The hung quarter-hour
City and ocean beneath your feet, rising.
CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Michael Gaylard from Horsham, UK โ CC BY 2.0 ยท Michael Gaylard from Horsham, UK โ CC BY 2.0 ยท Michael Gaylard from Horsham, UK โ CC BY 2.0
Its record is excellent across a century and a half: two professional drivers, their boots and ropes the brakes, the lane traffic-closed in working hours โ and children over three usually ride in parents' laps. The nervous can simply watch below the launch: half the joy is the riders' laughter anyway.
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Monte is Funchal's complete rite: the cable car lifts you from the old town 560 metres over city and ocean in a hung quarter-hour โ to Monte village with its pilgrim church (the exiled last Austrian emperor Karl I lies there) and gardens. And the descent is the island's legend: the carros de cesto โ wicker sledges on wooden runners driven by two straw-hatted men in wide rubber boots who run, steer and brake by rope down two kilometres of asphalt โ genuine transport since 1850 become earth's most amusing street ride (Hemingway rode and wrote it) โ ten minutes of pure laughter resembling nothing. The full equation: cable car up, Monte church and gardens (with Monte Palace the great neighbour), toboggan down to Livramento โ taxi or walk to the centre. Go early: the sledge queue after cruise-ship landfall runs a full hour.
City and ocean beneath your feet, rising.
The sledge's runners and ropes โ a 170-year trade.
Austria's last Karl in Monte church.
Caminho das Babosas 8, 9060-291 Funchal