On arriving in Lisbon, we decided to leave right away and go straight for the beaches of Lagos, a small tourist trap town in the Algarve area of Portugal. Lagos (pronounced ‘lagosh’) was quite confusing with tiny streets covered in mosaic patterns, all inside ancient fortress walls.
Our little room had a balcony and was clean and comfortable, but was not very secure. The door to the balcony did not lock.
Each day we got up late and meandered down to one of the beaches and sat there, smimming/reading/people watching and, of course, speculating about what all of you are doing there while we are working so hard on our tans. Very exhausting!
On the third day, we found new accomodations - an ‘appartomento’ as Sr. Viana called it. Very nice! Complete with full kitchen, full bath, living room, balcony, TV (sitcoms are very weird in Portugal).
One day we wandered down to Ponte de Piedade where there are nice grottos (caves and interesting rock formations caused by the tides). We wandered around the point and then found another beach to laze around on before the trek home.
Richard’s comments: Pretty much, we did nothing here except take it easy as Diana indicated above. Once again, my lack of culture will show as I found different things interesting. The bus station half way to Lagos was my introduction to non-Canadian plumbing. After 2.5 hrs on the bus, I needed to use the washroom, so after finding it, pushed open the door, and at first thought that this stall was out of order, so went to the next one and after opening the door found it in the same state..I was expecting this later in our trip, but not in Portugal…a squat toilet; a simple whole in the floor. Upon a close look, I decided that I really didn’t need to go that bad considering the guy before left me a present courtesy of his bad aim. Not to get to graphic, but it looked as if a cobra was about to strike. Look out Immodium, I think I found a better cure to diarrhea. Too bad I didn’t have my camera, but I am sure India will give me ample opportunities for pictures.
Diana failed to mention one stop of interest in full detail. On the way back from the grottos, we first saw a little sign for a beach, so decided to check it out. After a 20 minute hike down the cliff on this little trail, we came to a beautiful beach among the cliffs. But that was not all that greeted us, there were about 10 old naked Portuguese men. These were not the Adonasis’ as Diana was probably hoping for as they were not carved out of stone like a statue, but rather were wrinkly old men. Too make it even better, there was one poised like a supermodel right at the entrance showing off what God had endowed him with, and apparently what he lacked in a penis and modesty, he made up for in testicles. I grew up in a farming community, and have seen some large nuts on pigs and cows, but this guy put them all to shame. Needless to say, we were out of there pretty quick; well, as long as it took me to pry Diana away. The nightmares have are slowly subsiding.
After 8 days in Lagos, we were quite relaxed for our next trip - on to Italy.
June 16th, 2010 at 4:02 am
[...] Diana has told you about the sights, so nothing more to say on that…off to Portugal and [...]