Ponta Delgada; Monday, 27 May, 2019

I had a relatively early flight the following morning, so I had to get up early and leave, though thankfully, not before my breakfast hamper was delivered.

I’d pre-booked a taxi back to the airport with the same company that had picked my up on my arrival, so I headed down to the main road where they were supposed to pick me up from and waited. I waited until 10 minutes after the scheduled pickup time with no sign of them and then tried to call the contact number I’d been given – which didn’t work. Thankfully I was close to the main taxi rank in town and, despite the early time, there was a taxi on stand who was able to take me up to the airport for just another €10, on top of what I’d already effectively been scammed out of by the shuttle company.

I checked in for my flight and headed through to the departures lounge to wait for my flight back to Madeira.

It was a pretty slow boarding process as they checked everyone into a long queue and waited to have everyone in the queue before walking us out onto the tarmac and over to the plane, but it did mean that once we got to the plane everyone was on pretty quickly.

Only about 10 minutes late we pushed back and headed out across the Atlantic for our 2-hour flight to Madeira…