Praia da Vitoria, Terceira, Azores May 18, 2024
After 7 days at sea, we made our first stop at Praia da Vitoria, Terceiera, Azores. The Azores are an archipelago made up of nine volcanic islands in the North Atlantic Ocean. They are about 2/3 of the way across the Atlantic from the USA. The nine islands are clustered into three groups...Flores and Corvo are westernmost; Graciosa, Terciera, Sao Jorge, Pico and Faial are centrally located; and the Formiga Islets are to the east. An autonomous region of Portugal, the Azores are 870 miles west of Lisbon. Each group of islands is home to one of the branches of government. Ponta Delgado, is home to the executive branch, Angra do Heroismo is home to the judicial and Horta is home to the legislative branch. The population of the Azores is 236,440 and it's main industries are agriculture, dairy farming, livestock, fishing and tourism. We saw evidence of livestock and farming on our shuttle ride into Praia da Vitoria. Almost all the houses had at least one or more cows in their yards, some tied to a stake in the ground. The hillside was a mosaic of fields divided by stone walls and modt houses had a garden. Praia da Vitoria is a cute seaside town with two churches and many shops, several schools, a volunteer fire department and restaurants, including Burger King and KFC!! We spent several hours walking the cobblestone streets, exploring the town. The houses all had a similar look to them, but some were quite colorful. Most all had orange terra cotta roofs. We saw a market that had a vegetable stand and a fishmonger. Everything looked very fresh. The weather was sunny and the temperature was in the high 60s so a very pleasant day. Now we have two more sea days until our next port of Cork, Ireland. I'm adding some photos below but have had an issue with the blog app which doesn't seem to upload photos in their correct orientation. I haven't figured out how to fix this! Sorry if you have to keep flipping the photos.
The view of Terceria as we arrived
Stone walls divide the fields
