Madeira - Day 37 - Sugar Museum

After the walk yesterday, I had a relaxing morning and then walked down to the old section of the city and signed up for another walk, my 5th with FloraTravel and probably my last as I don't think I am going to do the one listed as "Difficult" in all the brochures and guide books. Its the one up to and around the highest 2 mountain peaks.

I wandered around, reading menus, as I thought that I might have lunch out. I don't know what makes me choose or not choose a restaurant. It was cooler than it has been so I knew I wanted to be in the sun. It seemed like my choices were either the "Menu del Dia", set menu, and I didn't feel like that much food, or they were a la carte and pricey.

So I just walked around and didn't stop to eat.

This kind of tree, no idea what it is, has a green pod/fruit and they have just started popping open and the white fluffy seeds are floating through the air just like the cottonwoods do at home in June. It's "snowing" in Madeira.

I noticed this boat was moored beside the cruise ships the other day.

She is actually a relatively new ship (2007) and is used for youth sail training and participates in tall ship races and regattas

I did end up having lunch in the square in front of the Sugar Museum. I was told the soup of the day was carrot. It was very tasty and only about 2Euro but there was only enough carrot in that potato soup to give it a bit of an orange colour.

I had hoped that this museum would tell me something of the history of sugar production on the island as it was a major driving force and source of a great deal of wealth when Madeira was at the peak of its trading days.

However it turned out that it was a display of artifacts found when excavating an area that had been the house of a wealthy sugar merchant. It was interesting to see the comparison of the piles of broken crockery they found and then the pieces all put together.

One particular well had material at the bottom from 3 different decades. Although all the signage was in Portuguese but there were brochures in English with full explanations. I was able to read them because when I had gone to sign up for the walk this morning the person who mans the office said "Oh, I think these might be yours" and handed me my prescription glasses. I had given them up for lost. He said I left them there the first day I came in to book a walk and he kept forgetting to give them to me when I came in. What a relief. Now I wont have to rely on the "cheaters" I had bought to replace them in my backpack.

The only thing related to sugar was this "Sugar Loaf"

A sugarloaf was the usual form in which refined sugar was produced and sold until the late 19th century, when granulated and cube sugars were introduced. A tall cone with a rounded top was the end product of a process in which dark molasses was refined into white sugar.
The raw sugar was refined by a series of boiling and filtering processes. When, at the final boiling, it was considered ready for granulation and was poured into a large number of inverted conical molds. These were usually made of either brown earthenware or sheet iron with an internal treatment of slip or paint respectively, and each stood in its own collecting pot. Over the next few days most of the dark syrup and noncrystalline matter drained through a small hole in the bottom of the mould into the collecting pot. To improve the whiteness of the sugar, repeated applications of either a solution of white clay or of loaf sugar dissolved in warm water was applied to the broad end of the loaf. This slowly drained through the loaf, readily uniting with any remaining molasses or other coloring matter and removing it to the collecting pot. The loaves were then tapped out of the molds, dried in a stove room that would have contained hundreds of loaves, trimmed to their final shape and wrapped, usually, in blue paper to enhance their whiteness. From Wikipedia.


This is the form of sugar that is on the Madeiran flag.