It's Just Me, Isn't It?: Madeira

When I made mental lists of places that I wanted to visit, I never said to myself, "I really need to see Madeira!" I don't think it was on my radar at all. Then, we booked a cruise that would take my husband, myself, and two youngest children there.

This is our first glimpse of the city of Funchal, from the deck of our cruise ship.

Holy cow! So gorgeous.

By the time we tried to book a shore excursion, they were full, so we walked off the ship to see what we could find.

We found these sights before we even left the port.

I haven't edited any of these images, by the way - no filters, no color correcting. These are just as they came out of the camera. The colors really were that vivid.

We'd passed the first group of gathered cabbies hoping to entice us to hire them, but now we ran into a second group. We don't come from a large city, so we're not used to hiring cabs. My 18 year old and my 14 year old had only been in a cab once before.

One friendly but not overly aggressive driver handed us a homemade brochure. "I take you to the botanical gardens, the sea cliffs, a fishing village and back here. OK?" He named a price.

OK. Let's go see the island, we decided.

I'm so glad that we hired a driver. I would not have been able to make sense of, nor feel safe driving, the narrow, winding, hillside streets, even if I had access to a car.

It might have been worth the price just to see the Jardim Botanico da Madeira.

Looking down the mountain, you could just barely see the ship that had brought us across the Atlantic.

There she is - the Disney Magic.

Driving across the island, everything looked amazing and exotic to us - narrow streets, tiny cars, old buildings. We're from the American West, where something 50 years old is considered a teardown. Here, people lived, shopped and worshipped in buildings centuries old.

One of the local traditions turned tourist attraction involved sledding down the mountain streets. Straw hatted drivers steered the wheeled sleds down the mountain, and drivers like ours waited at the bottom to pick them up. We watched, delighted, but decided to pass on actually sledding.

A significant portion of the steep hills were terraced for growing. We're not wine people, but I hear that Madeira wines are highly rated.

The next stop was Cabo Girao, the tallest sea cliffs in Europe. The clear viewing deck was too unnerving for my youngest; she stayed well back. "I can see fine from here!"

Being a desert dweller, I find anything to do with water overly romantic (or overly terrifying, depending). I found myself in Camara de Lobos practically swooning. Drying fish! Battered boats! And the colors!