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Jan 01
Love0

Happy New Year

By Nearby 396 Comments

visitmadeira

The Festas are now over, Christmas is gone, and New Year’s Eve is past. Happy New Year everyone, and now let’s get back to “normal life”.

Some people didn’t like the decorations, and some did (I particularly liked rua Fernão Ornelas). Some people complain of the lack of liqueurs in the downtown stands. Others didn’t like the fireworks, while other swear by them (very honestly, I have great difficulty in remembering enough, year to year, to make that sort of comparison – its gorgeous, certainly spectacular, but differences between years quickly dissipate).

After a month in which very little prouctive work was done and accomplished, “real life” now begins again, with less “feast” and less expenses, and with a slow but inevitable return to normalcy.

Anyway, on my behalf, a Happy New Year for all, with wishes of great successes and much happiness. Which will certainly come to those who work for it.

Jan 01
Love0

«You can now “release the fireworks”»

By Nearby 63 Comments

 

visitmadeira.org

 

The sentence “you can now release the fireworks” belongs to one of the best known Madeirans anywhere. Today Cristiano Ronaldo will be in the island that saw him born, but it isn’t likely that there’ll be a repetition of the 2008 sentence, when he won the first of the four “Ballon d’Or” in his CV – and in his museum.

Tonight, nine cruise ships, and thousands of tourists and locals, from the whole island, will be waiting for the beginning of the fireworks, shot from 37 different posts throughout and around the city, the seafront and the sea itself.

Tonight is also the anniversary of the Madeira firewoks to the Guinness Book of Records as the biggest fireworks display on Earth.

There are to be 25 posts around the city, 8 on the seafront and 4 at sea.

Dez 27
Love0

The “presepio” that attracts thousands

By Nearby 4.354 Comments

For several decades Juvenal Silva has been putting the nativity scene that attracts thousands together. For almost twenty years now, at the Galeão (in São Roque, Funchal outskirts), the nativity scene, that took four months to be built, took eight people 14 hours a day to complete.

It’s worth going there, and walk through the history of Madeira, spread through the piles of paper and light, showing almost 30 thousand pieces, that cannot all be shown at once.

The “presépio”, with some pieces being over 200 years old, like a crib in a typical Madeiran room, is this year themed “Memories of the Past”. If you are an aficionado of these cultural events, you have until January 20th to see this giant master piece.

Here are some pictures of what you will be able to see.

Dez 27
Love0

One “presepio” that attracts thousands

By Nearby 4.268 Comments

For several decades Juvenal Silva has been putting the nativity scene that attracts thousands together. For almost twenty years now, at the Galeão (in São Roque, Funchal outskirts), the nativity scene, that took four months to be built, took eight people 14 hours a day to complete.

It’s worth going there, and walk through the history of Madeira, spread through the piles of paper and light, showing almost 30 thousand pieces, that cannot all be shown at once.

The “presépio”, with some pieces being over 200 years old, like a crib in a typical Madeiran room, is this year themed “Memories of the Past”. If you are an aficionado of these cultural events, you have until January 20th to see this giant master piece.

Here are some pictures of what you will be able to see.

Dez 25
Love0

Yearly evening market in Funchal

By Nearby, Unforgettable 2.671 Comments

There were thousands. Wearing a hat, in a hat, with stags, with bright lights and flashy glasses. It was the market evening. With a lot of singing, in tune, as if it had been rehearsed by the thousands of singers throughout the year.

It was a sight to be seen. The scents of the tangerines bought in the stalls lined along the Rua da Boa Viagem, where the tourists took hundreds of pictures and the Madeirans heaps of selfies.

And then was the day of taking in all the waste generated through the night, which will reach huge numbers, but the council will take care of it, and leave the city as if nothing had happened. In fact, a very positive aspect of this night is the fact that early in the afternoon of the day after, Funchal has no “leftovers” of the evening market.

The night filled the expectations of all that took part, and thus welcomed Christmas. Here are some of those moments.

Dez 23
Love0

The night of being bumped on… by fruit

By Nearby 6 Comments

This is the night of seeing shoulders and of being bumped on by fruit bags… and everybody loves it.

There are thousands of people that count the days to this day. Not because they’ll be opening presents, but because they plan on tasting all the ponchas, sandwiches and cherry brandy they find underway… and the way is getting increasingly longer.

This is the day in which the market starts in the Old Town and finishes in the Infante roundabout, the day in which everybody sees shoulders and become heroes, because crossing the city, especially as one approaches the city market, is not for everyone. Well, sorry. It is for everybody. For the youngest who, perched on their fathers’ shoulders, are the ones who most enjoy the feast as they are the only ones who manage to see it, for the biggest because they may be able to recognize a person five metres away and take ten minutes to reach her, for the women who insist on holding on to their husbands, not so much not to get lost as not to lose them, for the grannies who insist on dragging themselves over the city because they have been doing it for over fifty years, and for the tourists who, enchanted by the novelty, feel as if they are in Hyde Park on December 31st.

Funchal starts changing in mid afternoon. The streets start to close, the stalls are set up, the hundreds of kilos of bread and marinated pork are unloaded, and the city starts to smell to food. Just as if it had become a huge marinated pork sandwich.

And is there anything better than to go out into the street and see all our acquaintances in a row to meet us? Ah, it is not to meet us. It is because no one can move an inch, which means that the half of the street who wants to go east can’t move because the half coming west is stuck. Is there anything better than being bumped on by bags of custard apples or pineapples, and smile to the apology of the poor fellow who, just like us is literally, sandwiched?

There isn’t, I assure you. Even because we have the opportunity to get current on the people we cross with and, in the circumstances in which things are really stuck there’s time to meet someone and perhaps even to get married. Well, I guess not, because that would imply a procession, and this would be impractical. But you get my drift…

And is there anything better than to wait for two hours to be served a simple poncho or a sandwich with four bits of meat in it? Of course not!

It’s the spirit that does it. The Christmas one, and the one that allows you to survive the night. Because only the one who enjoy it endure it. If you want to see the last novelties in terms of Christmas accessories, with lots of reindeer, Noddy GUIZOS, and lights, many lights, to light up users’ intelligence.

It’s nice to see this, and it was now extended to the main boulevard of the city. And if the option is to stay there, you can always claim to have been to the market, because the whole city was taken over by the event. It is only over on the 1st, so enjoy it, because the evening market will only return next year.

Is the problem the fact that live out of town, or just that you are around and can’t manage to get downtown on this night?

Then it is no longer a problem. If you have internet access, this is all you need to follow the events of the evening.

“Na Minha Terra TV” has a special emission to cover the whole event planned to start at 20h30.

 

Dez 21
Love0

Beware: evening markets are everywhere!

By Nearby One Comment

They multiply as if there was no tomorrow, and we find them everywhere. The “noites do Mercado” (evening markets) have been taking place all around the island since last weekend, are around, and proliferate more than a virus. We stumble on them all the way from Pota do Pargo to Porto Santo, and we even visit them in series, in the same way we do with the Child Jesus novenas.

Those in the know say that it’s good for business, that these days one spends what we have and what we don’t, and the excuse to taste a poncha or a marinated pork sandwich goes well with some tangerines or custard apples.

In Madeira more than anywhere else in Portugal Christmas is lived by traditions from times immemorial and that reappeared for some reason. Vendors will mount their stalls everywhere, and itinerant salespersons will peddle their novelties in every parish of the island – every year. They are always the same, but so is the Christmas spirit, and Madeirans love this season more than any other.

Immigrants, returning by droves, smile with the scents of the streets and the human heat that only Madeira can deliver.

Pay attention to your agenda, leave the uncomfortable shoes at home, and put on one of those hats decorated with flashing lights. There’s no better way to instil Christmas joy into everybody around you. But before that, calibrate your voice and concentrate all your courage. You’ll need to enter the Funchal market, because half of Madeira is sure to be there this Friday evening. Everywhere between the Infante roundabout and the Old Town will be “market”. Enjoy!

Dez 17
Love0

Athletics warm up Machico’s “Noite do Mercado”

By Nearby 357 Comments

machico-722

First comes the warm up.

And after comes the “noite do Mercado” (market evening), which will take place already this Saturday (December 17th) in Machico.

It will an intensely busy weekend, the one coming up now, but before Santa arrives, this Sunday, athletes will be able to run along the main streets of the town. Enrollment can take place just before the race, at the start, in the square next to the council building.

There will be to departures, one at 18h20, and another 10 minutes later, to cater to different levels of “professionalism” or – rather – different amounts of breath. But what really matters is that athletes get tired enough to need victualling in the market, as the “noite do Mercado” is to take place then and there, in and around the market structure in Machico.

The night is certainly going to be a lively one, especially as there are to be a number of attractions to ensure it.

And on Sunday, don’t forget to take the kids to meet Santa. This is scheduled for 16h, and the old man’s arrival to the central square always generates a lot of excitement amongst the kids.