Published: 10/16/2023

The Dos and Don’ts of Visiting the Azores:  My Best Azores Travel Tips

If you’re headed to Portugal’s Azores, chances are your visit will be a once in a lifetime experience. To make sure you don’t squander your time on these beautiful subtropical islands in the middle of the north Atlantic Ocean, I’ve pulled together all the tips and tricks I learned on my Azores visit to Terceira and Sao Miguel Islands in spring 2023.

Despite being the target of several airline ad campaigns in the last decade, the Azores aren’t a particularly well-known vacation destination for American tourists. When you tell someone you’re going to the Azores, you’ll probably spend more time explaining where the islands are rather than getting first-hand travel tips.

So let me be that travel friend whose brain you pick before your trip. If you’re anything like me, when you start researching a destination, your research ends up sparking more and more questions. Sometimes you just want someone to tell you exactly how things are. I’m happy to help!

In this post, I’ll answer all your nagging Azores questions. We’ll talk about what the Azores are really like, the best (or worst?) Azores travel guide book, how to pay for stuff in the Azores, and so much more.

Read on for my best Azores tips and tricks so you can make the most of your visit.

Pin these Azores Travel Tips and make your Azores trip unforgettable!

17 Azores Tips and Travel Tricks I Learned The Hard Way

1) Do learn some Portuguese

If you’re only fluent in English, the Azores are a great place to visit. Almost everyone we met in the Azores was prepared to communicate in English. Tourism is a major industry in the Azores, with most visitors coming from either North America or Europe.

However, it’s always important in a foreign country to remember that people have no obligation to speak to you in the language you know. While you don’t need to take a crash course in Portuguese before your Azores trip, do take a moment to learn a few common, polite phrases.

Samantha Brown says there are only four words you really need to know when visiting a foreign country: “Hello,” “Please,” and “Thank you.”

I can personally testify that after interacting with a waiter or cashier in English, thanking them in Portuguese was often all it took for their whole face to light up. It takes about 10 seconds to learn these phrases and if you know some Spanish, you’ll be able to pick up a lot of Portuguese pretty quickly. (Or so I’m told . . . I took French . . . .)

Portuguese to English:

Hello = Ola
Please = Por Favor
Thank you = Obrigado

(A note on thank you: Portuguese words are gendered. “Obrigado” is male gendered and “Obrigada” is female gendered. To avoid using the wrong gender, we found that it’s perfectly acceptable – and common – to just say “Obrigad.”)

Bonus tip: Make sure you have Google Translate on your phone for times when you do run into a language barrier. This worked beautifully to get us to and from the airport during our long layover in Ponta Delgada at the start of our 8-Day Azores adventure.

2) Don’t plan for nightlife

At their heart, the Azores are all about remote living, rich history and culture, and unbelievable landscapes and vistas. While you’ll find plenty of bars and restaurants on the Azores, you’ll be hard-pressed for a club or dance hall.

If, like me, your idea of a great travel day is exploring all day, having a delicious supper, and then maybe a little wine and a game of cards or a show, the Azores are going to be right up your alley.

If you’re looking for a bumpin’ club scene (that’s how the kids talk these days, right?) you might want to bypass that cheap flight you found to Ponta Delgada or Terceira and opt for Ibiza or Lagos instead.

3) Do visit more than one island

One of my top Azores travel tips? Visit more than one island! This was our view flying into Terceira Island from Sao Miguel. 

We only visited two islands during our 8-day visit to the Azores – Terceira and Sao Miguel. These are the two most populous islands in the Azorean archipelago and while they have plenty of similarities, I’m so glad we saw both. For example, Terceira is home to the oldest city on the islands – Angra do Heroismo – and Sao Miguel’s largest city, Ponta Delgada doesn’t hold a candle to the beauty and charm of Terceira’s historic city.

I was shocked on the plane ride home by how many of our fellow travelers had spent their entire Azores trip on Sao Miguel Island. Just like you wouldn’t get a good sense of Hawaiian culture if you only visited Honolulu, you’re also going to have a pretty skewed concept of the Azores if you only visit one island.

Unless you expect to visit the Azores semi-regularly, plan to see at least two islands during your visit. There are nine Azores islands to choose from and they each have their own character and claims to fame. Several of the islands lie hundreds of miles apart from each other, so it’s definitely not fair to assume that if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

4) Don’t depend on the Moon guidebook recommendations

Looking for the best Azores travel guidebook? Aren’t we all!

Because the Azores are a region of Portugal, they’re often relegated to a small section in Portugal guidebooks. If you want a guidebook just about the Azores – and as an autonomous region of Portugal there’s more than enough need-to-know Azores information to fill an entire book – you’ll find a very limited selection.

All three of us ended up with the Moon Azores guidebook. The book seems fine when you’re researching the islands ahead of time (although I definitely found a couple red flags as I skimmed its pages), but once you’re actually on the islands, you’ll quickly discover it has issues.

The biggest problem with the book is that the author has a very clear agenda. She knows what she thinks Azores visitors should be up to and doesn’t bother to outline other options. For example, if you take the information in the book at face value, you will assume there is only one restaurant in Furnas that serves the local stew, Cozido das Furnas. This behavior’s so blatant throughout the book that I wondered if she got paid by certain restaurants and tour companies to have their businesses highlighted.

Moral of the story: If the Moon guidebook makes it sounds like a must-do activity, do a little Googling and YouTubing before making it an integral part of your Azores itinerary. Almost everything we did based on the Moon guidebook’s enthusiastic recommendation was an absolute dud.

5) Don’t worry about restaurant reservations

I sure am glad we made a reservation to guarantee a seat at this “busy” Sao Miguel Restaurant . . . . 

Seasonality probably contributes to this Azores tip, but everything I read about the Azores before visiting insisted that you needed dinner reservations. And every restaurant that we visited in the Azores, we got right into without a reservation . . . or even a wait. “Do you have a reservation?” felt like an Azorean catchphrase for American tourists.

While I can’t guarantee that you don’t need restaurant reservations during the summer high season, I can assure you that reservations aren’t needed for an early spring visit to the Azores. This has more to do with luck than anything else, but we even managed to get into A Tasca – a well-known family style restaurant in Ponta Delgada – without a reservation because it’s where we ate our main course on our wine and food tour with Hungry Whales.

This tip also applies to eating cozido das Furnas in the Sao Miguel town of Furnas. If you visit the lakeshore in the morning when this famous stew is being prepared, you’ll run into several people trying to convince you to make lunch reservations. (We think they get a commission from the restaurants.) Not only is the stew available well outside of the lunch hour, but we had a delightful meal at Restaurante Tony’s without a reservation.

6) Do have a plan for long layovers

Ponta Delgada Airport (PDL) on Sao Miguel Airport is clean and comfortable, but very small. You may prefer to head into the city of Ponta Delgada (less than a 10 minute cab ride away) if you have a layover longer than two hours. 

One disadvantage of booking through Azores Getaways like we did is that you don’t have any control over your flight schedules. While flying is the main way to get from island to island, it’s not like Hawaii where island-hopper flights run every hour. If you miss your desired departure time in the Azores, it could very well be six hours before the next flight to the island of your choice.

For example, we took an overnight flight from Boston to Ponta Delgada and then had a nearly seven-hour layover before we could get to our final destination – Terceira Island. While we technically could have caught the 8 a.m. flight to Terceira, there was a $100 per ticket flight change fee, so we opted to stick with our 1 p.m. scheduled flight.

Azores airports are small, no-nonsense affairs. These are no MSPs or ATLs where there’s ample shopping and dining to keep you entertained for hours.

If you’re stuck with a long layover in the Azores, you’ll want to leave the airport. We didn’t have energy to do any exploring during our lengthy layover, but we were very happy to have a private room in the Azores Youth Hostel where we could nap and take a break from babysitting our bags.

Bonus Azores travel tip: Don’t expect SATA Airlines to fly on time. While we never had a terribly delayed flight, we never even started boarding a SATA flight until after its scheduled departure time. Island time is definitely a thing in the Azores!

7) Don’t expect smooth flights

As you might expect of spits of land in the middle of Atlantic Ocean, it’s pretty much windy in the Azores all the time. Whether you’re on the ground or in the air, there’s no escaping the gusty winds coming off the ocean. If you’re a nervous flyer, you’re not going to love inter-island flights in the Azores. The landings are especially bumpy, so consider yourself warned!

8) Do expect variable weather

Our experience at the Boca do Inferno overlook on Sao Miguel Island was less than panoramic. 

Locals like to say that you can have “all four seasons in one day” on the Azores. While this is obviously a little tongue in cheek, weather changes rapidly on the Azores. During our early spring visit we experienced average temps in the high 50s and low 60s and a fair share of rain and fog. It was also windy pretty much all day every day.

Check out my Azores packing list to learn what to wear for your trip. Spoiler alert: while lots of Azores marketing material features palm trees and pineapples, this is not a tropical destination. You can leave the sandals at home. Waterproof shoes and a rain jacket are musts!

9) Pack waterproof shoes

10) Do have a VISA card

Good news: every restaurant and store we went into on the Azores accepts credit cards.

Bad news: If you’re used to using the Delta AmEx for every purchase, you’re out of luck.

VISA is the king of credit cards in the Azores . . . and the rest of the world, if we’re being honest. We found most places didn’t accept AmEx and we even ran into some issues with Mastercard. However, VISA cards worked everywhere. It would definitely behoove you to get a VISA card that doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees before your Azores trip.

Of course, you could avoid this problem by just using cash. The Azores are part of the European Union and use Euros for currency.

11) Don’t take your favorite swimsuit to the hot springs

This is the large geothermal bath at Terra Nostra Garden in Furnas. And yes, water that color does stain!

You’ll see this tip on every list of Azores tips and tricks, but I’ll repeat it here: if you’re going to thermal baths in Furnas, wear an old swimsuit.

These natural hot springs have a high concentration of minerals, including iron. I’m sure if you’re a hot springs fanatic, those minerals are correlated with all sorts of detoxifying health benefits, but on a more concrete level, it also means you’ll emerge from the baths with a stained swimsuit.

Honestly, I found the rust-colored water more than a little disconcerting. After a quick dip in the warm, mineral rich water, I was done. I didn’t notice any discoloration after my five-minute soak, but the white stripes on Jenny’s swimsuit definitely turned rust colored.

12) Do try the local cuisine

I love eating the local food wherever I travel, whether it’s Cincinnati or Boston, and I knew I wanted to try as much of the Azores’ best food as possible. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t spent much time in South America and I’ve never been to the Iberian Peninsula, but Azores food wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

The Azores are known for their “happy cows,” so steak and hamburgers are very popular. Despite being surrounded by the north Atlantic, seafood offerings were fairly limited to tuna steaks. We also ate a lot of stews, delicious breads and cheeses, and, of course, sipped more than our fair share of wine. While not everything will be to your liking (I’m on the fence about limpets), I definitely recommend trying as many new foods as possible in the Azores.

One thing you probably won’t see frequently on your plate: leafy greens. If salad is something you eat regularly, you might need to hit up a grocery store to get your fix.

13) Do take some tours

Our whale watching tour was one of my favorite parts of our entire trip. We were lucky enough to find a school of dolphins and a humpback whale!

The Azores are great for self-exploration. The roads are easy to navigate, many (if not most) attractions are free to visit, and you’re only ever minutes away from a great hiking trail or beautiful beach. While you don’t need a tour guide for your entire time on the Azores, I do highly recommend taking a few tours during your visit.

Our tours – a local experience tour on Terceira, a whale watching tour on Sao Miguel, and a wine/food tour of Ponta Delgada – were all enjoyable and memorable in their own ways. You just can’t beat the knowledge you gain from taking with local residents. We walked away with excellent restaurant recommendations as well as a much deeper understanding of the islands’ history and culture.

14) Do rent a car

If you don’t like renting a car when you travel, the Azores might not be for you.

These islands are small – it only takes about an hour to drive from one end of Sao Miguel to the other – but if you don’t have a car, you’re going to miss a lot. For example, it’s a 20-minute drive just to get from the airport on Terceira into the city of Angra do Heroismo.

We crisscrossed the two islands in our teeny rental cars. It’s by far the easiest  to get to all of the islands’ best sites on your own schedule when you have wheels of your own. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, our friend Jenny drove us everywhere on Terceira and Sao Miguel and we are so grateful!

15) Do spend a lot of time outside

The Azores are absolutely an outdoor destination. If you don’t like spending a lot of time outside, well, I’m not really sure what you’d do on the Azores . . . .

We spent the majority of each day in the Azores hiking through the woods, around lakes, to beaches, or down into volcanic lava shafts. While there are some “indoorsy” things to do in the Azores, the most memorable things – like whale watching in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean – were outside.

16) Research your hikes ahead of time.

One travel regret I do have about our trip to the Azores is not spending more time researching the hiking. There are dozens of hiking trails on the nine islands and I honestly just got overwhelmed researching them in the days leading up to our trip.

However, my “wing-it” approach to our hikes didn’t really work. My beloved Gaia app worked well enough, but it was hard to distinguish between actual hiking trails and just old dirt roads. The app also struggled to get me to the official trailhead parking lots.

You will find bright signs at the start of all of the official Azores hiking trails. However, the English on these signs isn’t always the clearest. Cell reception often wasn’t great right at the start of hikes so it was difficult to research or clarify details in the moment.

Before setting out on each day’s adventure, it would have been infinitely helpful for me to look at the maps on the Azores Trails website to know exactly what to expect for parking, difficulty, and route.

17) Don’t be intimidated

The Azores are a very forgiving place to travel. We found everyone in the service industry on the Azores extremely friendly and more than willing to communicate in English. Our phone’s GPS worked well both driving and hiking. And since many Azores’ attractions are free to visit and food prices are comparable, if not slightly lower, than in the States, I thought it was a very affordable international trip.

We booked our flights, hotels, and rental cars using Azores Getaways which saved us a bunch of money and decision fatigue. I also think we ended up in the nicest hotels on both islands we visited!

Honestly, if you’re curious about the Azores, consider this your permission slip to just book those flights for the trip of a lifetime.

I hope these Azores tips and tricks help you prepare for your trip to Portugal’s volcanic archipelago!

As with any destination, so much of what makes the Azores special simply must be experienced for you to fully understand it. Drop me a line to let me know if you have any other questions about traveling to the Azores and I’ll add my answer to this post so I can help as many future Azores visitors as possible.

If you enjoyed these Azores tips and tricks, check out my other Azores posts!