Tag Archives: Royal Caribbean

I gave Ribeira Grande short shrift on Monday’s blog. In that article you saw one church, and two photos of a factory liquor store. You probably thought, “What the heck?” Well, I only had three shots I wanted to post of Salto do Cabrito, so I threw in those images of Ribeira Grande to pad out the article. Needless to say, we now need to head back and take a more in-depth view of this charming little town and what it has to offer. Well start with heading back to that Baroque marvel, the Igreja do Divino Espírito (Church of the Holy Spirit)

Let’s zoom in on one of those Baroque details:

Now, I know some people who are so entranced by the Baroque architectural style that they tend to ignore everything else. But to them I say, “Hey… if it ain’t Baroque, don’t nix it” (is that a loud groan I heard out there). For if you do, you’d miss out on the impressive Ribeira Grande Town Hall:

Or the Teatro Ribeiragrandense (Theater Ribeira Grande). This colorful building has quite the grand appearance as you approach it from the east:

You may recall from Monday the colorful balcony shot I took at the Mulher de Capote factory liquor store. Well, here’s the rest of the façade:

Finally, if you stand next to the previously mentioned town hall, you’ll see the Big River, or in other words, the Ribeira (River) Grande (Large). Down there, below street level, is a playground (Plac Zabaw), but I was more interested in the red benches contrasting against the green grass. So, I call this shot The Red Benches:

The next two stops on our tour of São Miguel Island were the town of Ribeira Grande and the waterfall at Salto do Cabrito. Since we’re discussing the tour in chronological order, I’ll begin today’s article with Ribeira Grande. And we’ll begin with the charming and ornate façade of the Church of Espirito Santo:

How about a quick gander at a wonderful liquor store specializing in some of the local spirits? This is A Mulher de Capote (The Woman in the Cloak) factory store at 11 Rua de Goncalo Bezerra (not to be confused with actual distillery located to the south of downtown):

Of course, no Portuguese destination would be complete without at least one colorful balcony image. This is an outside view of Mulher de Capote:

Time to head out of this wonderful little town and into the countryside for a neat waterfall located about 5.2 kilometers/3.2 miles driving distance to the southeast of this store. Next stop: Cascato do Salto do Cabrito:

So, what exactly does Cascato do Salto do Cabrito translate to in English? As best I can tell, it’s something like Waterfall (or Cascade) of the Leaping (Salto) Kid (as in baby goat—Cabrito). Whatever it means, it always translates to beautiful and worth the trek:

The vegetation is this area is lush, green, and altogether wonderful. The flower at the top of this article was photographed here, as is this image: