I live in Funchal - Madeira Island. I can advice

[louthebowler]

To save me reading through all the pages of this post..What is the best way to get to the cable car ? We fancy going up in the cable car and coming down in a basket. Can we walk or is it easier to get a taxi from the ship to the place where the cable car starts from. I'd also read that it's easier getting back to the ship by taxi from where the baskets stop. ?

 

its been a few years since we did the cable car and toboggan , if nothing has changed ie ships berth, then we found it a pleasant walk to the cable car and after the toboggan ride we did walk back downhill but it was a fairly steep 45 min walk so maybe taxi might be best depending on your fitness.

maybe google a map of funchal and get your bearings before you leave home. its a shame , but the person who started this thread who lives there ended up having too much agro and stopped posting which was a shame as local knowledge cant be beaten,

enjoy the ride!

Edited October 1, 2015 by louthebowler

[UK Cruiser2]

its been a few years since we did the cable car and toboggan , if nothing has changed ie ships berth, then we found it a pleasant walk to the cable car and after the toboggan ride we did walk back downhill but it was a fairly steep 45 min walk so maybe taxi might be best depending on your fitness.

maybe google a map of funchal and get your bearings before you leave home. its a shame , but the person who started this thread who lives there ended up having too much agro and stopped posting which was a shame as local knowledge cant be beaten,

enjoy the ride!

 

Thank you very much for your help. It is a shame about the person that originally gave all that help and info to so many people

[roothy123]

We were in Funchal a year ago. I ended up walking from the bottom of the cable car to the ship - maybe a 20 minute walk cable car to ship - just turn left as you face water near cable car and walk for a while. The main street there, hugging the water, will even;tually curve around into where the ferries and cruise ships dock. (I there's only one place for that, but not positive.) tomsportguides.com is a good research tool for cruisers. Enjoy Funchal; we certainly did (pictures here: http://www.pbase.com/roothy123)

[aberdare_chick]

Can anyone tell me what the weather will be like here in January? Thanks

[50cruiser]

Hi jc,

 

I think you are refering to the area near the Cathedral, those shops are all closed on Sunday. However, not too far away from the pier, you can visit Marina Shopping, where you can find some good shops, it is open on Sunday, from 10am to 10pm.

 

That's right, you'll have to ride the Toboggan in the morning.

 

We are ariving in april......acording to info there is a flower celabration going on,,,,,,,Could you tell me a little about it.........CARL

[Steamboat Bill]

Biara or---

 

Can you tell me what time Mass is offered on Sunday at the Cathedral and the Jesuit Church? We'll have a port stop on Sunday, April 10, scheduled to arrive at 10:00 and we would like to go to Mass.

 

Bill

[EaglesWing]

We will be in Funchal on All Saints Day, November 1.

 

Is everything (like shops) closed?

[alwayslost]

Wondering if we should do a tour or do in on our own? I am traveling with my husband and my 15-year old son.

 

We will be arriving on a Monday (Jan. 2, 2017) - I know it's a long time away but want to plan while I have time and not too busy :)

 

We were thinking of doing a 5-hour tour. The suggestion was:

 

With 5 hrs I suggest our Highlights Tour that includes:

Monte - Our Lady of Monte Church (Madeira's Patron Saint); gardened areas; optional cable car and typical toboggan ride.

Pico dos Barcelos - the beauty of the entire suburban area of Funchal.

Eira do Serrado - amazing views from the mountain top all the way down to the crater valley (Nun’s Valley); souvenir shop

Camara de Lobos - small quaint fishing town; optional Madeira Wine tasting

Cabo Girao - great sights from this 580m high seacliff with glass bottom Skywalk.

 

Or just do it on your own? Thoughts? We travel a lot and comfortable doing things on our own if public transportation is easy to get. We like nature, a little shopping (my boys indulge me), just seeing different and unique stuff. We are not really wine drinkers. Seeing good views and unique nature would be fun as well. We are moderately active.

 

Any thoughts?

[roothy123]

Wondering if we should do a tour or do in on our own? I am traveling with my husband and my 15-year old son.

 

We will be arriving on a Monday (Jan. 2, 2017) - I know it's a long time away but want to plan while I have time and not too busy :)

 

We were thinking of doing a 5-hour tour. The suggestion was:

 

With 5 hrs I suggest our Highlights Tour that includes:

Monte - Our Lady of Monte Church (Madeira's Patron Saint); gardened areas; optional cable car and typical toboggan ride.

Pico dos Barcelos - the beauty of the entire suburban area of Funchal.

Eira do Serrado - amazing views from the mountain top all the way down to the crater valley (Nun’s Valley); souvenir shop

Camara de Lobos - small quaint fishing town; optional Madeira Wine tasting

Cabo Girao - great sights from this 580m high seacliff with glass bottom Skywalk.

 

Or just do it on your own? Thoughts? We travel a lot and comfortable doing things on our own if public transportation is easy to get. We like nature, a little shopping (my boys indulge me), just seeing different and unique stuff. We are not really wine drinkers. Seeing good views and unique nature would be fun as well. We are moderately active.

 

Any thoughts?

 

I'm just one person (and not Biara), but my two cents worth is this:

 

We had a little less time there (I think, anyway) and did a shorter tour than this 5 hour one, but going the same places, with shortened visits at each place with less time to see everything. That worked for us, as we don't mind doing things quickly, and I had a place in town I wanted to see. However, 5 hours for the above sounds better if you have the time. We enjoyed all of the places you listed. Monte and the view from above is a must see in my mind, although we passed on the toboggan ride. It looked fun but I have read that occasionally there is an accident, and we didn't want to take the chance that our vacation would be ruined by one, even with insurance to hopefully pay for medical costs, but probably not "catch up to the cruise" costs if necessary. The cable car is nice (we did it down from there) but not a huge, huge "must." If you go to Monte, both the cable car and the toboggan go back down, so it's an "either or" choice there - or just driving back down. With any choice, the driver/tour person will meet you at the bottom. Of course, you can do the cable car on your own from the town of Funchal, although it's a little bit of a walk (maybe 20 minutes) from dock to cable car station. If you want to do both on your own, you can take the cable car up, and the toboggan and bus or walk down. The free, printable guide on tomsportguides.com covers this pretty well - and much more.

 

You can do most, or possibly all, of the 5 things you mention by using the Hop On Hop Off bus, assuming it's still running, and is running on the day you're there. Some of these places are spaced pretty far apart for a HOHO bus, so I'm sure the frequency of trips isn't great. Also, we were in Funchal in 2014, so things may have changed. Of course, taking a HOHO will add to the time you need to see everything. A tour operator does things more efficiently, and when we took our tour (with two others from the ship) the price was very reasonable.

 

Pico is a nice overview area with minimal effort to see. Eira do S. takes some climbing up a lot of steps and is not for people who easily get out of breath, but certainly a 15 year old would probably want to do it, and you sound like you and husband are good to go as well. I was in my early sixties at the time and did it, although I WAS huffing and puffing. My husband waited at the bottom.

 

The glass bottom viewing platform at Cabo is a small thing, but it's fun - and the views there are very pretty. Make sure you see the cable car that takes farmers down the cliff. The whole area around there is pretty. Camara is nice, too. We didn't sample the wine, but found the town charming.

 

If you have any time in Funchal itself, you might want to take a little stroll in the old town area to see some of the painted doors. I like artsy stuff like that, so I had to save some time to do that. The town itself has some nice and colorful views, both in town and out to the sea. I know some people shop at the big fish market, but I ran out of time for that - and I'm not a shopper, anyway, when I travel. Our tour guide didn't say an awful lot, which might not work for some people, but I found it OK. He did at least speak enough English to be able to communicate well with us.

 

There are plenty of cabs at the port. If you just want to go to Funchal, or the cable car or something like that, you might want to walk outside the port to find one. At the time I was researching Funchal, there was discussion of that - think they are less expensive once you get out of the port. Of course, you can walk, too, although it took me almost a half hour to walk back to the ship from the old town area, so keep that in mind.

 

My pictures are here (go down towards bottom of page): http://www.pbase.com/roothy123/iberian_sojourn__portugal_spain_gib&page=all

 

I think there may also be another nearby "gallery" for my second string shots from that cruise. There's also small gallery showing some of the doors I mentioned.

 

Enjoy! We loved Funchal.

[sansterre]

We will be in Funchal late November, just one day as we are on a cruise. I fell in love with the island back in 2015 when we toured the island on a perfect weather day (also a one day, cruise port stop). This time we want to repeat the sled ride and possibly take the cable car. I have some limitations when it comes to walking long distances and/or on uneven surfaces and stairs are a bit of a struggle.

Therefore I'm thinking of a combination of HOHO bus, cable car, and sled ride. I am looking for a map of Funchal to see if these three connect. Has anyone done that combination? Thank you, in advance, for any and all suggestions.

[roothy123]

When I can get to the information I kept on Madeira and the other places on our cruise, I'll see if there's a good map in there. I don't think we had a full day there, so our time was somewhat limited. Therefore, we decided to take a taxi tour shared by two other people. I think it was around 4 hours and was reasonably-priced. If you want, I should be able to dig out the info, although it has been maybe 3 or 4 years, so no promises that the person/company still exists.

 

I did look at the HoHo bus but in my case decided it would be better from a time perspective to do a taxi tour to go out to various places on the island. While I think the HoHo might have been useful for getting from the cruise dock to center city Funchal (and out to certain places if you have ample time), I don't remember it really going too many places in Funchal that I wanted to go to, or felt I couldn't walk to - and seemed rather time-consuming.

 

I'm a pretty decent walker, though I AM in my 60s, and I found the walk back from the cable car to the port was a bit long but doable. However, I also went farther east (I think it was) to see the area of restaurants, street art on doors, old yellow fortress, etc. that I wanted to see. All in all, it was quite a bit of a walk. However, there were cabs available at the port and around center city, so that's another option. I'm cheap, though, so I'll walk if I can. We ended up taking the taxi out of the city to briefly see a few places on the island, and ended up back in Funchal/Monte to look at the tobaggan sled ride (passed on it - looked fun, but someone mentioned a very occasional accent occurs, and I couldn't stomach what that might do to my vacation). We then took the cable car down (nice but not totally essential in my opinion) and the taxi driver met us at the bottom and took my husband back to the ship. I stayed to go to the places I mentioned above, and then walked back. I didn't go to the Fish Market or much else around the cable car station, but many people do that while in Funchal.

 

My pictures are here: http://www.pbase.com/roothy123/iberian_sojourn__portugal_spain_gib&page=all Funchal starts on page 12.

 

I'll look for a map later today or tomorrow morning. I really like maps from openstreetmap.org - lots of detail. Also, are you familiar with tomsportguides.com? Tom has a number of great guides geared towards cruisers (free to download or print) and I think he did one on Funchal.

Edited July 9, 2017 by roothy123

[newport dave]

Will be on Funchal next March 18. Are there any taxis at the port which do island tours and approx cost?

 

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[Thejuggler]

Plenty of taxis around the port. €80-100 for a full day out. You can also book before you arrive, all the taxi drivers will do island tours.

[seeriteR]

Will be on Funchal next March 18. Are there any taxis at the port which do island tours and approx cost?

 

Dave,

 

Check out my slide show of our cruise stop in Madeira.

 

Our taxi driver was excellent and gives tours. His website is shown in the video at 1:57. You can email your reservation from the website. We will be there again in December and already have our tour lined up with him.

 

Hope you have a great time,

Jim

[newport dave]

Thanks guys...

 

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