Parental Leave on São Miguel

After a 3 hour flight from Hamburg, Germany to Lisboa, Portugal, followed by another 2 hour flight, we landed in Ponta Delgada which is the capital of São Miguel, Azores.

Green and beautiful Azores

After checking-in with the authorities to present our negative PCR-Test results and scheduling our 6th and 12th day PCR-Tests, we picked-up our rental car (booked via billiger-mietwagen.de as always), met our AirBnB host for the keys and drove to Furnas.

Furnas is located in the mountains (one of the many calderas) and known for it’s geo-thermal activities. We picked this Airbnb because of the great location in town and the beautiful garden. Furnas was a great base to explore the eastern part of the island with various hikes, beaches and activities.

Green and beautiful Garden in our Azores Airbnb

Experiences we enjoyed the most:

  1. Poça da Dona Beija, a thermal bath with 39’C natural swimming pools. The kids and we loved it.

  2. Hiking around Furnas Lake which is the place where they place their pots underground to cook meals. I tried it the classic Cozido das Furnas. It wasn’t good (basically a mountain of meat and veggies) but it was special.

  3. Fogo Beach in Ribeira Quente and Praia dos Moinhos in Moinhos. Our favourite beaches to play with sand, go with the waves and sun-bath. We had to be mindful of the Portuguese man o’ war which appears during this time of the year though.

  4. Eating fresh fish (Thuna steak 🤤) at Bar Caloura. The view and the food was mind-blowing.

Bar Caloura View

Next blog post: Our week on Pico Island, our favourite.

Nils Neubauer @nilsneubauer