Tell anyone you’re headed to Madeira, an archipelago off the coast of Morocco, and you’re likely to get a lot of blank looks. Even fewer people will know it’s an autonomous region of Portugal. But ...

Portugal’s Azores ... leads and people follow, and the world hasn't yet figured out how beautiful it really is. It's easy to kind of forget how remote this place is. Nine volcanic islands ...

Rising up from the Atlantic Ocean some 900 miles off the coast of Portugal, the Azores is one of the ... than the population of the islands, a mere 244,000 people (and steadily shrinking).