Núcleo Museológico Rota do Cal
São Vicente
- Outdoors
- Ages 6-14
- Children free
- Booking required
A free lime-kiln museum in the hills above São Vicente: a thirty-minute walk from the limestone quarries to the kiln, fossils over five million years old, and a film on how lime was burned.
The best piece of hands-on earth science on the island for a child, and the easiest to miss, because it keeps no opening hours at all - you telephone and arrange a time, and visits are effectively private. The fossils are shown up close rather than through glass. The quarry path is the workers' own route, uneven underfoot, so it works from about six and badly with a pushchair.
Worth knowing: Phone or email days ahead. There are no drop-in hours whatsoever, and reviewers who drove up on spec found the gate shut - this is the single most common wasted trip on the north coast. The video on lime-burning is Portuguese-first.
Opening hours
The operator publishes no opening hours. Phone before you drive.
Prices
Free.
Getting there
Prices and opening times change without notice, and on this island they change often. Everything here carries the date it was checked in our research notes; if a place has moved or closed, tell us and we will fix it.