Bloggen - Peter’s blog…Obviously!

We have landed safe and well on the lovely island of Madeira, it’s quite extraordinary here, very different. But so was the flight here too. As soon as we boarded the plane we noticed some unusual activity when they prepped the plane for departure and our suspicion was confirmed when the captain then announced “We have a 60% chance of making it to Funchal today, we have strong winds battering the runway there, but as a precaution we have taken onboard enough fuel to be able to hover above the airport for an extra couple of hours waiting for a window of opportunity. If the winds are more than 25 knots, I have to abort landing”. Now when you get a message like that from your captain, just as you sit in your chair strapped in with no chance of getting off, you are sort of prepared for a rough ride. It turned out that half the passengers had been attempting to get to Madeira the past 3 days, but it had been impossible to land because of the strong storms. As you can probably imagine there were quite some tensions in the cabin, to say the least and as we approached people started crying and screaming as the plane went through turbulence like nothing I had ever experienced before, it was all over the place. The captain did an amazing job at calming people down and he managed to get us all down safely too… but what a trip, what a rush! We were all a bit shaken up, I think Caroline and the kids more than I was. So I can report we HAVE arrived and found our lovely hotel in Jardim de Serra, the weather however …..ahhhh…. not so good! Have a look here below. This picture is the view from our balcony at the Quinta Resort, they say the weather will clear up in the next day or so. But what do we care, we are here and we are chilling out big time in our lovely Spa hotel and that is what counts right? Now off to happy hour in the bar…I need that drink

The view from the hotel, originally uploaded by Peter Carlsen.