The Azores — São Miguel, Pico and Faial
Nine volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic, where the weather is an argument and the landscape wins it.
São Miguel is the island most people start with.
Sete Cidades is a twin crater lake — one green, one blue — inside a caldera you can drive the rim of. Furnas has boiling springs, iron-rich thermal pools at Terra Nostra, and cozido cooked underground in the volcanic soil. Lagoa do Fogo, in the middle of the island, is protected and often the clearest of the three.
Tea, pineapple and cattle.
Gorreana on São Miguel is the oldest working tea plantation in Europe and still operates with nineteenth-century machinery. The island also grows pineapple under glass and, above all, keeps cows: the Azores supply a large share of Portugal's milk and cheese, which is why the landscape is hedged into green squares.
Pico is a mountain with an island around it.
Ponta do Pico is 2,351 metres, the highest point in Portugal. At sea level, the Criação Velha and Santa Luzia vineyards are grown inside currais — small walls of black lava stone that shelter the vines from salt wind. The landscape is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the wines from it are salty, mineral and unlike anything on the mainland.
Faial and the channel.
Horta's marina is a mid-Atlantic crossing point, and sailors have painted the quay for decades; painting your boat's mark is considered good luck, and Peter Café Sport is the room where those crossings are logged. Capelinhos, at the western end, is the ash desert left by the 1957–58 eruption that added land to the island.
Practicalities.
Flights connect Lisbon to Ponta Delgada in about two and a half hours; inter-island flights and summer ferries link Pico, Faial and São Jorge. Weather changes hourly on every island, so a good Azores plan carries two versions of each day. Whale watching runs roughly April to October, with blue and fin whales passing in spring.