Did indeed go there, on honeymoon as it goes. We loved it - I’ll try and keep this short and digestible, but I am procrastinating from doing some work, soooo:
Landed and took off from main island of Sao Miguel - islands are basically in 3 groups, the main one and a tiny one in the south east, the central group of 5, and 2 more off to the north west (can be tricky to get to these two).
Sao Miguel is pretty good, it has setes cidades (that volcanic lake thing that’s been shown a couple of times up thread, we went horse riding around it), and some good volcanic pools and stuff in the east (eg Furnas), but I think you’re better off heading into the central group. Car hire is pretty much essential for Sao Miguel if you do explore a bit. It wouldn’t have affected us, but we were recommended to itinerise to spend more time at the end of the trip in sao miguel, rather than the start, because the small planes and boats that you use to get between the islands can be postponed semi-frequently due to bad weather, so you don’t want a couple of day’s delay to make you miss your flight home.
We got a boat to Terceira in the central group, and absolutely loved Angra - we stayed in an old fortress, and the town/harbour is like walking around Monkey Island. More volcanic stuff to do, including lava tunnels. We then got another boat, to Pico, and stayed there a short while in Madalena - went swimming with wild dolphins and whale watching, climbed up pico volcano itself (still steaming at the top - our guide melted a cheese toasty at the peak) and stayed overnight in the pit crater - the weather was quite cloudy beneath us, which was a shame as the views are amazing apparently, but it was crystal clear above us, so saw milky way etc, pretty fantastic. Day trip to Horta, which was nice, a load of mega rich yachts, I think it’s the main (or one of) stops when crossing the north atlantic. Then back to Sao Miguel - we went out via Lisbon (cos we like Lisbon) but back to London.
