It has been reported that the Portuguese government is planning to open the airline market so that airline companies can operate between Madeira and the mainland Portugal. Until now these connections were considered to be a public service that only Portuguese companies had the privilege to participate. Now it seems that from May this year low cost airliners such as easyJet will be able to operate between the Madeira Islands and mainland.

easyJet (LSE: EZJ) is a low cost airline officially known as easyJet Airline Company Limited, based at London Luton Airport. The airline operates frequent scheduled services for leisure and business passengers and serves more than 200 routes between more than 65 European airports. (source: Wikipedia)

Latest Update! EASYJET will start regular flights to Madeira as of October 2007!

Holidays can be made memorable with cruise vacations whereby you can explore places and travel on a cruise. You can choose from among a variety of cheap cruises by exploring various vacation deals online. Make a reservation into the miami hotels and you will get entitles to exclusive vacation and travel packages. These packages would include cheap airline tickets other facilities. Thus flights can also be a reasonable option when planning a vacation. It is a fact that flight travel time is less than the time taken by cruises thus time is saved by flying to your destination. Make a sensible choice of hotel reservations to ensure a comfortable and relaxing holiday experience which is not that heavy on your pocket too.

From the website of the Madeira Regional Tourism Department you can download the Cultural Agenda for the month March 2007. The Cultural Agenda is published every month by the Madeira Cultural Affairs Department (DRAC).

Cultural Agenda, March 2007 – english (516 Kb)

Those who come to Madeira often and hires a car to drive around might have noticed that some locals think that they were born too slow and seek to cross the borders of speed limits. Not only cars, but motorcycles, trucks and even some buses. Luckily not all members of the road have this ‘kick’.

But often you will hear from behind the roaring sound of a motor-devil that is announcing his presence … passes you by in a wink of your eyes .. and vanishes in the next curve leaving you with a impression of one second.

Most of these bikers do not care much about their own life and the only thing they want is to reach the climax of breaking the speed limits on the road.

Look at the video …. made here on Madeira. Watch the speedometer! This is low-flying! Guess how these guys are ‘dressed’ on their bikes (the only sure protection would be the helmet).

And if the person who added this video is the one who was driving …. you would not believe how old he is …..

Click twice on the arrow in the image to start the video. If this does not work, then go here to visit the corresponding YouTube page.

Winston Churchill is one of the many great names the island of Madeira had the honour to have as a visitor. Other visitors we can recall are Empress Sissi of Austria, Emperor Karl I of Austria – Karl von Hapsburg (also known as Charles IV of Hungary), or George Bernard Shaw and so on.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, a nature lover, visited the island not only for its landscape, the flowers, the beautiful scenes for his paintings, … but also to recuperate from the fatigue and illness that he started to surfer those days.

Accompanied by his wife Clementine and his daughter Diana, Churchill arrived in Funchal aboard the liner, The Durban Castle, on the 2nd of January 1950. They stayed at the Reid’s Hotel. Churchill worked on his war memoirs and was impressed with the various landscapes Madeira had to offer (and still offers) such as Camâra de Lobos, where he painted various pictorial images of the village.

No, do not be frightened! There was no earthquake here on Madeira. On the contrary of the Azores Islands … the archipelago of Madeira is very stable. Even when you consider that the whole archipelago (Madeira, Porto Santo and Desertas) emerged from the sea thanks to large eruptions and volcano activities 700,000 years ago.

Below you will see an image of the seismic activity of the mainland (Portugal) and Madeira (left corner below) of the last month.

The next image is of the seismic activity of Açores the last month:

For more seismologic information go to The Portuguese Meteorological Institute

Of course … this does not mean we will never have a quake …. you never know when Mother Nature will a bad day ….

Here are some pictures of the Carnival parade last that took place Saturday

(By Willisha)

Yesterday my friend and I have treated ourselves with a beauty day in the newest hotel of Madeira, The Golden Residence Hotel (www.goldenresidencehotel.com). The hotel offers good Spa & Wellness facilities, with all kinds of treatments and packages, for reasonable prices.

We started with a Rasul (maybe you have the same question as me: what is a Rasul???). Well, this is a steam shower, you apply several sorts of clay all over your body (white for the face, yellow for the décolleté, brown for the belly, grey for the elbows, knees and feet and brown (lots of brown!) for the rest of the body. This relaxes you already and detoxes the body. You can do this alone or with your partner or friend (there is place for 2 persons), you can imagine the fun we had! After 20 minutes a soft shower started to sprinkle, so we could get rid of all the colours of our body.

My next step was the SoftPack. This is a superb experience: a bath that doesn’t make you wet! You are floating on a hot water mattress, while your body is absorbing the Aloe Vera (for example). After 10 minutes I was sleeping!

To complete the program you can choose for a massage like I did, but next time I want to experience the hot stone treatment. After a nice lunch in the restaurant it was time to enjoy the Turkish bath and the sauna.

This was our first visit, but surely not the last one!

Would you like to write a short review of a (special) place you recently have visited here on Madeira Island? Then contact the editor.

There are a few ways to see the city of Funchal from sky. By helicopter …. by cable car …. from the cable balloon at the Marina.

But did you know there is another way to see all the Funchalense rooftops from above? Namely from a paraglide.

A guy from Madeira started his paragliding stunt from the mountain side behind Funchal and went all the way down …. to the beach at the Marina (maybe to go for a swim later on). All this (except the swimming part) he has captured it on film and placed it on YouTube.

Click twice on the arrow in the image to start the video. If this does not work, then go here to visit the corresponding YouTube page.

Alberto João Cardoso Gonçalves Jardim, (born Funchal, Madeira Island, February 4, 1943) president of the regional government of Madeira, resigns his office as a protest to the Portuguese government’s 2007 budget, which reduces fund for the islands.

According to Jardim the new budget would mean that he would not be able to complete projects undertaken during his 2004-2008 term. “This happens in the middle of our mandate. It’s a violation of our legitimate expectations“.

However the island is not in crisis as most people would expect when a government resigns. Since 1978 Alberto João Jardim (a Social Democrat) became successively and democratically elected for President of the Regional Government of Madeira all these years. He said he would run again in the next elections and “show the people of Madeira I am not escaping or jumping ship when times are hard.”

His resignation will cause early elections of which the expectations are that he will win again and renew his leadership term till 2011. Actually you could say that this resignation is more kind of a ‘reset‘.

Charles count de Lambert is a famous French/Russian aviator. He was the first student taught by Wilbur Wright in France. On October 18, 1909, he was the first to fly over Paris and around the Eiffel Tower. In addition, he set an altitude record that same day.

He was also the first aviator to fly in Holland (The Netherlands) on June 27, 1909, with a Wright Flyer. Although the flight only lasted 3.5 minutes! This will be commemorated in 2009 as the centenary of the nationally historical flight.

Did you know that he was born in Funchal (island of Madeira) on December 30 1865 at 03:30 …. and to be precise in ‘Quinta Vigia’ … the Official Residence of the President of the Regional Government. Did you know that ‘Quinta Vigia’ was before called ….. ‘Quinta Lambert’ … owned by the count Alexandre Carlos Lambèrt, adjutant of the Russian Empress.

We can safely say that …. one of the world famous aviators was …. from Madeira.

More about Charles count de Lambert you can find in the website of Gerard J. van Heusden: www.charlesgraafdelambert.nl