Terra Nostra Garden Hotel, Furnas

Backtracking just a little, our base for the first 2 nights on Sáo Miguel island was the luxurious Terra Nostra Garden Hotel.  Normally location and somewhere small and friendly, or old and quirky, are what I look for in a hotel.  The selling point for this one was its highly acclaimed lush tropical gardens with a thermal spa at their centre, in the small village of Furnas.  ‘A very pretty village’, we were assured by our young taxi driver, who still lived there, with his mum.

It was late when we checked in and I was quite happy with my comfy bed, but was horrified to wake next morning to the sound of steady rain.  Glum faces tucked away, we tucked into a very grand breakfast indeed.  ‘It’s brightening up a bit?’  Hopeful words, but by the time we’d donned macs and gone out to explore it was torrential. …