The catch at Reid's Palace, A Belmond Hotel

The Superior Rooms are 23 to 26 m², each with a furnished balcony, in the main building or the Garden Wing, and they look over the gardens to a partial sea view. The Deluxe Sea View Rooms, 26 to 31 m², are the first category that faces the bay full on, from a large furnished balcony. For one night on Tuesday 8 June 2027, for two with breakfast, the Superior was €824 and the Deluxe Sea View €974, a step of €150. The Family Rooms, larger at 31 to 37 m², face the gardens from a patio in the Garden Wing, so a bigger room does not buy the view either.

The bathrooms are marble, and in the Superior, Family and most Deluxe Sea View Rooms the shower is over the bathtub. Some Deluxe Sea View Rooms and some Deluxe Junior Suites have a bathtub and a separate walk-in shower; the rest have the shower over the bath, and so do most of the 43 m² Superior Suites. A separate walk-in shower is standard only from the Deluxe Suite, 53 m², and in the two Signature Suites, so moving up a category or two does not by itself bring one.

The hotel stands on a clifftop promontory, and there is no sand below it. Two heated pools, one seawater and one freshwater, sit on terraces on the cliff with their edges over the bay, and below them a tidal pool at the water's edge, with a lift and steps down into the open Atlantic. That is the whole of the sea swimming. Children have their own pool at the Kid's Club, for ages 3 to 12. The nearest public bathing is the Lido complex, 14 minutes away on foot along the Estrada Monumental.

Every price here includes breakfast and Funchal's tourist tax of €2 per guest per night, up to seven nights, from age 13 (the council has voted to raise it to €4 from 2027), which the hotel's own booking engine adds to the total as a separate line. For the entry Superior Room midweek, January, February, March and mid-December run at about €545 to €565 a night for two; mid-November about €685; late April about €725; 8 June 2027 €824; August about €985. From 24 to 28 December 2026 the Superior was about €1,255 a night, more than double January, and the nights from 29 December to 1 January had nothing on sale in late October.

William, the MICHELIN-starred dining room, serves dinner from Tuesday to Saturday only, from 19:00 to 23:00, with a William tasting menu at €190 a head and a Discovery menu at €160, before wine. Brisa do Mar, the open-air restaurant for seafood and Portuguese cooking, opens from Friday to Tuesday between April and June and every day from July to September, and its published season ends there. Ristorante Villa Cipriani, the Italian restaurant with a terrace, opens every evening from 18:30 to 23:00. So on a Sunday or a Monday in winter, the hotel's dinner is Italian. The Sé, in the centre of Funchal, is 24 minutes away on foot, mostly level or downhill on the way in and a gentle climb back.