For those of you who love TRs with photos of food, drink, and 5 star accommodations, please hit the back button. I don't really do the whole photo thing, and I couldn't really care less about food. The disclaimer completed, here goes...
As my wife's caseload at work just skyrocketed, our plans of spending 3 weeks in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were shot to sh*t. Thus, I had to come up with a couple of smaller trips to moderately obscure places that did not require multiple travel days. As I am enamored with islands in general, particularly those that are somewhat obscure and have mountains to climb and roughly zero beaches, the Azores came to mind. After doing some digging, we settled on a somewhat whirlwind trip over an extended Labour Day weekend. I managed to add 3 new airlines (B6, S4, and SP) in the process, as well as knocking off another country high point (I'm a rock-climbing, list-keeping nerd...).
8/28/2014 B6 DCA-BOS
After dropping our goofy little pitbull at the kennel for the first time and shedding some tears, my far better half and I headed off for DCA and my first ever flight on B6. As S4 (Aero Acores Internacional) does not really partner with anyone of note in the US, I needed the cheapest option to get to BOS, and B6 had sub $200 RTs.
The flight was completely and utterly unmemorable, although it was very, very strange to not have priority boarding and to sit in the back, back, way back of the A320. My wife thought it was a good chance to to see how commoners fly. I can't recommend it.
8/28/2014 S4 BOS-PDL
I booked a roughly 3.5 hour layover in BOS, as I couldn't interline our luggage, and wanted to ensure that we had enough cushion in case of delays. We dragged our bag from C to E and found the S4 desks completely inundated with pax heading to PDL and LIS (New England having a very large Portuguese and Azorian population). Thankfully, I noticed a tiny sign for Sata Plus members and C pax, and was able to force my way through the enormous Y line into a tiny C line. Boarding passes and lounge invite in-hand, we headed for an insanely long security line (I have Pre, wife does not). 35 minutes later, we managed to get to the front.
Our invite was for the Air France lounge, which conjured images of a spartan, but well-kept European lounge. Unfortunately, the real AF lounge is an overcrowded and dank basement room with crappy food and beverage options, no wifi, and surly employees. We did manage to hang out for awhile, but then departed for the far end of the 3rd world terminal E gate for S4, which was surrounded by, conservatively, 12,000 people. Some unintelligible announcements were made as boarding time came and went. Finally, roughly an hour after scheduled departure, the crowd surged forward and boarding commenced. Thankfully, I'm a big enough guy with enough attitude to shove as hard as the next pax, so we managed to mosh our way to the gate and onto the elderly A310 that would take us to PDL.
After spending 20 minutes waiting in the jetway (Plane wasn't ready for 224 grumpy pax quite yet), we finally settled into out 1980s ear C seats. The plane was clean, but the cabin was definitely a blast from the past (Circa 1993, IIRC), with no PTVs, power ports, and old-school barcaloungers. At this point, I conked out for the remainder of the flight, thanks to the eyeshades from the spartan amenity kit, but my wife reports that the food was edible-ish, and that the cabin service reminded her of a bunch of confused people who had read a book about running an airline. They apparently fiddled with the lightswitches so much that it looked like a rave with strobelights. Additionally, my wife was chided for having her reading lamp on during the take-off roll, as S4 apparently wants a dark cabin. I was blissfully asleep during all of this.
We landed roughly 90 minutes late at PDL and disembarked via stairs (No jetbridges) and had a 90 second, very pleasant immigration experience. One thing S4 does well is baggage, as t took roughly 5 minutes for our bag to arrive.
Ponta Delgada and the island of San Miguel
PDL is a fairly modern and quite pleasant little airport, thus it was very easy to find the rental car desks. Unfortunately, the hertz desk was unmanned and the agent was MIA. There was a furious German couple fuming at the desk about the lack of service when I arrived. I decided to head out for a smoke and walked to the rental car lot and found the agent. She was very pleasant and spoke amazing English (My Portuguese is extremely rusty and I generally add in a bunch of unintelligible Argentinian Spanish). We ended up with a massive Peugeot 5008 as an upgrade for being more patient than Germans (Not hard to do)and as because Americans apparently love big vehicles (I'm not really American and I hate big vehicles, but that notwithstanding...).
We then headed off for Furnas and the plethora of hot springs in the area. The drive was surprisingly easy in our massive landyacht, and we were soon at the Terra Nostra Garden Hotel, where the front desk clerk was incredulous that I would have the audacity to inquire as to an early check-in, but he did deign to give me the pass that allowed us access to the gardens and the massive hot springs pool. We then went for a couple of 11am drinkies and headed to the hot springs pool for some relaxation.
The hotel was modern and bland, but did allow access to the spectacular and enormous gardens, so it wasn't a total loss. We spent the next morning driving around the island before heading to PDL to catch our flight to Pico island.
Bored yet?
8/30/2014 PS PDL-TER-PIX
We got to PDL 2 hours ahead of our flight, which was roughly 1h50 too long for a domestic flight, which annoyed my wife to no end. As there wasn't much to do, we drank and read until they boarded out Q400 roughly 5 minutes ahead of take-off. Sata Acores (Domestic airline partner of S4) boards through both doors and has open seating, so loading took roughly 5 minutes for 50ish pax.
The flight involved a quick 20 minute stop in TER, and then continued to PIX. I honestly can't remember a thing about the flight, save for the fact that there is no cabin service at all, but that the staff was extremely friendly and that everything was on-time.
A couple of days on Pico and pushing my wife ever closer to divorce...
PIX consists of one medium-sized building and a smallish runway. Bags took 2 minutes and we were driving off in our decrepit VW Polo (77,000km) within 15 minutes. We drove through the worst fog of my life whilst crossing the mountains to our hotel in Lajes.
We stayed at the Aldeia da Fonte, which has a spectatcular setting on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic and a fairly decent restaurant, but which does not have AC or even a fan in the rooms, which made for some sweaty sleeping. That aside, it is likely the best hotel on Pico.
On Sunday, we made the drive over to Montanha do Pico, the highest point in the Azores and in all of Portugal, for what should have been a pleasant 6 hour hike on a 2300m volcano. The ascent was fine, albeit steep and rocky, but my wife's newish boots gave out on the 1200m descent, and it became a bit of a deathmarch, with her cursing me for dragging her along on another one of my "easy hikes in the mountains". As I spent 15 years in CO and have roughly 500 ascents of 4000m+ peaks under my belt, I apparently have a very skewed sense as to what a quick and easy hike entailed. Thankfully, my wife descended without lasting injury and has rescinded her divorce threats.
We spent a relaxing morning the following day hobbling through vineyards before flying back to PDL for a night and half day of walking around and consuming more booze.
9/2/2014 S4 PDL-BOS
Much like our S4 flight to PDL, this one was delayed without explanation and boarded in a massive scrum. Fortunately for my wife, she exacted revenge on me by ensuring that we got to the airport with very little time to spare, but the fates favoured me in the guise of an inexplicable delay, which we spent in the tiny, but pleasant Sata Plus lounge.
The flight back featured another set of moderately clueless FAs, one of whom was extremely pleasant, and one of whom had a downright hatred for me, thanks to my placing my pillow behind my seat. The flight was otherwise fairly ordinary, and we landed in BOS 90 minutes late. Customs was, thankfully, fairly quick, as was the baggage.
9/2/2014 B6 BOS-DCA
Much like my first ever B6 flight a few days earlier, this one was quick and pleasant, save for 90 minutes of waiting at the end of the runway, thanks to flow control in DCA. We managed to land at 23:45 and were home 30 minutes later.
Overall thoughts
We really did enjoy the Azores, but will likely never return, thanks to their being 50,000 other places on out bucket list. S4 is a pretty mediocre airline, but did manage to get us back and forth without crashing or losing our bags. Honestly, they're no worse than UA or US, but I don't think I'd ever venture to try them in Y (C was $700 more for 2 people RT).
As my wife's caseload at work just skyrocketed, our plans of spending 3 weeks in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were shot to sh*t. Thus, I had to come up with a couple of smaller trips to moderately obscure places that did not require multiple travel days. As I am enamored with islands in general, particularly those that are somewhat obscure and have mountains to climb and roughly zero beaches, the Azores came to mind. After doing some digging, we settled on a somewhat whirlwind trip over an extended Labour Day weekend. I managed to add 3 new airlines (B6, S4, and SP) in the process, as well as knocking off another country high point (I'm a rock-climbing, list-keeping nerd...).
8/28/2014 B6 DCA-BOS
After dropping our goofy little pitbull at the kennel for the first time and shedding some tears, my far better half and I headed off for DCA and my first ever flight on B6. As S4 (Aero Acores Internacional) does not really partner with anyone of note in the US, I needed the cheapest option to get to BOS, and B6 had sub $200 RTs.
The flight was completely and utterly unmemorable, although it was very, very strange to not have priority boarding and to sit in the back, back, way back of the A320. My wife thought it was a good chance to to see how commoners fly. I can't recommend it.
8/28/2014 S4 BOS-PDL
I booked a roughly 3.5 hour layover in BOS, as I couldn't interline our luggage, and wanted to ensure that we had enough cushion in case of delays. We dragged our bag from C to E and found the S4 desks completely inundated with pax heading to PDL and LIS (New England having a very large Portuguese and Azorian population). Thankfully, I noticed a tiny sign for Sata Plus members and C pax, and was able to force my way through the enormous Y line into a tiny C line. Boarding passes and lounge invite in-hand, we headed for an insanely long security line (I have Pre, wife does not). 35 minutes later, we managed to get to the front.
Our invite was for the Air France lounge, which conjured images of a spartan, but well-kept European lounge. Unfortunately, the real AF lounge is an overcrowded and dank basement room with crappy food and beverage options, no wifi, and surly employees. We did manage to hang out for awhile, but then departed for the far end of the 3rd world terminal E gate for S4, which was surrounded by, conservatively, 12,000 people. Some unintelligible announcements were made as boarding time came and went. Finally, roughly an hour after scheduled departure, the crowd surged forward and boarding commenced. Thankfully, I'm a big enough guy with enough attitude to shove as hard as the next pax, so we managed to mosh our way to the gate and onto the elderly A310 that would take us to PDL.
After spending 20 minutes waiting in the jetway (Plane wasn't ready for 224 grumpy pax quite yet), we finally settled into out 1980s ear C seats. The plane was clean, but the cabin was definitely a blast from the past (Circa 1993, IIRC), with no PTVs, power ports, and old-school barcaloungers. At this point, I conked out for the remainder of the flight, thanks to the eyeshades from the spartan amenity kit, but my wife reports that the food was edible-ish, and that the cabin service reminded her of a bunch of confused people who had read a book about running an airline. They apparently fiddled with the lightswitches so much that it looked like a rave with strobelights. Additionally, my wife was chided for having her reading lamp on during the take-off roll, as S4 apparently wants a dark cabin. I was blissfully asleep during all of this.
We landed roughly 90 minutes late at PDL and disembarked via stairs (No jetbridges) and had a 90 second, very pleasant immigration experience. One thing S4 does well is baggage, as t took roughly 5 minutes for our bag to arrive.
Ponta Delgada and the island of San Miguel
PDL is a fairly modern and quite pleasant little airport, thus it was very easy to find the rental car desks. Unfortunately, the hertz desk was unmanned and the agent was MIA. There was a furious German couple fuming at the desk about the lack of service when I arrived. I decided to head out for a smoke and walked to the rental car lot and found the agent. She was very pleasant and spoke amazing English (My Portuguese is extremely rusty and I generally add in a bunch of unintelligible Argentinian Spanish). We ended up with a massive Peugeot 5008 as an upgrade for being more patient than Germans (Not hard to do)and as because Americans apparently love big vehicles (I'm not really American and I hate big vehicles, but that notwithstanding...).
We then headed off for Furnas and the plethora of hot springs in the area. The drive was surprisingly easy in our massive landyacht, and we were soon at the Terra Nostra Garden Hotel, where the front desk clerk was incredulous that I would have the audacity to inquire as to an early check-in, but he did deign to give me the pass that allowed us access to the gardens and the massive hot springs pool. We then went for a couple of 11am drinkies and headed to the hot springs pool for some relaxation.
The hotel was modern and bland, but did allow access to the spectacular and enormous gardens, so it wasn't a total loss. We spent the next morning driving around the island before heading to PDL to catch our flight to Pico island.
Bored yet?
8/30/2014 PS PDL-TER-PIX
We got to PDL 2 hours ahead of our flight, which was roughly 1h50 too long for a domestic flight, which annoyed my wife to no end. As there wasn't much to do, we drank and read until they boarded out Q400 roughly 5 minutes ahead of take-off. Sata Acores (Domestic airline partner of S4) boards through both doors and has open seating, so loading took roughly 5 minutes for 50ish pax.
The flight involved a quick 20 minute stop in TER, and then continued to PIX. I honestly can't remember a thing about the flight, save for the fact that there is no cabin service at all, but that the staff was extremely friendly and that everything was on-time.
A couple of days on Pico and pushing my wife ever closer to divorce...
PIX consists of one medium-sized building and a smallish runway. Bags took 2 minutes and we were driving off in our decrepit VW Polo (77,000km) within 15 minutes. We drove through the worst fog of my life whilst crossing the mountains to our hotel in Lajes.
We stayed at the Aldeia da Fonte, which has a spectatcular setting on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic and a fairly decent restaurant, but which does not have AC or even a fan in the rooms, which made for some sweaty sleeping. That aside, it is likely the best hotel on Pico.
On Sunday, we made the drive over to Montanha do Pico, the highest point in the Azores and in all of Portugal, for what should have been a pleasant 6 hour hike on a 2300m volcano. The ascent was fine, albeit steep and rocky, but my wife's newish boots gave out on the 1200m descent, and it became a bit of a deathmarch, with her cursing me for dragging her along on another one of my "easy hikes in the mountains". As I spent 15 years in CO and have roughly 500 ascents of 4000m+ peaks under my belt, I apparently have a very skewed sense as to what a quick and easy hike entailed. Thankfully, my wife descended without lasting injury and has rescinded her divorce threats.
We spent a relaxing morning the following day hobbling through vineyards before flying back to PDL for a night and half day of walking around and consuming more booze.
9/2/2014 S4 PDL-BOS
Much like our S4 flight to PDL, this one was delayed without explanation and boarded in a massive scrum. Fortunately for my wife, she exacted revenge on me by ensuring that we got to the airport with very little time to spare, but the fates favoured me in the guise of an inexplicable delay, which we spent in the tiny, but pleasant Sata Plus lounge.
The flight back featured another set of moderately clueless FAs, one of whom was extremely pleasant, and one of whom had a downright hatred for me, thanks to my placing my pillow behind my seat. The flight was otherwise fairly ordinary, and we landed in BOS 90 minutes late. Customs was, thankfully, fairly quick, as was the baggage.
9/2/2014 B6 BOS-DCA
Much like my first ever B6 flight a few days earlier, this one was quick and pleasant, save for 90 minutes of waiting at the end of the runway, thanks to flow control in DCA. We managed to land at 23:45 and were home 30 minutes later.
Overall thoughts
We really did enjoy the Azores, but will likely never return, thanks to their being 50,000 other places on out bucket list. S4 is a pretty mediocre airline, but did manage to get us back and forth without crashing or losing our bags. Honestly, they're no worse than UA or US, but I don't think I'd ever venture to try them in Y (C was $700 more for 2 people RT).