It happened immediately after boarding and it lasted for the full hour and a half ferry ride. But I digress.
To start us off on Faial let me remind folks that the Azores is a small Portuguese archipelago located in the Atlantic ocean off the coast of mainland Portugal and Morocco. The next few photos give you an idea of where its located and what parts that we traveled to during our vacation.
For our trip we visited three of the nine islands, including Sao Miguel, Sao Jorge, and lastly Faial.
We arrived on Faial Island at the port city of Horta. We disembarked from the ferry late in the afternoon on day one and spent a total of two nights and three days on the island touring the various sites.
The island is quite small so two days was a decent amount of time to spend there. I felt like we saw most of what it had to offer without our time being rushed. If we had another day I'm sure I could have found more to do, maybe another hike, but for the most part two full days was plenty for us.
Firstly, you can visit Horta. It's the largest city on the island and likely the city you would stay in. It hosts a whopping 7000 people! Its got the population of a small town but it actually does have the feel of a city somehow.
It really felt larger than what you would expect from such a small population. I'm sure the capacity is much larger if you include all of the visiting tourists so I'm guessing that that has something to do with it.
In Horta a must do activity is to tour the harbour. Its famous for is colorful paintings. The cement barrier walls of the marina are covered with hundreds, probably more like thousands, of unique paintings.
This was a neat free activity to do and made for an enjoyable casual walk during the day and then again in evening for us. You can view the art pieces and also the sail boats and yachts!
Every island that we visited in the Azores had a different vibe about it, what I felt was a different set of themes. To me Horta had a fisherman / sailor vibe about it. I could imagine a time when old white haired sailors sat in the pub drinking dark ale and smoking wooden pipes. It has that feel to it for sure. Overall, the themes of Faial to me were sailors and volcanoes. I'll get into the volcano part shortly.
Another thing to do in Horta is visit its famous pub, a landmark bar and restaurants called "Cafe Sport."
It had a similar vibe inside as the marine did outside.
The walls and ceiling were covered in different flags and posters which gave it its own unique character and created a fun sort of atmosphere.
Overall I really enjoyed Horta. It was a fun and colorful city with a lot of unique character and personality.
Velas on Sao Jorge was meh to me, but Horta was actually worth checking out.
After dinner each night we also walked around the old town. I liked the cobblestone streets and the colorful buildings.
Faial island is an active volcano and its actually the most active of the islands within the Azores archipelago.
At the western most tip is the Capelinhos volcano which last erupted back in 1957, an event that lasted a full 13 months and caused the evacuation of approximately 2000 people who emmigrated mostly to Canada and the US.
The site is marked by the original lighthouse that has been turned into a museum dedicated to the volcanos of the Azores. The museum is actually underground so as not to marr the unique landscape of the area.
The surrounding landscape was created by the eruption back in 1957 and it looks barren and other worldly still to this day. This is a must see site on the island in my opinion.
Another neat outdoorsy activity to do on the island is to hike the rim of the Caldeira Volcano. Is located in the center of the island at an elevation of a little over 1000 meters.
You can drive to the top of the site and park your vehicle and then hike the outer rim of the large crater. It was a pretty easy 2000 meter hike without much elevation change and it only took us approximately 2 - 2.5 hours. We went early in the morning, maybe around 9am and were finished before noon. Then we were on our way to our next activity.
Like the other islands in the Azores there were many scenic viewpoints called miradouros, that were found along the roads and highways. They were marked with signs and there was always parking so they were always worth pulling over to see.
The best one was called Miradouro da Ribeira das Cabras (above).
So those were the main activities that we did on the island during our stay but there were also ocean swimming pools scattered around like what we saw on the other islands.
We didn't go swimming in Faial but did walk around and view the landscape of the area. Like Sao Jorge, the rocks along the coast were coal black, another reminder that you're standing on a volcanic landscape.
Overall I'd say that Faial was my second favorite of the islands that we visited. Sao Miguel was the best because of its size and what it all had to offer. Faial was a close second because it was a bit more lively than Sao Jorge and it felt like there was more to see and do. That could have been based on the weather though also. It had rained two days when we were on Sao Jorge so we canceled one of our hikes and struggled to find other activities to occupy our time.
Regardless, I really enjoyed Faial and would recommend it as an island to visit for a day or two if you're traveling to the Azores and plan to do some island hopping.
