Funchal...
Funchal...
Funchal has a really nice mix of city life, ocean views, gardens, food, and easy access to Madeira’s mountains. It works well whether you want a relaxed holiday, hiking, or a more cultural trip.
What Funchal offers
Historic old town (Zona Velha)
This is one of the best areas to wander in the evening—narrow streets, seafood restaurants, wine bars, and lots of atmosphere. Rua de Santa Maria is especially famous for its painted doors and street art.
Markets and local food
Mercado dos Lavradores is the main farmers’ market with fruit, flowers, fish, and local products. It’s a good place to try Madeira specialties like:
espada (black scabbard fish)
espetada (beef skewers)
bolo do caco
passion fruit desserts
Madeira wine
Cable car to Monte
The Funchal Cable Car takes you up to Monte with great panoramic views over the city and coast. At the top you can visit gardens—or do the famous wicker basket toboggan ride back down.
Beautiful gardens
Two standout spots are:
Monte Palace Madeira
Madeira Botanical Garden
These are some of the island’s top attractions with tropical plants, viewpoints, lakes, and museum collections.
Seafront and swimming
The marina area is great for sunset walks, bars, and boat trips. For swimming, Praia Formosa is the main beach area nearby, and the Lido promenade is popular for sea pools and ocean views.
Madeira wine experiences
Funchal is the best place to try Madeira wine. Many visitors stop at wine lodges such as Blandy’s Wine Lodge for tastings and cellar tours.
Easy day trips
From Funchal you can easily visit:
Cabo Girão Skywalk for dramatic cliff views
Câmara de Lobos for harbour views and poncha
Pico do Arieiro for sunrise and hiking
levada walks across the island
Best for:
Funchal is especially good if you like:
warm weather without extreme heat
walkable city breaks
scenic hiking nearby
food + wine holidays
winter sun
cruise stopovers
a relaxed but not “too quiet” destination
(Funchal)€36pp/€136 Per Tuk Tuk Monte and Toboggan Ride Tuk Tuk Tour
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Your tour departs from Funchal and climbs through the city's upper neighbourhoods, the streets narrowing and the vegetation thickening as the altitude rises. As the rooftops of Funchal spread out below and the bay opens up behind them, the scale of the island's topography becomes apparent in a way that the city streets never quite allow. Monte sits at approximately 550 metres above sea level — high enough to feel genuinely apart from the city, close enough to make the contrast between the two feel almost theatrical.
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History More Strange Than Fiction
At the heart of Monte stands the Church of Nossa Senhora do Monte — Madeira's most important pilgrimage site, its twin-towered baroque facade rising above a dramatic stone staircase that has been climbed by pilgrims on their knees for generations. The church was built on the site of a 15th-century chapel and houses the venerated image of Our Lady of Monte, patron saint of Madeira, to whom the island's people have brought their devotions for five centuries.
But Monte's most extraordinary historical detail belongs to the church's small imperial chapel. Buried here is Karl I — the last Emperor of Austria-Hungary, who died in exile in Madeira in 1922 at the age of 34, having refused to formally abdicate his throne. He arrived on the island gravely ill, in poverty, and largely forgotten by the courts of Europe. He never left. His tomb, in this quiet hillside village above Funchal, is one of the most quietly remarkable historical sites in the entire Atlantic — and one that most visitors to Madeira never know exists.
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Adjacent to the church, the Monte Palace Tropical Garden occupies the grounds of a 19th-century palace and represents one of the finest botanical collections in Portugal — a landscape of koi ponds, azulejo-tiled pathways, endemic Madeiran plants, and curated collections of cycads, palms, and African and Asian flora spread across terraced hillside gardens with views over the valley below.
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The Toboggan — A Tradition Unlike Anything Else
And then there is the ride down. As seen on Jane McDonald recently
The carreiros do Monte — Monte's wicker toboggan descent — has been operating since the 1850s, when it began as a practical means of transporting goods and people rapidly down the steep hillside to Funchal. What began as necessity became tradition, and tradition became one of the most singular travel experiences in the world. Two carreiros — dressed in their traditional white uniforms and straw hats — guide a wicker sled on wooden runners down 2 kilometres of smooth cobblestoned road, using their rubber-soled boots as brakes, reaching speeds of up to 48 kilometres per hour.
There is nothing quite like it anywhere else on earth. It has been operating continuously for nearly two centuries. And it ends, conveniently, precisely where your tuk-tuk will be waiting to return you to Funchal.
Four People €136 per Tuk Tuk (€34 pp based on 4 people)
Two to Three People €96 per Tuk Tuk (€32pp based on 3 people..€48 pp based on 2 people
*note. The toboggan ride is booked and paid separately on-site, we leave members to choose who they wish to take this ride with.
Private two hour tour. Expert local guide. .
This tour is available in: English, Portuguese, Spanish, German and French.
Hilltop gem with gardens, church and a toboggan ride
High above Funchal, reached by winding roads through terraced hillsides and subtropical gardens, sits Monte — a village of a different atmosphere entirely. Cooler, quieter, and draped in the kind of lush vegetation that Madeira's elevated interior produces in extraordinary abundance, Monte has drawn visitors since the 19th century, when Funchal's wealthy built their quintas here to escape the summer heat of the city below. It has been surprising people ever since.
The Monte Tuk-Tuk Tour takes you there from Funchal on a private journey up through the hills — and brings you back down in the most memorable way possible.
FROM €27.50PP/€110 PER TUK TUK BOTANICAL GARDENS AND HERITAGE TOUR BY PRIVATE TUK-TUK
PLEASE REMEMBER PRICES ARE BASED ON PER TUK TUK
Four People €110 per Tuk Tuk (€27.50 pp based on 4 people)
Two to Three People €80 per Tuk Tuk (€27.67pp based on 3 people..€40 pp based on 2 people
Madeira exists in a botanical category of its own. The same volcanic geology, Atlantic humidity, and extraordinary range of microclimates that make the island visually unlike anywhere else in Europe also make it one of the most biodiverse environments in the entire Atlantic — a living laboratory of plant life that has fascinated botanists, naturalists, and travellers for centuries.
The Botanical Garden Tuk-Tuk Tour takes you to the finest expression of that biodiversity, combined with a journey through the historic heart of Funchal that gives the day a complete and satisfying arc.
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Your private tuk-tuk departs Funchal and climbs through the city's hillside neighbourhoods toward the garden, your guide providing context on the city's layout, history, and character as the rooftops fall away below you. The drive itself is part of the experience — Funchal's upper streets reveal a quieter, more residential city than the seafront suggests, with quintas hidden behind garden walls and views across the bay that shift and expand with every turn of the road.
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A Garden With a Story
Perched at 300 metres above Funchal, the Jardim Botânico da Madeira occupies the former private estate of the Reid family — the same family whose name became synonymous with Madeira's golden age of luxury hospitality through Reid's Palace Hotel, which has welcomed guests on the island's clifftop since 1891. The garden was established on the estate in 1881 and transferred to the regional government in the 1950s, opening to the public as one of Portugal's most important botanical collections.
Spread across 80,000 square metres of terraced hillside, the garden is organised around the full spectrum of Madeira's extraordinary plant heritage:
Endemic Madeiran flora — species found nowhere else on earth, including representatives of the ancient Laurissilva laurel forest, a UNESCO World Heritage ecosystem that once covered much of southern Europe and now survives almost exclusively in Madeira and the Canary Islands
Tropical and subtropical collections — plants gathered from across the world's warm-climate zones, thriving in Madeira's uniquely temperate Atlantic conditions
Ornamental gardens — formally designed terraces of flowering plants and sculpted hedgerows, with panoramic views over Funchal, the bay, and the open Atlantic beyond
The garden also houses the Museum of Natural History, whose collections document Madeira's remarkable endemic fauna and geological formation — providing scientific context for the extraordinary living environment surrounding it.
This is not a garden you walk through quickly. It rewards time, attention, and curiosity — and your tour allows for exactly that.
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The journey back to Funchal weaves through the city's historic centre, transforming the return into a second, complementary chapter of the day. Key stops include:
The Sé de Funchal — the 15th-century cathedral completed in 1514, one of the oldest and most architecturally significant churches in Portugal, its Manueline details a reminder of the island's central role in the Age of Discovery
The Municipal Square — framed by the elegant 18th-century City Hall and the baroque facade of the former Jesuit Monastery, one of Funchal's most photogenic and historically layered public spaces
The combination of Madeira's natural heritage in the morning and its architectural and civic history in the afternoon makes the Botanical Garden Tour one of the most complete and satisfying single-day experiences available in Funchal — two sides of the same island identity, seen in one seamless journey.
Private one an a half hour tour. Expert local guide. .
This tour is available in: English, Portuguese, Spanish, German and French.