The Azores - day one - meh!
It's like Little Portugal with zillions of cows
Greeting Gold and Silver Level Templar Knights! I don’t want to be rude about the Azores because they’re lovely people but…read on
Cruise Ship Odyssey - part three (read parts one and two before this)
OK - I’m being mean - but for a reason. After over three days at sea from Liverpool in England, our cruise ship docked at Praia da Vitoria in the Azores. To be honest, after spending that amount of time chugging through the ocean, I expected a bigger pay off.
Now, I’m half Portuguese and my late mother was from the city of Porto, in the north of Portugal. I’ve never even set foot in the Algarve, let alone journey into the Atlantic to visit the Portuguese dependencies of Madeira and the Azores. On this cruise, I was able to cross those two off my bucket list.
What immediately struck me as I made my way from the ship to the centre of Praia da Vitoria was the number of cows. Apparently, the Azores is basically a huge dairy farm for the mainland Portuguese market and elsewhere. There are a crazy number of bovines on the multiple islands.
Welcome to Smallsville
So our first port of call on the Azores was Praia da Vitoria. It’s one of those quaint towns that you will literally know in a one hour vigorous walk. I couldn’t help thinking that Saint Helena - another island in the Atlantic where Napoleon was exiled for a second time - must have been as small as this. The former French emperor would have paced around it once and known everything. Then gone mad for the next few years until he died.
There is a main street that could easily be in any Portuguese town and two large churches. What is unique on the Azores is the very garish painting used on churches and monuments. The sort of bright colours you would associate with India. Maybe that was an influence given the Portuguese voyages and colonisation of Goa and Bombay. Here I am outside a church…where my shirt matched the external decor (accidentally).
Check out this monument in the nearby town of Angra do Heroismo.
The most unusual thing on the Azores is these small temples called ‘imperios’ that are colourfully decorated houses dedicated to the Holy Spirit. They are not built by the church - but the local people. And every year, an emperor is crowned within. Now I don’t know about you - but I can’t help feeling there’s something a bit pagan influenced about this. Although, according to official records, there were no indigenous people on the Azores when the Portuguese first arrived - so no blending of cultures. Take a look - it’s very odd…
Join me for another instalment from My Cruise Odyssey 2024 tomorrow!