March 24, 2010. One year later.

Funchal is the capital city of Madeira, which belongs to Portugal.

What is interesting about Funchal is that it is located within an amphitheatre-shaped bowl.  In February of 2010, only about a month before we arrived in Funchal, there was a terrible flood which caused awful mudslides and claimed almost 100 lives.  Here are some pictures from the damage in Funchal.

Luckily for us, they immediately began the clean-up effort and other than a few muddy hills, you never would have known they had such an event only weeks before.

The touristy thing to do in Funchal is to take a cable car up to the Village of Monte and take a toboggan ride back to the bottom.  The view while in the cable car was amazing.

I had no idea what a toboggan was before arriving in Portugal (other than the thing you wear on your head when it’s cold outside).  These toboggans are basically wicker baskets that you sit in and these men push you all the way down the hill (occasionally they’ll pick up some speed and they can ride on the back).  This was a ton of fun!

After the toboggan ride, we hopped on a bus that took us up to Pico do Serrado, which as you can see, had amazing views.  In the valley is what they call Nuns Valley because back in the 1500s, this is where Nuns retreated to hide from pirates.

Funchal is known for its famous wine lodges so our last stop was to one of these shops for a sample.  (We were not huge fans of the wine by the way.)

We headed back to our ship, claimed our table on the back deck, drank our mimosas and waved goodbye to Funchal.  What I love about cruises is that you always seem to pull out of the port when the sun is setting.  Because of this, you have plenty of great opportunities to see some beautiful scenery.

Thank goodness the following day was a day at sea.  We sure needed the break after four straight days of sightseeing.