Well the toilet door open at least we had a shower we could use.
We went down to breakfast which was a bit more like a euro breakfast with chunks of thin bacon stuck together with sometimes beef sausage and some times just hot dogs. Ocassionally we had a few fried eggs for breakfast so it wasn’t too bad and still they had weird breakfasts that most people avoided. There were plenty of goo stuff too so it wasn’t a bad idea.
First idea was a day out in Madeira town to get the hang on the free bus and see what happened. We waited a few minutes and caught the bus and decided to walk over to the greener of a market area (turned out to be anything) but, we got hijacked by an ex-mancunion Mancunion trying to get people to visit his time share places. Well we drew two tickets and got a safari/jeep tour and a trip roud the Northern part of the islan (or so he said). All we had to do was listen to his bestest sales pitch at the nearest local hotel. Took us about 15 minutes drive and the hotel looked a damn site better than ours – they had bog doors!
So we sit and listen to all his talk and get the walk around the hotel and told the venue was actually spread over several areas, wow! We had our free drink and after abouthalf an hour he started talking about money and it was all stupid euros. Lots and lots of euros, and you had to pay for your own flights. Not really a big deal as we loathed our hotel and the cost was ridiculpus. Told him that his price was way too high and without flights it was a waste of time. Even Annette agreed, so we got the times for the free stuff and left.
We were lucky as tonight was to be the last night of the towns play acting to select the best fireworks for this new year. So we walked back to the coast an found a good spot to sit down and wait for the fireworks. There were a few blasts going off all over the place and loads of dumn asses trying to get in front of everyone who was siting down patiently. There was some British tart with her familly walked and stood right in front of us, but got moved to the right by protest. She looked half cut and behaved like it – didn’t stop her and her family performing. Still it was a good night out and we saw all the fireworks, which were mostly up in the air.
We had gone back to the hotel to pick up the disasterous meal before getting a taxi to the front. It was a dismal as before and we mostly had cakes. The meals were going to be pretty mean by the look of things. After the fireworks, spectacular Portugees we started walking back through the masses that were all after a ride home. We walked about half way along the beech front and got a ride back and it was quite a walk from what I remember. Anyway, we went down to the local bar to see what entertainment was on, I was feeling tired anyway. It was a local group, mixture of Russian, Belgian and a local chap from what I could remember. What’s more they were quite good so we got ourselves a couple of seats and a couple of drinks.
It would take us about a week to realise the drinks all came out of premixed taps! The whole holiday was one big con! Not to say it wasn’t fun as we had plenty to do in the day and it was alright to stuff up on food at the pools to prepare for the garbage at night. All in all it was a typical Thompson balls up and we intended to let them know about this on our return. Annette is still trying to sue them for a good refund, although I expect we’ll get no more than £100 if we’re lucky. So it was the end of the night at about 1115hrs despite the group willing to play on and we went back to our rooms for another nights sleep.