Funchal - Activities, Attractions & Shopping
One of the major activities on Madeira is walking in the mountains, using the paths alongside the many miles of stone water channels (levados). These channels, some dating from Roman times, are used to channel water from the wet mountainous areas, down to the dry, lower slopes on the Island.
A ride down the cobbled streets of Funchal in a sled is also an unmissable experience!
You do have to be a keen gardener to appreciate the flora of this island. Particularly that of the Botanical Gardens, 3 km from Funchal. Open daily from 0900 to 1800. It also has a collection of exotic birds in its parrot park (Loiro Parque). There are several other tropical and sub-tropical gardens open to the public.
And not to be forgotten, are the wine lodges, where the famous Madeira wine can be tasted.
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Related to following destinations: Funchal, Madeira, Madeira Island
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There is now 8 visitor berths available in the new harbour run by Porto Funchal. If you are at Porto Santo, they can assist in booking a berth.
We visited Funchal Marina in March 2016. It was Easter, so no marina staff were at the marina and we had to look for a berth ourselves. We could not find a berth for 15m length. We had just 12kn of wind, but I wouldn’t have liked to try to turn the boat with more wind than that because of lack of space. We asked a boat that had been in the marina a few days if they knew of berths for our size of boat. They didn’t know of berths that size. The reception pontoon looked very bad and short. Even with a 13m boat, I wouldn’t have wanted to go alongside there. The reception pontoon was also very low.
We decided to go to Qunita do Lorde Marina instead. There they had pontoons even for at least 20m boats and no lack of space to turn out boat or lack of berthing space in March.