Funchal, Madeira’s capital city, is tucked between the mountains and the sea. Houses cling to hillsides. Roads rise at 45-degree angles, and highways glide through tunnels (there are 156 of them on the island). 

But even here, there are limits — rocky gorges, mountains cleft by streams and waterfalls. For those less navigable places there are cable cars, gondolas that glide above it all. 

You can take one from the harbor to Monte, and a shorter and less traveled one from Monte to the Botanical Gardens. That’s the one we chose on Thursday.

Similar to a ski lift, the car never stops moving. You step in, the door closes, and you are floating hundreds of feet above the ground. I mostly focused on the horizon, but every so often I glanced down or to the side, which gave me a chance to snap this shot. I have a feeling the occupants of the other car were doing the same thing.