Sao Miguel or a hat's story

by Yana Borisova (Bulgaria)

I didn't expect to find Azores

There are places that make us ask at least one question about their history. And there are those other places that ask us if we have a history of our own. Every journey is a love affair. We know how this love began, we have been expecting it, even planning it, we have been dreaming of this love, about its sky, its land; we have packed our expectations in a suitcase, along with a favourite outfit, a scent, a camera and a notebook. And we set off in the steps of this love to find it in places, in people and in the unknown. One of my favourite directions in 2019 led me to discover a place where I felt I belonged, though I certainly had no roots there. It was a spontaneous, yet deeply true feeling. When I landed in Ponta Delgada, I only knew it was the capital of the largest of the 9 islands making up the Azores. I knew Sao Miguel is small, cosy and hospitable, with different climate in the four parts of the island. I knew that the island is both unpredictable and safe and peaceful but surprisingly exciting. I stepped firmly on an island I explored as if it were a beautiful house. I opened its door and never closed it, not even when I walked out of it to return to Bulgaria. Because the heart has no lock and no door. 5 euro. This is not admission fee, nor a sum you have to pay to take a photo. 5 euro is the taste on the tip of my palate that spills across my body as the world’s richest and most delicious chocolate. I collect the taste of chocolate like others collect fridge magnets from every destinations they visited. I paid 5 euro for a piece of chocolate cake and a cappuccino which added sweetness to my curiosity. And then I asked Anna… Anna met me at the Louvre Michaelense (Sao Miguel Louvre). She opened the door for me to the Ponta Delgada chocolaterie and to a story that started 114 years ago in the main town of the Azores. I arrive at Louvre Michaelense at 9 a.m. while the town is still sleepy. No one is in a hurry. I already know about Ponta Delgada Louvre and it is first on my list of sights for the day. The Louvre of Sao Miguel - this is what Louvre Michaelense means. The association with the French museum began in 1905 when Louvre Michaelense (today a chocolaterie and a tiny arts shop) was the place Duarte Cardoso used to make hats. None of them resembled the other. They were unique in style and craftsmanship and all the materials for them were shipped from Paris. The hats were so exquisite that local citizens viewed them as objects of art worthy of a museum. They were far from affordable, but everyone admired the perfection of Cardoso’s imagination. Some hats can still be seen in Sao Miguel Louvre. Cardoso died in the 1970s and the hat shop closed. For a long time its doors remained locked. Later the place housed a small sewing workshop and a sewing machine and several counters are still preserved. If you open the drawers below, which you are allowed, and even encouraged to do, you will find spools of thread and buttons. They aren’t old but they are history. Today’s chocolaterie still uses the 1905 counter. Anyway, the sewing workshop only functioned for a few years and again the place remained silent behind closed doors. Among cobwebs and inside chests of drawers Cardoso’s dream was still alive. In 15 years’ time an entrepreneur from continental Portugal arrived in Ponta Delgada and “adopted” the history of the Cardoso family. Today Louvre Michaelense has the same old heart, only it now loves chocolate cake and hardly ever wears a hat. Sao Miguel is an island that is as pretty as a picture with its basalt churches, the wind that drives the windmills and the locals who love nature. They call the island paradise. Just think how we try to imagine paradise in heaven, while it is here on earth!