Grand Adventure: One year ago we went to the Azores!

Exactly one year ago (Feb 12 -20, 2019), we were on vacation in the Portuguese Azores. It was a last hurrah of my maternity leave with Dd and a choice informed by the surprising fact that traveling with a 5 month old is easier than with a toddler. It's interesting to write this after so many months have passed. I realize that many of the details I'm sharing are a little negative however the trip really was fun and we are glad we did it when we did. The stressful moments are seared into my mind, while the good, but less emotional moments are not quite so vivid. Such is life. It's a good thing we have photos.

Firstly, we decided to take a trip in February, during D's preschool break and the end of my leave. Next, we decided on the Azores based on the intersection of travel time and comfort level (by which I mean getting around and not experiencing culture shock). Many people would have opted for a sunny destination, but to us bringing a not-yet-swimming kid and a baby to the land of sunscreen, sand and bug spray just didn't sound that fun. We first heard about the Azores as a great destination when we lived in Boston, from where it is a very easy 4-5 hour flight.

This was only our second international trip with kids. When D was five months old we went to Montreal and it was a great, easy trip (to a city where I lived for several years) that inspired the idea of traveling when Dd was also five months old. Both of our kids have been miserable car passengers as infants, perhaps picking up on Jack and my preference for other modes of transportation. However, our research correctly informed us that the Azores would have been really tricky without a car, so we did rent one. Almost all of the drives we took involved continuous hair-raising crying by Dd, interspersed with occasional naps, where we became militant about D being perfectly silent, which is contrary to his nature. I'm sure Dd cried a little bit on one of the four flights but I don't remember it and it was nothing compared to the car rides.

We took a red eye flight from Boston and stayed the first three nights on the west side of the island, in Sete Cidades and then spent four nights in Nordeste. AirBnB is the only way to go, with washing machines, kitchens and borrowed cribs.

We like walking trips and indeed the hikes and scenery were fantastic and D (at age 4.75) did an amazing job hiking two to four miles on very steep terrain. We saw so many new types of landscapes. I'm quite happy that Jack blogged our hikes with picture from his phone during the the trip since this post has taken me so long to publish. The hikes were well marked and we were able to research some of them in advance.

hike 1 Serra Devassa, windswept, scrubby hills with amazing views
hike 2 Atalho dos Vermelhos, cliffs above the ocean
hike 3 Cha Gorreana, the only tea plantation in Europe
hike 4 Lagoa Furnas, Pico do Ferro, high walk above lake with a jungle vibe, abandoned manor
hike 5 Lomba da Fazenda, down and up a canyon to the ocean
hike 6 Lomba D'El Rei, another canyon

Sete Cidades, where we stayed and canoed

hike 1

these carved out, green channels were neat

hike 2

hike 3

hike 4

We hiked up from the lake, and back down again.

hike 5 This is a slightly protected swimming area that the waves wash in and out of.

wow

hike 6

D taking a break

There was light hail on our first hike, and other rainy and windy days but it wasn't too cold and I don't remember being too concerned about the weather during our walks. On multiple nights the wind howled like nothing I have ever heard, reminding me that we were on small islands in the middle of the vast Atlantic Ocean. It cut the internet connection at our second AirBnB for the whole stay. We saw many rainbows. There were wonderfully fragrant white flowering trees that we encountered often and hydrangeas growing, apparently wild, along the side of the roads.

surprise!

the tail end of the hydrangeas

our tiny car

The hardest part of the trip was the jet lag. D had the worst of it. The two night stopover in Boston at the beginning of the trip probably was a good thing, but the one night stop over on the way home was not at all helpful. I thought it would ease the jet lag with a more gradual transition but it just extended the misery of sleep deprivation. We would have been better off powering through to get home, though that would have been hard because of the risk of booking separate tickets without enough of a time buffer for delays. In fact our flight from Ponta Delgada to Boston was delayed by something like 5 or 6 hours and we arrived at our hotel in Boston at about 10 pm, spent the night all together in one luxurious room crying and screaming and then finally made it home late the next night.

At the beginning of the trip we were going to bed at about 1 or 2 am and slowly working it earlier each night. There was one magical night in the second AirBnB where Dd slept 10 hours straight in the same bedroom as D. Then the was the less-than-magical moment on the red line train and at the Davis Square stop (our old home station) where both kids were crying and screaming so badly that people were checking that they were not being abused. Just kidding, it was much longer than a moment.

This was also inexpensive for a short European trip. We visited friends in Boston on the way there and actually bought completely separate round trip tickets for SEA to BOS and BOS to PDL (Ponta Delgada). The major expenses were:

$1,515 for the Azores Airlines flights
$769 for the Jetblue flights
$768 for 7 nights total at two different AirBnBs in the Azores
$227 for a downtown Boston hotel (a mistake, it turned out)
$285 for a rental car on São Miguel Island

Total $3564 or $445 per day for 8 days

One surprising thing was just how limited the grocery options and hours were outside of the primary city. After we arrived at our second AirBnB (with no internet) Jack drove out to get groceries at 6 pm and the only thing he could find was ham and cheese sandwiches from a closing down cafe. Ham and cheese appear to be a staple and it was a reminder to not take our access to wonderful produce at home for granted. The one interesting meal we had was cooked slowly in these thermal pools near Furnas.

These stairs were really cool. The houses were stone or cement with thick walls and no built in heat or AC. We did appreciate the space heaters but most of the year I think it's quite comfortable.

our bedroom in the first AirBnB in Sete Cidades

second AirBnB in Nordeste

We did not go in the thermal pools or on a horseback ride and we didn't visit museums or do tours. I think we ate two dinners in restaurants and the rest of the time cooked in our AirBnBs and picnicked for lunch. We did check out a light house, a garden and some thermal vents you can walk around. Our first AirBnB was in Sete Cidades and we had a great time paddling a canoe around for an hour or two. Dd fell asleep easily in my lap.

D was really impressed by the old buildings (a few hundred years) we saw in both Boston and Nordeste. He also enjoyed visiting the USS Constitution in Boston. It was fun to see, over the course of just a few days, the difference in snow plowing between Seattle's snowmaggedon (which we escaped the second half of by going on this trip) and a regular small Boston snowstorm. Our friends' house was on a small side street in Brookline and *three* plows came down the street in formation.