Turpan, China: Never Need a Reason, Never Need a Rhyme, Let's All Call It Turpantineby Randi / September 14, 2017
After our visit to Turpan, we took a super short train to Urumqi, which is the capital of the Xinjiang region. You know how state capitals are often not the best city in the state and usually not even in the top five? Like, Harrisburg you’d have to pay me to go back to. And Albany, I don’t know anyone not in government who would ever want to go to Albany. I don’t think anyone in government ever wants to go to Albany either but they have to. I still feel bad for my poor law school friends who were sent there to take the bar instead of the Javitts Center. Suuuucks. Anyway, same for Urumqi. It used to be a big deal on the Silk Road, as all these Xinjiang towns were because they had water and goods and people to help caravans and traders survive as they trekked through the desert. But now it’s just, city. And not a particularly fun one, just…city.
Urumqi is booming now with more than 3 million residents (tiny for China but big for rest of the world!) and apparently it is the biggest city in Central Asia (which I guess includes Xinjiang and the stans). Remember how in the Turpan post I said that Turpantiners consider their town to be farther from the oceans than any other place on earth? Well the Guinness Book of World Records, famed chroniclers of all things super important, give that honor to Urumqi. Let’s not quibble though, you both will always stay in my heart as the driest hottest hellholes in all of China. Okay they aren’t hellholes at all (they’re good cities Brent), they just have the same climate as hell.
After we got off the train, we did not walk out into the world as you usually do when you get off a train. We had to go through security again. To get out of the station. That’s how serious Xinjiang security is. At the exit were police and baggage x-rays and metal detectors for people to walk through and everyone diligently went through the ritual but we were pulled aside by guards seated at a table (you NEVER want to catch the attention of the seated guards!). They took our passports and wrote the info in a book, I’m guessing the Big Book of Foreigners, before letting us into their so magical city. Getting a little bit annoying. As I shared before, in China, there is no common building when people enter and exit and buy tickets all in harmony. All those activities are spread out over huge station complexes so that, if you want to pick up your tickets for your next train (as you should do when you arrive to be safe), you have to go through the rigmarole (I really don’t like that there’s not another a in there) of leaving the station, and then you have to walk around the whole damn thing and find the main entrance so you can then find the ticket office. And, guess what, to get to the ticket office, you have to go through x-rays and metal detectors and security again! I always wait outside with all the bags so Z can run in more easily. But guess what, Urumqi was not a ‘run in and hurry through security’ kind of ticket office situation. I waited in the sun for over an hour for him to return! In the picture above, you might be able to see a long line of people from the station door. That line stretched all the way back to be even with where I was standing, and that was just after the guards at that checkpoint checked you out and let you into the main line. The line to reach THOSE guards stretched down the block. The amount of time he had to wait in that line was almost longer than our train here. It was RIDICULOUS.
Fortunately, we had a nice refuge to go to next. To make up for the hole that was Turpan and our hostel, we upgraded to a room at the Urumqi Sheraton for this visit. Of course, that refuge was temporarily blocked by – you guessed it – more baggage x-rays, metal detectors, and security guards at the entrance. We couldn’t even tell when we entered if we were in the hotel because it was in a mall! So we looked up and saw cafes and stores lining the perimeter and no Sheraton Hotel signs and we were trying to ask the security guards if this was the hotel and they just yelled to put our bags on the conveyor belts which DID NOT FIT BECAUSE THEY ARE HUGE BACKPACKS AND THE BELT WAS MADE FOR EVERYDAY PURSES and they were NOT HAVING IT and finally they just let us through to the check-in on one side of the lobby and the hotel staff was nooooot good, not good at all, I must remember to complain about them. Anyway we finally got up to our room and then everything was okay. As long as we stay indoors, away from every other human, we will be fine.
obligatory hotel pics
Before this trip, I never really appreciated a Sheraton or similar mid-level hotel chain. They are clean and comfortable and have real toilets! This was the perfect thing to do at this time in our travels, because we really needed a few days without too much running around (any) and without too many things to see (we literally saw one). Instead, we ate snacks in the hotel bed (what a lovely bed I love bed) and watched horrible movies. This hotel didn’t have HBO like our other recent treat-yo-self China hotel stays have surprised us with – but it had Cinemax. Lolol you know how people used to joke and call it Skinemax? That’s not the right joke. There was nothing bawdy on, just PURE UTTER SHIT. We watched so many bad movies. There was one with Chloe Grace Moretz where somehow she keeps surviving all these alien attacks that wipe out 99% of the population and you watch and you think ‘well she’s gotta be special in some way right any minute now we will learn what makes her so different from everyone else and she will fight something and win back Earth’ but no her special skill is sleeping with a man who turns out to be part alien and HE is the one who helps save her she LITERALLY does nothing oh my god why is she the star in this disaster movie if she has NO Katnissy skills to speak of she literally just lucked out a few times then met a rando and slept with him and the man saves her and some other kids she does NOTHING and has no special abilities except not dying from bird flu or whatever. We watched this movie twice. We also watched Whiskey Tango Foxtrot twice, partly because Tina Fey is great even when she’s trying to be serious and dramatic and you’re like aw good for you hon trying new things and mostly because we have a big metal water bottle from the film that sits in our bathroom for no good reason so it’s like a part of the family. WTF was actually not bad. The third movie we watched was indeed awful. It was called Terrordactyl. I shit you not. Terrordactyl. It was like if Sharknado wasn’t funny, but was super depressing because you just feel so bad for these ‘actors’ who showed up to set and probably couldn’t make eye contact with each other because they were so ashamed of what their careers and dreams had become. We watched it only half a time.
In the mall attached to the hotel. WHAT THE CRAP IS KILLER LITTERING? IS IT THROWING PEOPLE OFF THE SKYWALK SO THEY DIE? IS THAT WHAT KILLER LITTERING MEANS?????
We lucked out with the hotel being attached to a mall because in our newfound lazy state, we didn’t have to go very far for food. Well, our first night, we did try to go very far for food. There’s one vegan place on HappyCow called Yuangqi Vegetarian, and we got on a public city bus to get there with everyone staring at us (we did not see any other tourists in this city, p.s.). It’s online info said it should be open and I was so excited to finally have a good meal after a few days without. I was so excited for their mock meats, as HC reviews claimed they had. Well I will never know because there was a handwritten looseleaf paper sign on the padlocked door that a nice passerby told us said they needed a rest today and had closed. FUUUUUCK YOUUUUU you need a rest?? I NEED FOOOOOOOOD. Dammit to hell. We could have tried back the next day but I was too angry with them.
Learning not to ever leave the hotel and its attached mall, we returned and scoped out the many restaurants on the upper floors, including a food court that was, as usual, too confusing with too unhelpful staff so we chose a Han restaurant with a picture menu. We got several vegetable dishes that were pretty good and I got mapo tofu but asked first if it was vegetarian because it always had pork, but this menu didn’t say pork. The waitress said yes and confirmed that it had no pork when we asked that separately. Of course it came with pork, and when we said (/had our phone say) ‘but you said it didn’t have pork!’ she motioned that it was just a little bit. I get that vegetarianism is super alien to most Chinese people considering their recent history and that being able to eat meat is a sign of being in an okay place finally, so it’s hard to complain about all these frequent mishaps. But like, this was a young girl and I asked her so many times. Blah. I hate wasting food so I hope someone ate it in the back. They brought me a porkless one and it was really good so at least it was sort of worth it.
This delicious spinachy dish was translated on the menu as “Casual”. That’s it.
After dinner, we checked out another floor that had tons of ice cream vendors (still none for me in three months ughhh), donut vendors, drinks of all sorts, and of course bubble tea. We were surrounded! I ordered one and asked for bubbles to be added, as I always have to do because usually only the milk teas come with bubbles automatically. I learned the right words finally and everything. Of course, it came without bubbles. I have HAD IT with these M***F***ing kids giving me M***F****ing bobaless teas! I wasn’t having it anymore and I said, hey remember I asked for boba? And the boy said ‘yes but it doesn’t come with it so you can’t have it.’ I MEAN. Luckily someone else overheard and was like wtf is going on just put the damn bubbles in, it will not lead to the downfall of your (*cough* Taiwan’s *cough*) culture if you put bubbles in milkless teas.
Anyway.
The hotel had a pretty decent gym, with tons of treadmills, weight machines, free weights, and kettlebells, the first I’ve seen of those in any place in China. There was also a separate spinning room attached which is hilarious because it didn’t seem like they had any classes, just all the bikes set up as they would be in a class. Unfortunately, the staff members ‘working’ in the gym were beyond horrendous. Two young guys were chasing each other around the gym floor trying to pour water from paper cups onto each other the entire time I was on the treadmill. I kept looking back at them and being like WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU but they were too oblivious to notice my withering glare. Finally one of them left so the other finally just sat the crap down, but then this huge guy came in, went into the office inside the gym, and put on THE WORST music I’ve ever heard – slow, painful, and exceedingly loud. I asked the seated staffer if they could turn it down considering I had to cover my ears to breathe normally through it, and he shrugged and pointed to the guy as if to say ‘it’s his music.’ Remember that this huge guy putting the music on was not an employee. Seriously I need Sheraton Corporate to care that this was happening. I went up to the huge guy, who was starting to lift, and pointed to the office and the speakers and asked for him to turn it down. And you know what he did? He laughed at me. So I went right up in his face and SCREAMED “TURN THIS SHIT MUSIC DOWN BEFORE I TURN IT OFF FOR YOU YOU GODDAMN ASSHOLE.” He turned the music off. And then he did bicep curls with a freaking machine (so dumb) while making the loudest grunts I’ve ever heard at a gym and I just laughed thinking of what all the reddit fitness commenters would say about this jackwagon.
The hotel had a pretty decent gym, with tons of treadmills, weight machines, free weights, and kettlebells, the first I’ve seen of those in any place in China. There was also a separate spinning room attached which is hilarious because it didn’t seem like they had any classes, just all the bikes set up as they would be in a class. Unfortunately, the staff members ‘working’ in the gym were beyond horrendous. Two young guys were chasing each other around the gym floor trying to pour water from paper cups onto each other the entire time I was on the treadmill. I kept looking back at them and being like WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU but they were too oblivious to notice my withering glare. Finally one of them left so the other finally just sat the crap down, but then this huge guy came in, went into the office inside the gym, and put on THE WORST music I’ve ever heard – slow, painful, and exceedingly loud. I asked the seated staffer if they could turn it down considering I had to cover my ears to breathe normally through it, and he shrugged and pointed to the guy as if to say ‘it’s his music.’ Remember that this huge guy putting the music on was not an employee. Seriously I need Sheraton Corporate to care that this was happening. I went up to the huge guy, who was starting to lift, and pointed to the office and the speakers and asked for him to turn it down. And you know what he did? He laughed at me. So I went right up in his face and SCREAMED “TURN THIS SHIT MUSIC DOWN BEFORE I TURN IT OFF FOR YOU YOU GODDAMN ASSHOLE.” He turned the music off. And then he did bicep curls with a freaking machine (so dumb) while making the loudest grunts I’ve ever heard at a gym and I just laughed thinking of what all the reddit fitness commenters would say about this jackwagon.
in the Xinjiang Museum. Doesn’t “the mortals from the last millenium” sound like a creepy sci-fi film?
We were going to go to the big bazaar, but we read that it was pretty fake and just for tourists and it all sounded very annoying and unnecessary considering that our next destination, Kashgar, has an authentic and still amazing bazaar. So we didn’t. The one thing we did in Urumqi was the thing you really have to do when there, which is visit the big museum, called the Xinjiang Regional Museum (or the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Museum). Named for the whole region for a reason, it houses some of the most important archaeological and historical finds that weren’t shipped out of the country, including all those mummified corpses I mentioned in the Turpan post that they found there. They were REAL mummies, my goodness. It was a little sickening. The super dry climate in Turpan (slash all of Xinjiang) helped preserve so much detail – like, hair. And freaking eyelashes! There were 21 mummies, I think, in this museum, and they included men, women, and children – including an infant-sized mummy. It was very disturbing and upsetting to see. I think I am over dead bodies, okay?
The museum included exhibits on all the ethnic cultures living in the Xinjiang region, which happened to represent all of the places we had so far visited on this long journey – Russia and Siberia, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and all the other stans. So my favorite parts of the museum were things that reminded me of our travels up to this point and pointed to our next destinations. like this look at Mongolian wrestlers that were NOT wearing the traditional wrestling uniform (speedo + feather boa) that we learned about in Naadam.
The museum included exhibits on all the ethnic cultures living in the Xinjiang region, which happened to represent all of the places we had so far visited on this long journey – Russia and Siberia, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and all the other stans. So my favorite parts of the museum were things that reminded me of our travels up to this point and pointed to our next destinations. like this look at Mongolian wrestlers that were NOT wearing the traditional wrestling uniform (speedo + feather boa) that we learned about in Naadam.
I also loved seeing a view from inside a ger/yurt that had an animal right in the doorway! Just like we saw in Mongolia! It feels like that was years ago!
And of course I have to take a picture whenever there’s a dog.
But the best was this look at traditional goings-on inside a house…in which the museum staff decided it was super appropriate and traditional for the girl to be wearing a sweatshirt that says “MATHLETE”?? We were crying. Whoooo decided that? Do they know how weird it is? The others are wearing non-ridiculous garb. I still can’t get over this.
WHAT WHY
As usual, the other visitors to the museum provided some entertainment as well. I still am a little scared of this girl’s shirt:
It says “until the tears run into your mouth”. why so cry?
I can’t even put into words the immediate dread I felt when I saw this huge crowd of little kids on a school field trip. I gasped, saying to Z, “OMG ARE THEY ALL LITTLE TRUMP SUPPORTERS?” I see red hats, I fear the worst. I guess all these little Chinese kids aren’t probably Trumpers, right? Just an easy way for the teachers to keep tabs on them?
only a small section of the Baby Trumpers
After the museum, we walked around the city a little, and I found my new favorite bubble tea place, called FlyJuice. It was the best tea – not too sweet! – and it came automatically with boba AND weird white jelly! The best!
We did some more wandering, found a grocery store, and then went back to the hotel to scout more of the restaurant floors. I had a weird noodle bowl that ended up being with sauerkraut and not just plain cabbage that isn’t worth sharing a picture of. But I will share a picture of my dessert, courtesy of Happy Lemon drink stand.
Yeah, I know, I am a monster! I had two bubble teas in one day! It made me so nauseous that it actually – can you believe – put me off bubble tea FOR GOOD. Well probably not for good, but I haven’t had any since and looking back at these pictures is making me nauseous again. End of an era, I know. I guess that’s the secret to beating this type of obsession – have so much of it that you never want it again. I said to Z, “I’m like the girl in The Joy Luck Club who ate too much strawberry ice cream and then never ate it again.” Z said “what.”
So, I know we didn’t do much, but that’s our time in Urumqi. It was just a regular old city with a good museum but not much else to recommend it for tourists. It was good though because we needed a bit of a rest before the last section of our trip when we hop from place to place extremely quickly. I leave you with the sign on the door to the train platform (which some of you saw on instagram) as we left Urumqi for Kashgar (the next post).
AND TELL MY WIFE I LOVE HER
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More of St. Petersburg: Random Sights, More Museums, and Peterhof
There’s so much more to talk about from St. Petersburg! Russia fun is only just beginning! We had a jam-packed less-than-a-week in the ‘bourg, seeing everything on our must list and most of the stuff on our maybe list. We really enjoyed our time and would happily return one day, maybe for a more leisurely visit, maybe to do all the clubbing we missed out on (“well I wouldn’t say I’ve been *missing* it”). I covered all the main highlights in the previous post, but there’s still so much cool stuff we saw. I want to share the last of the museuming we did in Peterbourg, a few random things worth commenting on (at least from my perspective), and our day at the Russian version of Versailles.
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Like this random street market that was decorated with umbrellas when we were scrambling trying to find umbrellas for sale. No one could reach these to sell to us. So cruel, decorative umbrellas in the rain! This market had a burrito truck, a Dippin’ Dots stand (for real!), and then about 48 matryoshka and wooden whittled goods stands.
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I know I’m a nutter but one of my favorite things was this ambulance. The word on the back is pronounced ‘reanimatsia” – like reanimator. I was cracking up. So morbid!
How do they not have a series of action movies called the Reanimator?
There are statues everywhere, and not just of past rules but of famous writers too. Here is Pushkin all like ‘hey I don’t really know what’s over there but there’s a bird on my head’.
THAT BIRD IS A LIAR
And here’s Gogol being like ‘I’m so morose but in a high fashion way not a depressed way look how fashionable my downward gaze is maybe I should model instead of write.’ First name Hansel.
Gogol. So hot right now.
So St. Petersburg has the deepest subway tunnels I’ve ever seen. Are they the deepest in the entire world? I would bet on it. OK I just looked it up and they have the second deepest in the world and some of the longest escalators. Seriously, on the way to the metro we would be standing on that escalator for like a full four minutes! That’s INSANE! And I thought the tube had some deep lines! I usually run down the escalators in the tube but hell if I was going to even walk slowly down this one when I couldn’t even see the bottom for 3 minutes! It was kind of scary. The metro was pretty easy to use though with really user-friendly token machines. You just put money in and for every 45p (the cost of a one way token) it counts, it spits out a token. So easy, no screens or language barriers or anything.
longest escalators in the world!
Okay so every statue we saw of Peter the Great (and there are a lot) gives him a tiny Beetlejuice style head! What is up with that? Did he have a tiny head? Because he was really quite tall, right? Poor tiny headed tall man
Okay that’s enough Rand(i)om Thoughts, let’s get back to touristing! One rainy morning (cough every morning so far cough), we walked for a while across the Neva to see the original cabin of Peter the Great when he first found the land and was like hey I wanna live here and name it after me! His little cabin was so cute! It was built in 1703 and he liked for it a little but then he was like nah boys let’s make a huge city and have my palaces be approximately 1 billion times bigger than this one room schoolhouse. The cabin was closed the day we went up but I don’t think it’s necessary to go in anyway. Cool to see, cool to see.
Pretty fancy for a log cabin. Ron Swanson would not approve.
When we were up by the cabin, we decided to check out the cruiser Aurora, which served in the Russo-Japanese war in the early 1900s and now serves as a museum. On a ship! Of course, as we’ve come to learn is super common in Russia, the cruiser was closed the day we went, even though the info we had in advance said it was closed a different day. Oh boy, things are always closed on random days. (Wait till you see what we’ve had to deal with in Moscow! Soon.) At least we got to take a picture of it.
Museo warship!
St. Petersburg has some beautiful green space, such as the big central park called the Field of Mars. This park has beautiful gardens and trees, as well as the Eternal Flame, which was lit on November 6, 1957. Ten years later, it was delivered to Moscow’s Kremlin for a similar site near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier there – which you will see in the next post!
IS THIS BURRRRRNING AN ETERNALLLL FLAAAAAAME
Our last museum of St. Petersburg came at the suggestion of friend-of-the-show Liz, who said the Ethnographic Museum was not to be missed. It was a really surprisingly extensive museum. At first the building looks like it has maybe one room but then it goes on literally FOREVER. We were there for 2 hours before I conked out and had to stop museuming. Two hours is really my limit for museuming, especially when we are going to like at least one a day, which is a shame because it really was a very interesting museum. There were tons of dioramas of dress and housing and other aspects of life and culture from literally every ethnic group in the entire region of Central Asia. And best of all, it was the first (and only) exhibit of Jewish stuff we’ve found so far, which made me haps.
yay jews
#4 that Frasier tho |
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my real favorite part of the Ethnographic Museum – a wee wittle baby woolly mammoth!
The greatest thing we did later in our visit, though, was a day trip to Peterhof, like the Versailles of Russia. Peter the Great ordered it to be built in the early 1700s, probably so he could summer there when the Winter Palace/Hermitage just wouldn’t do. Like Versailles, it’s very much a good weather destination, with the outside grounds of endless gorgeous gardens and impressive fountains the real draw. So we were nervous about going when the forecast for our last day, the only day we could go, was rain rain rain. Luckily, our hostel receptionist Anastacia (the nicest person we’ve come across like ever) said it was better to see it in the rain than not at all, because we went, and the sun came out the entire time we were on the grounds. It rained on our journey there and back, but we super lucked out once there. Amazing!
To get to Peterhof from the city, we walked about 30 minutes (literally everywhere we went was always a 30 minute walk, it was like some kind of weird wizard universe) to a certain metro line, took the metro to a bus stop about 10 stops away, and then took a minibus – really a 15 person van, so weird – that went to Peterhof. The minibuses/vans were indeed legitimate, with numbers of their routes on the windows and full of locals getting off along the route – but it just seemed so fake. But it was fine, and got us there in less than an hour. Once there, we spent about 4 hours at the site. It was so beautiful! The fountains were ridiculous, as were the gardens. The interior of the palace, the fancy af rooms, required a separate ticket, which we didn’t know until we tried to go in. The line to get interior tickets (at the actual palace, not the outside ticket office) was suuuper long, and then once you had those tickets you had to queue in another super long line to get inside. So annoying! The rooms are gorgeous though. No pictures allowed, so you’ll have to go yourself. But I’ll share tons of pictures from the lovely grounds! They went on forever, and even though the site was packed, there was so much of it that you could walk a mile all alone like you were in a forest. Such a great respite.
pretty cool
Peterhof was built right on the water, so after you walk through the acres and acres of gardens you are in the sea amaaaz
a little aviary on the grounds
the pyramid fountain
SQUIRREL FRIEND
Chessboard cascade!
my favorite little house on the grounds! like 1/1000th of the main palace but it’s my fave. These bridges split the water around it into four pools i would LOVE four pools
I definitely recommend spending a day at Peterhof as a break from the city. We loved it, though I must admit we still haven’t been to Versailles, so I can’t say whether you’d be similarly blown away by the beauty if you’ve been primed by Versailles. But I’m going to say that you would still enjoy it because come on so beautiful!
So St. Petey’s was a great real first-stop on our adventure. It felt very comfortable, without any of the culture shock that we are expecting to come at us in the (very!) near future. It is still very European, which explains that feeling. We would probably be happy to return one day, especially because there is still much to see. We really wanted to do a night boat tour, on many strong recommendations. See, at night, the bridges on all the canals lift up from about 1:45am to maybe just before 4am, so there are boat tours that go around the freed up canals and show off all the lights of the city. It’s supposed to be awesome, but there just wasn’t a night that we could dedicate to being up then because we had such full days planned, we couldn’t sacrifice a whole morning (as we would need to in order to recover from such a night!). So we’re sorry to have missed that, but we did so much sight-seeing that we are happy overall with our visit. And now we have a good reason to return! After Peterhof, we had a great final dinner at Ukrop (read about it here!) before getting on the midnight sleeper train to Moscow. Next post!
Madeira, Portugal (Part 2): Funchal Vegan Food, Lodging, and More
As discussed in the previous post, Madeira, the little Portuguese island off the coast of West Africa, is an amazing little paradise of mountains, gardens, and overall pleasantness. In this post, we are getting down to what matters: the vegan food, and the hotels. Although the remote location means the extreme vegan ballerness of mainland European cities hasn’t reached Funchal yet, there are still lots of good options and cute restaurants to check out. And as far as lodging goes, we stayed in THREE different hotels over this trip! Okay, one was in London and one was not planned, but you’ll see! We had an incredible time in Madeira and you can read about all the sights and stuff to do here.
yep this was taken during a break in barfing. (‘oh it’s pronounced bar-fay’)
My top restaurant recommendation is Coracao (pretend it’s a squiggly c!) Vegano, which has been around, and vegan, since 1973! Amazing job guys. The food took a minute but we had just flown in and we were super hungry so it probably seemed longer than it really was. Before we share the food, look how adorable the restaurant itself is!
Since like I said we were so hungry, we did our usual thing of ordering too much food. We ordered a wrap, a thing called Vegan Lust, and sushi. So yeah, the offerings are eclectic, like lots of vegan cafes, without one clear vision or cuisine. But who cares!
First up, the vegan plate of lust. It contained crispy chicken slabs (is slabs not a good word for food?), bacon slabs (again I ask but what is a better way to describe it?), and salad. It was fine! I love salad and the various vegan slabs were fun.
Next up, the wrap. There’s only one wrap option, the Crispy Wrap, and it has crispy vegan chicken with veggies and salad inside. I loved the filling and wish the wrap itself was sturdier; it fell victim to the disease that kills most wraps – sogginess. Ugh I love wraps so much but haaaate when the wrapping gets too soggy I might dry heave just thinking about it. There is nothing else in the world where suuuuuch a tiny change in status makes me go from loving it to literally barfaying from it. But anyway, it wasn’t as soggy as other wraps I’ve seen in my day, so it was pretty good.
Lastly, sushi! Or what they call Shingen Zushi! It’s a fried tempeh roll and it was DERN GOOD. Man I love tempeh sushi. I want this again! So the food overall at Coracao (squiggly!) is decent, but it’s a must go because it’s kind of a Funchal vegan institution. And it’s rare to find an all-vegan place! I think this is the only one in Funchal, actually. And I adore that they are not shying away from announcing themselves as such or wimping out with referring to some ‘plant-based’ bullshit. Look at the entrance!
Just in case ‘vegano’ in the name wasn’t enough! Love it.
The next restaurant we tried that is worth sharing was called Copaki, which is a little farther down the coast, closer to the Contemporary Art Museum. They aren’t vegetarian but they have a veggie/vegan menu that is really great. Unfortunately, I ordered the wrong thing, like I can’t even believe I ordered it. I had the choice between deep fried aubergine (eggplant), braised tofu (omg want), lasagna (what!!), or fajitas, and like a G-D MORON I chose fajitas, momentarily forgetting that the main component in veggie fajitas are bell peppers and I FORKING HATE bell peppers! What was I thinking? I think I was distracted by the prospect of guacamole. Ughhh I had to eat so many red peppers and they make me nauseous.
first of all that’s not fajitas
Best (not) of all was that the ‘side of vegetables’ was more bell peppers. I mean. So don’t be like me, because I think if you ordered something that there’s a chance of you actually enjoying (e.g. not your least favorite veggie??) then we are all good at Copaki. Still can’t believe it. Luckily, I had some other dishes and they were great. Hard to mess up, but great.
Including:
BRUSCHETTA! I love bruschetta hard. I love it even more when people pronounce it right. (Hot tip: You’re probably doing it wrong.)
Including:
BRUSCHETTA! I love bruschetta hard. I love it even more when people pronounce it right. (Hot tip: You’re probably doing it wrong.)
Ours had mushrooms on top! Approved!
Next, we shared a bowl of soup. I honestly forget what kind of soup this was, but it was a pureed light colored vegetable (there aren’t that many so just you decide) and it was good.
Next, we shared a bowl of soup. I honestly forget what kind of soup this was, but it was a pureed light colored vegetable (there aren’t that many so just you decide) and it was good.
what brand of soup are you
But guess what else! They had a nice vegan dessert, can you believe it? I was expecting nothing more than fruit plates or fruit sorbets, but here they had a vegan puddingy flan type thing with candied puffed wheat bits on top. NICE!
Overall, it was a nice meal, and Copaki is a little more upscale than Corasquiggle if you are looking for a date night or something.
We also stopped by Gigi Sumos one day, a juice bar chain that is on HappyCow and says it has vegan bagels and salads too. Well, they don’t really. They can make a salad vegan by removing all the stuff in it, and they don’t have vegan salad dressings! I asked the staff, but you say you offer vegan salads; how can you do that if you don’t have vegan salad dressings? And you know what they did? They offered me MUSTARD or SWEET CHILI SAUCE. Like, both condiments straight from their bottles, undoctored to be palatable as salad dressings. I mean I chose the sweet chili but DAYUM.
even with avocado it’s sad! and look more bell peppers
Luckily, after that unfortunate stop, we went to the MOST BEAUTIFUL land of produce – Mercado dos Lavradores! This famous market is a must-do for tourists. It’s a giant building full of food vendors. The main hall is vegetables and fruit and nuts and spices and dried fruit and all kinds of good stuff, and there are restaurants and hot food vendors all along the sides. Because it’s so touristed, the produce is expensive, but you can get INSANE stuff. This is where I found my most favorite avocado of all time. You ready? She ready.
Look at those gorgeous things! Do you see the giant avocado? We bought that one that is standing upright – it was bigger than my face. Luckily our travel was intra-EU so we got to bring it home! It made a lot of guacamole. Okay so because it was so big it was kind of bland, but I don’t care, it’s so cool. If it were a rocking chair it would be a stop on a long-drive through the American West.
I don’t have a picture of the next coolest find we made in the Mercado, but I remember it vividly. A few vendors stopped us and made us try pieces of a special Madeiran hybrid fruit called – I shit you not – ‘ADAM’S RIB’. Making things even more interesting, it’s a hybrid of pineapple and banana. And against all odds it sort of reminded me of custard apple! It was more fun than delicious but it still was good enough for us to buy a few. SO FUN.
Okay, that’s it for food in this post. Sadly, we didn’t get to what many say is the best restaurant in Madeira for vegans, Restaurant Olives, but maybe next time. And there’s some happy news: the next Madeira post will be a fancy restaurant review, a part of the Vegan Michelin series!
LODGING
Funchal is the kind of place where you really will want a baller resort to stay in. Without sandy beaches, you’ll want to swim in a nice pool. Also, this isn’t the kind of city like Paris or London where you want to spend as many seconds as possible seeing all the sights because there’s never enough time to see it all (‘there’s no time! there’s NEVER ANY TIME!’). That’s not the vibe here. You’ll see some stuff like I shared in the previous post but you’re gonna want to relax in the hotel. Also, the hotels get the most beautiful beachfront so the views are amazing. We did a lot of research trying to find the nicest place that was still a value for money, and we decided on the Porto Bay resort. Porto Bay actually is three different resorts, and if you stay in one you have access to the amenities (restaurants, gyms, pools, tennis courts, kids clubs (so many families), mini golf, &c) in all three, so it was a great decision. They have the Cliff Bay (which I think is the most expensive), the Porto Santa Maria, and the Porto Mare. We chose the latter. And we liked it, and we loved it.
one of many sun bed areas
This was the view from inside our room.
What’s out there, you ask? Let’s go see!
Oh it’s just one of the FIVE pools at the Porto Mare alone! While I of course swam in this one just to have done it, it wasn’t super hot to make it my regular pool. Luckily, some of those five are indoor. If you know me, you know I love an indoor pool, like to a weird degree. Look how beautiful these options were!
That one was so big it snaked its way to be part outdoor pool. SO FUN.
There were also jacuzzis and steam rooms all over the place. And while the gym was a little hard to get to (down to the basement and then up again sort of?) it was a pretty good gym! My only sadness about this stay is that there were tennis courts literally outside our wing but we didn’t play.
The food at Porto Mare was pretty good too. As with all hotel buffet breakfasts, there was tons of cereal and fruit but nothing great on the hot food side. But, they had Alpro yogurt! So it was overall a win.
Now I bet right now you are thinking, if you loved this place so much why did you say you stayed at a different place? Well, Madeira can get crazy winds, and so it wasn’t a huge surprise that our flight home to London was cancelled because of them. EasyJet transported our entire flight from the airport to a hotel that was much, much better than I expected of EasyJet (I expected a trash motel). It was called the Pestana Ocean Bay.
It’s that green bit. Not the nicest place, but still pretty good. Checking in the entire flight took hours, sadly, as the hotel was not ready for such a madhouse. We were originally given a basement room but it had ants (omg maybe it was a trash motel and I forgot) so I went back to reception and demanded we be moved, and we got a much nicer room on the top floor! Awesome.
We were all given tokens for the dinner buffet, which was fine. Nothing special but they had enough dishes out in the giant buffet that were veg. We talked to some fellow passengers (ack) and wondered when we’d be notified about our rescheduled flight. The email came late that night: they were putting us on a flight the next night/morning at 1 AM!!! ONE. AM. And since this is Madeira, most of the people were supes old! This sucked. We’d get in to London at what, 3-4 am? And back home no earlier than 5am and have to go to work? No no NO this will not stand! Luckily, they offered money back if you chose not to accept their shitastic rescheduling, so we refused and booked a NORMAL HUMAN TIMED flight with British Airways. We still had another whole morning to explore though, so we walked along the beach and the caves near this end of Funchal.
Okay so that’s two hotels; what’s this talk about a third? Well our flight out of London was at 7am, so we decided that rather than getting up at 3 or 4 am beforehand and hating the world on our first day in Madeira, we’d sleep at the airport and only dislike the world on our first day. We stayed at the YotelAir in Gatwick Airport and you know what? It was super fun and comfy. It’s a pod hotel, meaning the rooms are tiny little compartments and you feel like you’re on a submarine or something. (Or an overnight train!!) But it was clean and comfy and even though everything was a weird purple haze, it was great! Nice bed too.
ahhh so similar to our train journeys!
There are buttons to bring the bed down for sleeping!
The check-in process was so smooth, maybe the smoothest at any hotel ever. The staff was super nice. And it was weirdly fun to be able to change into pajamas and then go out and shop at the airport Boots and stuff!
So except for the aforementioned fancy dinner, that’s it for Madeira! I hope you consider it for a future vacay, especially if you are old or have kids. I hope to go back someday! Oh and here is a look at my favorite Funchal graffiti:
Send it to your friends named Sam and have a good day!
