São Miguel Island, Portugal

Aug 11

Six months after being apart, my long distance boyfriend and I reunited at our Airbnb in Portugal! The island we visited felt so secluded, had beautiful black sand beaches to hike down to, and gave us the opportunity to have life-changing foods! Even as the biggest island in the Azores, its landscapes covered in blue hydrangeas felt very untouched and beautiful. We spent a week here and basically took a chunk of the island to explore each day. Scroll down for more details on where we ate, went to the beach, and of course for lots of pictures— watch our YouTube vlog here!

Activities/Sightseeing:

Da Termas Ferraria
Parque Caetano de Andrade Albuquerque Bettencourt
Piscina Natural da Boca de Ribieira
Poça Da Dona Beija: Piscinas Termais [Thermal Pools]
- In expensive, but non-refundable tickets, so we booked our slot the day before going. You get to stay for 90 minutes! We recommend wearing a dark-colored bathing suit as the orange hue to the pools can stain them like it did to my white bikini bottoms and almost to his aqua shorts.
Sete Cidades
Vila Franca do Campo
- You can’t swim here, so we took a boat over for about an hour and walked around. It’s very small, so that’s really all the time you need. We bought our tickets at the desk by the waterfront on the day-of and it was super seamless. You can also book kayaks to take over, and we wish we had done that!

Beaches:

Praia da Viola
Praia da Amora
Praia Do Lombo Gordo

Restaurants:

Breakfast/Brunch:

Armazéns Cogumbreiro
Cascara (get the Braised Beef French Toast!)
Donduē
Jardim Natural Food & Coffee (tried to eat here, but it was packed— definitely make a reservation if you can)

Lunch/Dinner: