Madeira was pretty cool. The six of us went on a mini-bus tour of the island up the crazy steep drop off, low railed narrow winding roads that see, to be very common among mountainous islands. We went to the market in town that's 2 stories high and so super awesome! Fresh fruit, meat, fish and flowers, you can buy bulbs for every type of tropical or exotic flower there is. We got a ton of fruit for the ship. Then, we went up to a wicker factory where they make everything from crazy detailed animals to baskets by hand. There were four people in the basement sitting around and creating amazing things! I got a basket! I'm so pleased, the first new thing for our new house. Anyway, from there we went to the world's 2^nd tallest sea cliff which sort of creeped me out to stand so close to the edge but it was an amazing view. We saw a ton of tin lizards up there. We followed the roads around to a fishing village that was sort of weird. 1^st let me say it's where Churchill did some of his paintings, just so Dad knows I learned something today. But, it was weird cause there were NO women down by the water and all these weird guys were just hanging out and staring at us as we walked around... sort of a strange place but nice enough. After than we headed back to the boat. It was a good day out.

Here is what I have found in preparation for my trip to Madeira. There are no other tips online so I feel it can do little harm. 1) No ferries from mainland Portugal! It is possible to hitch a lift, but no comments on this 2) Hi5 is the popular networking site, not Facebook; Portuguese language 3) You can use Babelfish for translating Portuguese 4) Water temp is coldest in March at ~16 degrees 5) Plenty of flights from non London UK airports (domestic); handy 6) Internet is very patchy. Expensive internet cafes is all I know of so far. Time to investigate mobile phone internet. 7) There isn't a EBay Portugal. Need to find an alternative. Hope this helps - Andy