We landed in beautiful Ponta Delgada after a short 2.5 hour flight from Lisbon. We stayed at Azoris Royal Garden just for one night and picked up our rental car after walking around the town center for a few hours. Ponta Delgada is the main city on Sao Miguel Island where we are exploring. It has beautiful churches and cute restaurants, but after a couple days in Lisbon, we were craving something more natural, so we drove to Furnas where we checked into our next hotel, Terra Nostra Garden Hotel.
Ponta Delgada is known for its famous black and white architecture but I found it to be a very colorful city! Definitely seems like two different styles of different time periods occupying the same place. It almost reminded me a little of Havana.
We met the sweetest artist on the street. He was making jewelry and objects entirely out of found materials: spoons, bullets, nails, etc.
Once we got our rental car, we drove east on the island down hydrangea lined highways to the Terra Nostra Garden Hotel, the first hotel in the Azores and the only hotel within the Parque Terra Nostra. It is famous for its healing thermal baths, fed by the volcanic springs. We checked in and took an evening stroll through the garden.
We had a lovely dinner at the hotel and a full day of Furnas the next day.
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