St. Johns to Santa Maria, Azores
Saturday Oct 27, 2018
After a nine hour flight, we arrived at Santa Maria Island in the Azores (Portugal) around midnight. We checked into the Hotel Colombo, which was very nice. We were able to find a restaurant called the Central Pub, owned by an American. Fortunately, it closes at 2 AM as we got there about 12:30AM and stayed till closing. We enjoyed a pizza and some Heinekens. We were very surprised that they were quite crowded at 12:30 AM. After dinner, we were happy to get back to the hotel and collapse.
We did enjoy a great breakfast buffet. I walked down to town for lunch, about a 30 min walk. The hotel suggested a pretty good Portuguese restaurant called Travessa, had an interesting Portuguese buffet.
In the afternoon Marty and I went down to the airport and refueled, we carried about 270 gallons on our trip to Mallorca. We only need about 130 gallons but wanted to see how my plane would perform with so much added weight. We filed our flight plan, checked weather, emailed one of our sponsors, SkyPlan, with our proposed routing and of course had to have a final send off dinner at the Charming Blue hotel. The cod was a treat. Got to bed very excited about our third leg.
We were happy with the ground handling at Santa Maria, they looked at our website which Marty put together and said they would follow our trip and support the Alzheimer’s Organization .
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Again we enjoyed the fabulous breakfast buffet at the Hotel Columbo. I walked from the hotel into town, about a 25 minute hike, and surprised myself by not getting lost. I had a light lunch and then explored the town for another half hour, then went back to the hotel to catch up with Marty. We took a cab to the airport and refueled the plane for a total of 270 gals for the next leg to Mallorca, Spain. Back at our hotel we reviewed the weather, our proposed routing and filed our flight plan. Later that evening we took a cab into town and enjoyed a delicious dinner at The Charming Blue Hotel.
View of Santa Maria
North Atlantic crossing survival suits. Not comfortable, but very reassuring.