Did you know that experts have warned people not to use hotel kettles to clean their underwear? That means that not only is that actually a thing, but it happens enough that experts have needed to warn people not to. Seriously, how does someone even think to do that? And why not just fill up a sink with the already boiled water? I didn't even know that putting things into a boiling kettle was a thing until someone said that you shouldn't boil eggs in a kettle a few years ago. That one surprised me and also seemed a little bit ingenious if it works, but this one disgusted me.
Presumably the people doing it don't also use it for it's intended purpose, so it seems like a totally self centred thing to do. "Well I don't drink tea or coffee, so this can just be a tiny underwear washing machine", no consideration for the people who might need to use it in the future. Apparently it doesn't even do a good job of cleaning the underwear, so all you have is hot wet pants out of the bargain.
So this year, we thought we would go on an island holiday, after a bit of shopping around, we settled on the Portuguese island of Madeira and in doing so, single handedly reduced the average age of people on the island of Madeira for 1 week. That's only a half joke, we were asked by a couple in a cable car if we weren't a bit young to be in Madeira. We were also in the cable car, we weren't just passing underneath and looked so out of place that we prompted a shouted question from the sky. That would have been pretty aggressive and may have made us feel unwelcome.
The cable car was taking us up a hill at the time, Madeira is pretty much just hills, walk for a couple of minutes in any direction and the road either becomes almost impossibly steep for anyone not actually out for a hike, or it leads to a tunnel through the hills that you cannot actually see the end of. Of course you are going to walk through the tunnel because that is a much more appealing prospect than turning around and demonstrating to any passersby that you don't know where you're actually going and you will squeal with delight when the sunlight starts to pour in as you round the curve and you realise that the tunnel doesn't continue across the entire island for some reason. Even though there was no indication at the entrance that the tunnel was almost infinite, you still weren't sure until you saw the other end. Of course that tunnel will just lead to a big road junction and the only logical direction to take is through another seemingly endless tunnel and although this one will have signs on the wall indicating the length of the tunnel, you will still wonder if for some reason the 'M' stands for Miles instead of Metres and if the other end of the tunnel just leads to another road junction and you will be forced to walk through another tunnel and then another for the rest of your lives because you can't work out how to leave the unending maze of tunnels and you only saw other pedestrians in the first tunnel and the cars are going by too fast to stop anyone and ask for directions, which of course you would never do anyway because in spite of the evidence to the contrary you will still believe in your own sense of direction winning through and delivering you back to civilisation eventually.
Or not, I don't know how you spend your holidays.
The best thing about Monte though and the main reason for taking the cable car up there (and not purchasing the return journey even though the return journey is less than 50% more than the one way journey) is the optional mode of transport back down the hill, the apparently quite famous toboggan ride! (Here's a link: http://www.madeira-web.com/PagesUK/monte-toboggan.html). You get to sit in a basket and be dragged down a hill by 2 men dressed for a game of boules. The toboggan brings you down about half way and there is a choice of a taxi down the rest of the way or just walk down the rest of the way. Naturally we walked, it was downhill, how hard could it be? Quite hard as it turns out, but we made it.
