Madeira News Blog

TODAY’S PHOTO : Thanks to Vic … the crowds gathered in Funchal (Friday) to see the naval presence to mark Funchal 500. And there’s that submarine ‘Barracuda’ we saw sneaking around the coast last week (the display finished yesterday with a ceremony presided over by the Minister of Defence for Portugal).

Vânia Fernandes achieved a respectable 13th place in last nights Eurovision Song Contest Finals. My guess for a top 10 place was a little over ambitious perhaps, but she did achieve 2nd place in the semi-final on Thursday which was highly commendable. Well done to those blog readers who correctly guessed who would finish last (again!). The whole contest stinks anyway if you ask me, aside from the fact of the countries (like the UK) who don’t need to go through the semi-final stage, it is just not about the music. The winning Russian entry defies exact description, but it lies somewhere between ‘visually imaginative’ and ‘pants’.

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I think the record price I have ever been charged for a small beer on Madeira (Balão / ballon 30cl glass) was €1.70, and that was in a tourist rip-off joint. Where I live that same beer costs between €0.70 and €1 tops. Yet yesterday I went to an Irish Pub near the Savoy Hotel, in one of my rare visits to Funchal, to watch a football match on Sky TV (which annoyingly went off for 30 minutes of the game ‘cos the Sky card was put in the wrong slot). The pub is very nice, but has nothing Irish about it whatsoever, except Guiness, and the prices. A whopping €2 for that little glass of beer, and that  was not a tourist rip-off, that was the normal price. Bejeebers! Perhaps we will get loaded with snacks I thought, and that will make up for it … but did the steak niblets arrive, did they hell … we got one lousy little ashtray full of manky nuts in the space of over 3 hours, and that was to share between four people. Despite my hunger, I resisted the temptation of what looked like a vomit filled jacket potato … FROM €3.95! However it wasn’t an expensive afternoon, ‘cos the service was so poor it was a 10-15 minute wait to get a drink served outside. How can a business charge so much and not have a consience about paying Madeiran bar staff a lousy €2 per hour? Nice class of customer though! Don’t bother barring me for my observations Moynahan’s, I have already imposed a life time ban on myself from entering your premises again.

However I do apologise for my unacceptable and untrue embellishments  about the quality of your peanuts and flavour of  jacket potato filling.  

Sorry that that winge has left no time or space for real news, but I will catch up tomorrow … promise!

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Just to complete my journey report coming back to Madeira on Wednesday by Easyjet (from the UK). Excellent! I reckon 30+ people boarded before me, but I still managed to get a front row seat with more legroom than I could use. I managed to check-in online, but you can only do this at the UK end, and if you have no hold luggage … that gets you into boarding group A. And thanks to lifts at both end of the journey, probably the smoothest journey I have ever made. PS … Easyjet are doing a flight sale that lasts until next Tuesday … you can pick up flights between Madeira and the UK for under €30 each way, but there are very few dates at or close to this price.

I came back to find several colonies of ants under flowerpots on my patio … are they getting that lazy that they can’t be bothered to build their own nests anymore?

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