Furnas is a small town in Sao Miguel, part of the Azores. The island is formed out of a number of volcanos, giving it its unique landscape. Furnas is a town located on the edge of one of these volcanos.
One of the interesting results of this is the warm sulphurous water that you find in a number of places in the town. There's two places where you can relax in a thermal bath, or indeed go for a swim in a sulphurous lake.
The first of these is the Poça da Dona Beija. This is a beautiful place, built around a thermal spring in a wooded valley. There's five pools that you can go and relax, at different temperatures, depending on what you can handle. I've been a couple of times, both in the morning when it was pretty quiet. The last time it was raining, it was fantastic to relax there in warm water, with cooling rain coming down to take the edge off. Blissful!
The town is a lovely place, it's most famous feature is an upside down house (I think it's an electricity sub station or something?), which adds a little quirk. Everybody heads to Tony's Restaurant for the stew slow cooked in the volcanic earth that morning. Personally I really enjoyed the black pudding and local pineapple.
The Parque Terra Nostra is attached to the biggest hotel in Furnas, and is a beautifully landscaped botanical garden, with amazing flowers, tropical forest, walkways, and water features to explore.
The park also has its own thermal bath, which is a large pond at the bottom of the old house. This is a little cooler than the Poça da Dona Beija, but still a great place to relax. It doesn't look very appealing, with the minerals in the water giving it a very murky look, and you definitely wouldn't want to take your best white towels to dry off, but it's a wonderful natural experience.
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