The lava tubes tour at Gruta do Carvão is one of the unique parts of my trip to Azores. Try to make…read morea reservation in advance, either in person or on their website (we couldn't find out how to do it and ended up getting pushed back a couple days because of how popular they are). They only have five tours per day, starting at 10:30am until 3:30pm, and the basic 40-minute introductory ones are €5. If you want a more adventurous activity-filled three-hour tour (excellent for kids), then it's €20. Unfortunately, they don't have anything in the middle. Our tour guide was so passionate for his job and knew the science behind the lava tubes. He was also personable, engaging, and funny. You see some really cool structures along the cavern walls, such as lateral benches, lava bridges, branching galleries, lava balls, stalactites, stalagmites, columns, spongy lavas, glaze, and tree moulds. This is the place to get your kids' noggins working about archeology! I recommend working this into your trip to the island, especially if you are traveling as a family.

Unfortunately the true guided cave expeditions are only for older children (someone guesstimated 12…read moreand up). The 30 minute tour was general consumption interesting, and our English speaking tour guide was excellent at communicating and drawing out his audience. Unfortunately, the small section of cave we saw on foot was a bit of a let-down for our 6-year old, particularly after our 25 minute walk uphill from city center. The tour and visit would have merited four stars, but for the very nasty helmets that visitors must wear during the tour (which I thought was slight overkill, but I'm not a geologist). Not sure if all of them were as smelly as mine, and you are given hairnets to cover all sections of hair that could touch the helmet. But the smell was so appalling as to be distracting during the tour, and had me on the verge of retching the entire time. I didn't have my hair up, and must've missed a few strands, so the smell stuck with me for hours after, until I could get back to our hotel to take a shower. Please, please, please for the love of Josh, clean those helmets better, get new ones, or dispense with them entirely.

Raphael and Maria were very informative and the food was wonderful. Got some hands on and learned a…read morelot from them. Highly recommend

Fred was such a vibe, the food was yum yum in my tum tum. Fred was very nice. He should get a…read moreraise. The assistant was very super.

The service was wonderful. I had a fantastic tour guide Christina. We got free samples of liquor…read moreand pineapple jam.