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Showing posts with label Europcar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europcar. Show all posts

Saturday, January 13, 2024

Beziers Airport, Excellent Lemon Cake, Europcar, Learn Esential Car Locking!

 Good little souvenir shop and adjacent cafe which served a nice lemon pound cake,which we later found was a thing of the region of France.

Europcar Collection

The car collections kiosks are all around are forecourt so easy to find. 

However, our Europcar rep wanted to go home on Sunday afternoon. Phoned us while we were having our coffee at the airport to ask where we were and please hurry up. He left us to photograph the car and find out how weverything worked on a hybrid. The whole week we were puzzled, although we had a handy manual. 

Essential Information - Locking Doors From Inside

A pity they didn't give us vital information, such as how to lock the car doors from the inside. Later that week, at a traffic light, an odd looking man ran up and opened the car door. He repeated two words, several times. I speak French. At first I thought he was asking for money in a foreign language, which I do not speak, non European, such as Arabic. 

Then I wondered if he wanted a lift to another town, which was not a place we knew or attended to visit. 

I said, 'No! No understand!' i shook my head, frowning.

I pulled the door shut - and my assailant pushed the door shut, annoyed. As the lights changed, the car behind hooted, and my husband accelerated off.

We stopped at the next convenient pull-in. We looked up in the manual how to lock the doors from inside. A small flat square shape in the elbow height door handle could be depressed to lock the door. Lift it to release the door lock.

Leaving Beziers, taking off in the Ryanair plane, a week later, I was in an empty row. So I moved to the window seat and I took a picture. Low rise airport, two storeys high.

Ryanair plane from window seat, taking off from Beziers airport. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

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Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Easy Walks and Viewpoints in Madeira, especially Cabo Girao, Camara De Lobos

File:Cabo Girão - Skywalk.JPG
Photo from author Dirk Klasseen in Wikipedia.

Problem
How to get around?

Answers
If you want to drive your own car, you can hire at the airport. Or go online, find a good deal and take a 5 euro taxi from a Funchal seafront hotel to the Europcar or other office in Funchal, the capital city. Booking through our hotel coast about 50 Euros a day, about what our friends paid for the whole week.

Your choices
Taxi tours. You have a choice of six different tours. The map of the tours was in the back seat pocket of the taxi we took from the airport to our hotel.

Open top  hop on hop off bus tours with recorded guide:
Red buses.
Yellow buses.
One person said the yellow bus was very good and dropped her and her husband at the famous Reid hotel.

Local buses.
Levada walking tours.
Contact a company which does guided walking tours along the lavadas. I heard several guides who spoke fluent English as well as German and other languages, dropping into English when I stopped them, then back into German or other languages.

The cost of a guided Levada tour is about 12 euros for 2 persons, according to the sign on the tourist office kiosk which I passed late at night when it was closed.

Top sights include:
Botanical Gardens.
Wicker seated toboggan descent from uphill Monte, which I presume translates as Mountain or Mountain peak, pushed by two energetic people running in white suits.

Overlook At Cabo Girao, Camara de Lobos
One of the yellow top bus circuits takes you uphill to the unnerving glass-bottom lookout point, or Skywalk, which is free, at Cabo Girao, Camaara de Lobos. The open top yellow bus stops here. The viewpoint is a semi-circular suspended glass platform jutting out from the top of the cliffs, said to be the highest cliff skywalk in Europe.

Behind are a couple of snacks bars and various gift shops.
(The toilet costs 50 cents.)

Translation
I thought cabo was cape but Google Translate offered me cable. Nothing for Girao. Camara is chamber, de is in or of, lobos is wolf. So this was once a wolf's lair.

Easiest levada walks:
From Ribero (meaning river) Frio (meaning cold). The bus stops there. You can also park for free. The toilets are free in the cafe on the upper slope. The lady at the bar doesn't bother to check what you are doing although you walk past her. By the time you have done a half hour walk or two hour walk you are probably ready for a coffee anyway. Gift shop next door.

The walk on the lower slope (below the road) is alongside a levada, a canal about a foot wide alonside a wide path. The path eventually narrows.

On the upper side is another path, much easier, flatter, wide. A small cafe, barely more than a kisk is half way. At the end is a viewing platform with birds hoping for food.

Information
From the circular information kiosk on the front lawn of the seafront Pestana Casino Hotel.

Useful Websites
visitmadeira.com
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g1190957-d1464866-r179794621-Cabo_Girao-Camara_De_Lobos_Madeira_Madeira_Islands.html
http://www.visitmadeira.pt/en-gb/explore/detalhe/cabo-girao-viewpoint