Lagos, Portugal: Part 1

The Algarve region in Portugal has far exceeded our expectations. We arrived at our hotel in Lagos around 1pm and only had one night booked. When we walked into our room all of our jaws dropped! Our room had a huge living area with a kitchenette and a separate bedroom…with a DOOR! All of our windows overlooked the pool, the old town we were staying in, and the ocean. When the lady who showed us our room left, we looked at each other and instantly knew we wanted to stay here longer. After we unpacked, Marshall went to the front desk to see if it was available and came back saying we could stay up to a week. The best part was that we negotiated the price of the room from $90 a night down to $70 a night which is about the price of a Motel 8 in the US… Score! Note for those who travel with unknown timelines: as long as it isn’t the busy season, it’s pretty safe to book only one night then negotiate when you get there. We’ve already saved hundreds and enjoy feeling like we got a great deal. Definitely worth trying out!

After slathering Tyson up with sunscreen, we headed down toward the water to look for a restaurant for an early dinner. (Side note: Portuguese eat dinner around 9pm so if you eat dinner at 5pm you will only see other tourists in the restaurant. But thankfully restaurants open early for the tourists, unlike Tuscany). There were tons of restaurants lining the street along the water, but the one playing old school jams caught our attention. We noticed that restaurant was half full when all the others only had a few people. You know what they say when traveling, always go where there is a line. We walked in and claimed a cool couch seating area in the corner for us to hang out and for Tyson to roam around. There was a little boy from the UK that played with Tyson for a while and we spent the rest of the time soaking in the scenery while teaching Tyson the finer points of music we grew up listening to. He caught on quickly and was dancing in sync with us while we serenaded the rest of the people on the patio with our flawless American singing.  

The next morning we wanted to spend the day checking out the town. We walked down the hill to the main square and had a cappuccino at a café while listening to a couple live musicians play the keyboard and saxophone. Tyson practiced his dancing skills and ran around the square pointing out all the dogs. We then headed over to the market along the water and looked around for new clothes, but didn’t find anything that tickled our fancy. We tried to buy a pool toy to bring back to the hotel, but there was only one stand with any options and the boxes looked like they had been sitting on the shelf since the 80’s. We weren’t about to spend 20 Euros for a tiny inflatable shark, so we offered 10 and the guy called us cheap so we smiled and walked away.

At the end of the market we found a small fish market that has a kid’s science center above it. We showed Tyson all the cool fish including eels and octopus and then headed upstairs to the science center. Most of the activities are for older kids, but he had fun playing on the outdoor playground with another little girl. When we headed back indoors there was a big submarine that kids could play in and push buttons. Tyson got a little excited and dove straight into a plastic keyboard that left a huge line up his check (for those that have seen the movie Tommy Boy it looked just like Tommy’s face after he was hit on the check with the two by four). He was fine and was more surprised than anything. Poor boy was over the museum by that point so we went back to the hotel for Tyson to take his nap.

That evening we found an awesome place for dinner called The Garden. It’s an outdoor restaurant that’s funky and has an eclectic collection of tables, chairs, and couches to sit in. They even had a bucket of toys for Tyson to play with, a huge plus. Half way through dinner, I felt something wet hit my arm and realized a bird had pooped on me. Just wonderful. At least it wasn’t on my head or in my food for that matter. Food and atmosphere of this place is amazing though. Highly recommended for those staying in Lagos for more than one day and want a relaxing place to hang out.

When we got back from dinner I needed to charge my phone and searched the room up and down and couldn’t find my charger anywhere. It must have fallen out of my purse at some point during the day. My phone is the only one we have with phone and data service which we use constantly throughout the day, most importantly for navigation. So guess what we’re going to do in the morning….find somewhere to buy a new charger.

When we woke up, we went straight to the front desk and asked where we could buy a phone charger and she circled a spot on a map. So we used the good old fashion way to navigate our way to the store. Thank goodness they had the type of charger I needed. I decided to buy two just in case I lost it again and it’s not as easy to find next time. We then set out on a 30 minute drive to Cape St Vincent which is a lighthouse at the western most point of Europe. There’s a little café next the lighthouse so we sat and had a cappuccino while people watching for a few minutes. There was also a little store there that had little candy animals made of marzipan. I chose a fish and when I broke it in half to eat there were fake guts spewing out of its belly. It was a little bizarre, but the fake guts actually tasted pretty good. Next we headed a few minutes away to Sagres. The cliffs along the water are insanely high! We happened to find a little beach area in between the cliffs that had a restaurant next to it and stopped there for lunch.

There was hardly anyone at that beach, so we decided to try and find another one with kids running around for Tyson to play with. We drove along the coast and came across an awesome spot with a ton of kids. We listened for people speaking English and found a family with small kids playing in the sand. We put our beach towels down literally 5 feet away from them and I’m sure they were wondering why we chose to sit right up next to them when the beach was wide open. Hey, ya gotta do what you gotta do to get spontaneous play dates in when you’re on the road. SURPRISE, now play with our kid! These kids were a bit older, so Tyson mostly watched them play in the sand and run back and forth from the water to their castle. He has developed a bit of shyness around other kids lately, but is usually super outgoing with adults. We are taking him to playgrounds as much as possible to interact with other kids, but most of the time he seems content playing with himself or Mama and Dada for now. We’ll soak it in as much as we can now, because who knows if he’ll still feel that way when he gets a bit older.

Once we got our fill of the beach for the day, we walked back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. Since we loved the restaurant we ate at the night before we decided to go back. This time we sat next to a couple from the Texas that was currently living in Ireland for a job. They had traveled all over Europe too so we had fun exchanging stories about where we’d been and places we’d love to go next. After dinner we headed back up the hill to our hotel and ran into a mother and daughter from California that were lost. With Marshall’s great sense of direction (unlike me) he was able to help them navigate to the youth hostel they were staying at. By the time we got back to the hotel it was time for Tyson’s bedtime routine which consists of a bath, reading books on the computer, and singing with Mama. He went straight to sleep and then we watched movies on YouTube for a bit.

Today we decided to do a relax day and not do anything crazy. We took Tyson to the playground this morning and there was a little girl there that he was able to play with.  For lunch we found a restaurant that had a jumping castle for kids to play in while the parents ate. There were three other little boys playing in the castle. Tyson was hesitant to go in at first but after he realized how much fun the other boys were having he crawled inside and played with them. We realized all three of the other boys were coughing like crazy, so we pulled him out of there luckily right when our lunch came out. We ate a great breakfast type meal (waffles, french toast, etc) and headed back to our home base. 

After Tyson's afternoon nap we happened to look down from our window at the pool and saw the couple that we met last night at dinner. How random is that? We headed down to the pool and chatted with them for a couple hours. We really enjoyed having adult conversations with other adults from the states and learning more of their plans for retirement and way of life that is way different than most Americans we've met. Props to them for taking a risk and doing things differently. They were great and I'm excited for their future adventures they have lined out for themselves. Tyson had a blast playing fetch with his toys in the pool with them and splashing in the water near the steps. 

After awhile we were getting hungry for dinner so we went back to The Garden restaurant for the third day in a row (Yeah, it's that good!). This time we sat next to a couple from England and the girl happened to have traveled to a lot of the places we will be going to on this trip so she was giving us lots of great recommendations. We didn't snag her email to get more details unfortunately, but now that Tyson is sleeping we’re planning to spend the rest of the evening  researching SE Asia and see where we want to spend our time there. Things are going so fast! We keep saying how fast weeks are going by...how can we make time go slower!?! We’re already about half way through our stay in Portugal and need to figure out how to get to Spain!