Terceira, The Azores (Day Six): Ponta dos Biscoitos & Alto da Memória
If you missed days four and five of our trip to the Azores, check that post out here.
On our final day in Terceira, we took a roadtrip to the northern part of the island to check out the natural lava rock pools of Biscoitos. This area of the island is famous for its wine, and the drive took us through lush green pastures and vineyards. The lava pools are along the coast and filled by the ocean but protected from the waves. They’ve built platforms where you can sunbathe (or eat yet another grocery store atum sandwich), and some of the pools have concrete steps or ramps built down into them. The shallower pools/the ones further away from the ocean tended to be warmer, and we enjoyed swimming with some interesting looking fish while being sheltered from the waves. I would recommend having some kind of swim shoes (my trusty Chacos did just fine), since lava rock is deceptively sharp.
After a day of swimming, sunbathing, and reading at Ponta dos Biscoitos, we headed back to Angra do Heroísmo for a pre-dinner walk around town. Our main objective was to climb Alto da Memória Hill, atop which sits an obelisk built in 1856 to pay homage to the visit of King D. Pedro IV to the island during the Portuguese Civil War. From the obelisk, you’re greeted with absolutely stunning views of the city and bay, and the walk up is through a lovely garden.
We originally wanted to hang out at the obelisk until sunset, but the weather turned as we arrived at the top of the hill. We ended up having to take shelter under a very serendipitously placed tree and wait out the worst of the rain and didn’t hang around for sunset, since the clouds would have blocked most of the views anyway. Regardless, it was still a great way to take in our last views of the city!
The next morning, we soaked in the last views of the bay from our hotel room’s balcony. Below is the only proof I have that I was reading for my PhD qualifying exam this whole trip (I swear, I really read three books while we were there!). We then headed to the airport to return to São Miguel, where our return flight to the US departed from.
Back in Ponta Delgada, we just walked around the city and perused some of the tourist shops we hadn’t cared to venture into before. We ate lunch at a cafe with outdoor seating by the main square, where we witnessed a woman complain loudly about every aspect of her meal (I think she thought everything with seasoning was spicy). We stayed the night at Casa das Palmeiras Charming House, another B&B that was more centrally located than our last one. It was a cute little spot, and the breakfast there was very fancily laid out in a dining room with tables assigned to your room number.
Earlier in the trip, we’d been burned by walking all over town trying to find a dinner spot, only to be repeatedly turned away, since we didn’t have reservations and they were booked up (I know, poor planning—but I was in the middle of reading 5 books per week for exam prep and Mary was preparing for a cross-country move). We’d had good luck just stopping at one of the restaurants along the alleys near the B&B (that’s how we found O Giro), so we decided to just do that again rather than wasting our time walking an hour around the city and getting hangry. Oh boy, did we regret this choice.
I’ve written down that the restaurant was called something like Restaurante Rodizio Grill - Novilho d’Ouro, but future Google searches yielded no results. The first red flag was that they were out of almost everything on the menu. But that was fine, we just pivoted and ordered some kind of standard white fish. We also ordered bread (and said it in Portuguese as well), but we never received the bread. Instead, when the waiter set our fish down, he exclaimed, “Bread!” I still don’t know what was going on there. But by far the strangest part about this whole experience was the “salad” bar, which you were instructed to access via a back room of the restaurant. There were what looked like church potluck tables filled with plates and slow-cookers of the most eclectic assortment of foods, from coleslaw to black-eyed peas to fried plantains. Every vegetable was soaked in vinegar. The fish was rubbery and overcooked. I will admit that the fried plantains weren’t bad, if you could keep the vinegar from contaminating them.
Suffice it to say, we were in desperate need of gelato to recuperate that dinner and our final evening in the Azores.
Thanks for reading about our travels in the Azores! If you’d like to check out details and itineraries for other trips I’ve taken, click here.