The first coffee that we had when we arrived on the Island was in the town of Furnas. We popped into a small cafe while we waited for the thermal baths to open that day.
You never really know what you're getting into when you go to a Cafe for the first time in another country. For me there is always a lot of anxiety leading up to it. Will they speak English? Will I understand the menu? Do I pay before I order or after? Will I screw this up? Will I make a fool of myself? These are just some of the thoughts that go through my mind before walking through the door.
I got an Americano that day and she got a coffee with milk. The anxiety usually isn't warranted. Things always work out in the end.
Breakfast at the hotel each morning was buffet style with a really decent spread. Breakfasts are typically the same in most places that we've been to but its always neat how each country has their own sort of unique offerings. In this case the tiny spicey sausages were something different than other countries that we've travelled to and seemed to be a staple of the islands.
The coffee was pod style at the hotel and I screwed up my first cup on day one before figuring out the machine. In my first attempt I somehow got all milk and no coffee. I didn't realize that it required pods despite the stack of them right next to the machine. I got the hang of it once I realized the issue.
After three days of being in the Azores and traveling to a different island - Sao Jorge, my wife discovered a Cafe Galão. It was essentially a latte or something very similar. From then on that was all that she ordered anywhere we went.
On the island of Sao Jorge we went to Cafe Nunes, a small coffee shop located on Faja dos Vimes. Its run by a man (Mr. Nunes himself) who cultivates coffee beans on a small plantation on the property. Supposedly, its the only coffee plantation in all of Europe! Mr. Nunes is a friendly man who doesn't speak any English. It was pouring rain outside that day and he greeted us at the entrance when we walked up from the small parking lot down the main driveway. He kept saying something in Portuguese while pointing to the two parking spaces directly outside the door. I had no idea what he was saying at first but eventually pieced it together. "You should have parked here instead of getting soaking wet!" I just smiled and nodded my head, "yes yes, don't mind us, we are just idiot tourists making it up as we go."
I should have taken a photo inside the cafe. It was very minimal in there but it had an interesting wall decor. The walls were covered (about 1/3 all around) with American dollar bills and other currencies. I noticed some Canadian 5 dollar bills and a few pesos and Euros...etc. I couldn't count them all but I estimated that there had to be about $5000 on the wall total. Its an interesting way to save one's retirement fund I think.
Here we tried a traditional cookie of the Azores called Espécies. Its a spiced cookie made with fennel, cinnamon and pepper. It was quite good!
Around this location I noticed that they had a really unique way of grooming the trees of the town. They would graft the branches together and create a sort of halo at the crown (or canopy). I would have liked to have seen these trees in the late spring when all of the leaves were filled in. We actually saw some larger more mature trees in a different location that were grafted together in a different way - two separate trees that grew together as one. The branches were as thick as a human thigh so those ones were obviously many years old.
The day that we did the volcano museum on the island of Faial we had lunch at the museum canteen. It was surprisingly good food for not being a proper restaurant.
Our last coffee of the trip was at a cafe in Ponta Delgada.
You can't not go to Portugal, or its islands, without having pastel de natas.
