Angra: Churches, forts...

...and a green kiosk crammed with liqueur bottles.

"Sedna" and "Babette" are on safari in Heroic Angra. Or Angra do Heroísmo in Portuguese. Post-card perfect houses line the streets. They are white, decorated with broad bands of bright colors around the windows and doorways. Red-tiled roofs. The many light-red ones are new, restored after the New Year's Eve earthquake in 1980. There are cobbled streets up and down the steep hills. Lined with typical Portuguese patterned sidewalks: black and white, basalt and marble. The hills above provide a backdrop of small green pastures enclosed in lava-stone walls lined with blue hortensia bushes.
The impression, as at Faial, solid farming country with tidy towns.

From down in the amphitheater of the new marina we can see it all. Starting with sky-blue and white Misericordia Church, chiming the hour day and night. Its twin bell-towers and scrolled façade once part of the first Azores hospital complex, in 1492!
We climb the stone steps up to the church, walk up the cobbled street to the big square by the impressive town hall. This is where we find the 8-sided little green kiosk filled from floor to ceiling with bottles of liqueur. We find a red-parasolled table and try out the ice cream and coffee. For meals the serving girl braves the busy street, hurrying back and forth with plates of fries, sandwiches.
We force our Pico-weary legs further up the steep Angra streets. Up to a great look-out point topped with a yellow pointy pyramid. In the middle ages they thought this would be a good place to build a fort. So they built one. Soon to be out-dated with modern Renaissance forts nearer the coastline. There was a stream of Spanish galleons loaded with (stolen?) New World silver and gold to protect from Sir Francis Drake and other pirates. All sea routes to anywhere seemed to meet at The Azores, mid-Atlantic.
We get a great view of this World Heritage Site town. A town which became a renaissance City in 1534. We can see the Cathedral, Santissimo da Sé from 1570. Its twin towers, conical as the volcanoes, but patterned in squiggly black and white lines.
Down the hill again. And up the broad Cathedral steps. There we meet again our Portuguese Pico-climber friend, Clara Agapito. She and a French friend sailed here to Terceira last night.
Inside the church we get a free organ concert. Practicing for Sunday? The dark tones from the huge pipes match the murky interior of the 16th century stone church. Nuns kneeling by huge columns at small alters, candles flickering. I wouldn't be surprised to see Vasco da Gama appear from behind one of the stone columns.