Sete Cidades

Sete Cidades is a village on the Azores. It is on the island of São Miguel, and is home to 800 people as of 2011. It has the famous twin crater lakes, Lagoa Azul (Blue Lake) and Lagoa Verde (Green Lake).

Get in
From Ponta Delgada take bus C205 (1 hour) or C208 (1:30h). There are also bus connections where you need to change in Várzea. There are multiple bus stops in the village.

Get around
The village can be easily explored on foot.

Hiking
From the carpark at the bridge, you can hike up to the Vista do Rei Miradour (viewpoint). It's about 4 km up to the top of the caldera along a track that is somewhat maintained, and offers beautiful views of the lakes on the way up. (At the far end of the carpark, past the ducks, there are three trails — take the middle one.)  At the miradour, there is a hotel that was abandoned during construction in the 1980s, but it is not accessible.

From Vista do Rei, there is a dirt road along the lip of the caldera, with beautiful views and many cows, an easy 4.5 km to the Lomba do Vasco Miradour.

From there, you can continue another 2.2 km down into the village of Sete Cidades. It's about 3.5 hours in total.

Go next

 * Ponta Delgada, Furnas and the other towns of São Miguel