We are sailing through the day to arrive at Funchal, Madeira. The scheduled arrival time is 8pm which will leave us a couple of hours after dinner to get the party into full swing in the run up to the bells at midnight.It was quite a rough sea all the way from Tenerife. No luck again in the carpet bowls or for that matter in the quiz/ brain teaser/ scattegories games.

Planned the rest of the holiday and booked a trip to the Sunday morning farmers market and the whole day East Coast tour for Monday. Iwona also booked a Saturday morning Levada walk.

Decided as we hadn't seen a lot of the island yet we would do the half day tour to Nun's valley. This was the valley where the nuns went to hide from pirates. The drive up was spectacular and a bit scary in places. High into the mountains where we could get a view of of the village in the valley. On the way up we saw an area where there were nearly 30 post boxes and a communal car park. There are no roads to the houses and the residents need to walk ...

Took the cable car up and spent the entire morning in the tropical gardens. Then went to a cafe for coffee and cakes. After that managed to persuade George to go with us on the toboggan run. They have tarred a lot of the route over so it is not teeth chattering any more but was still a lot of fun. Had another coffee. Took a taxi back down to Funchal. Then had a late light lunch. In the rest of the afternoon yet another cafe a walk about and then back to the...

As we had booked dinner and dance at Reids palace before we got here we didn't want to do anything too energetic in the morning. Thought we would get the bus along to Lido. Had brunch in the sun in a nice restaurant with a view of the sea but decided we didn't want to go swimming when we were going to Reid's that evening so I had a seat in the sun to rest my foot which has been really painful and George and Iwona had a walk along the promenade. Cam...