there we were eventually loaded onto the plane via an emergency exit, and seated.

The flight went fine, until we approached Funchal, Madeira, then we were told by the pilot that the wind speed was currently to high to permit landing on the airport on the hillside, so we'd have to hold. The holding pattern continued for about an hour, all told. We kept seeing the same duvet-like clouds with mountain tops jagging out; the same uninhabited islands, the same banking of the plane, until finally we were granted permission to leave.

A minibus took us to the hotel. We were by now feeling jaded, and had had rain thrown at us as we left the airport, and a distinct feeling of having gone through a time portal backwards, and ended up in Torquay on a wet bank holiday Monday.

Imagine our surprise, then, to be greeted by the garden above! We were given a quick tour of the facilities, then seated poolside with a complimentary drink. GG and I eventually staggered up to our room, with its balcony overlooking the sea/town/pool/cable cars, and stayed there for a few hours, before venturing down to the pool. I did a few lengths. We made friends with some Dutch people,and they suggested a place to eat in the old town, near our hotel.

On Santa Maria street, we found the restaurant and had my favourite Portuguese food: fresh soup, and grilled sardines. It's twenty-three years since I last ate those, and they tasted twice as good as I remembered.

In the words of the late Meatloaf, Heaven can Wait. We have had a little taste of paradise, complete with ships' foghorns at bedtime.