Funchal is less a sight than the island’s operating system. Around 105,000 of Madeira’s roughly 251,000 residents live here, the airport is 25 minutes away by car, and both expressways \u2014 the VR1 heading east and the VE1 heading west \u2014 start at this bay. First-time visitors base themselves in Funchal and drive out radially: C\u00e2mara de Lobos in a quarter of an hour, Ponta do Sol in 35 minutes, Porto Moniz in 70.<\/p>\n
The city itself is a slope. From the harbour at sea level up to Monte is about 560 metres of altitude across three kilometres as the crow flies. That is why the cable car is not a fairground ride but the fastest way up \u2014 15 minutes, while a car grinds through hairpins and one-way streets.<\/p>\n
Below sit the Zona Velha with its painted doors and the Mercado dos Lavradores; above lies Monte with its tropical garden and the wicker toboggans. In between: the quinta gardens, the S\u00e9 cathedral begun in 1493, and roughly half the restaurants on the island.<\/p>\n
In practice: multi-storey car parks are the only realistic option downtown, the promenade is expensive, and two streets inland the bill halves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The base for everything else: 105,000 residents, every main road starts here, and no region on the island is more than 70 minutes away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":65,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-practical-info","tag-funchal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}