Lagos, Portugal: Part 2

Portugal, we will miss you! The past week spent in Lagos has been the most relaxing week so far. We’ve been losing track of the date and day of the week on a regular basis now. In fact, on Sunday, for whatever reason, we thought it was Father’s day so we planned our day accordingly. We explored the local beaches in the morning and stopped at a café overlooking the water to have a cappuccino. While we were there the clouds started rolling in so we headed over to a restaurant to pick up food to bring back for lunch. On our walk there it started down pouring like you wouldn’t believe. This was the first time we’ve seen rain in Portugal and were not even close to being prepared for it. We ducked into a little place along the main street and ordered breakfast for lunch while we waited out the rain. It only lasted 15 minutes or so, but Tyson loved watching it while drinking his orange juice and snacking on a waffle.

That evening we went back to the restaurant on the water that we went to on our first night in Lagos. This time they had a live DJ that was playing some great tunes that we enjoyed dancing to with Tyson in our seats. There was a couple of ladies with a child sitting next to us and they were nice enough to give Tyson a ball to play with during dinner. Tyson kept throwing it at them so they spent the rest of their time there playing ball with him (mostly retrieving the ball, but they had fun). We had a great time celebrating Marshall’s “Father’s Day” dinner. When we got home, we skyped with my parents and they informed us that Father’s Day was actually next weekend. Oops! Looks like we’ll be celebrating Father’s Day twice this year! 

The following day we spent the morning hanging out on the beach just down the hill from our hotel. It was warm, but a little windy so our beach umbrella kept flying away and nearly hitting the poor couple sitting next to us. We felt it as redemption for them smoking cigarettes the whole time, but they were good sports and even wrangled it for us a few times. Around noon we started getting hungry so we went over to a nearby café to grab pizza to bring back to the hotel for lunch then planned to spend the rest of the day at the hotel pool area to relax and research our next destinations. As we were walking back to the hotel I stumbled and one of my flip flops broke (grrrr!) Marshall offered me one of his size 13 flip flops and I figured that looking ridiculous would be better than going barefoot so I took him up on his offer and Marshall went barefoot.  That is the second pair of flip flops we’ve broken on this trip. Marshall’s only pair broke about a week or two in on this journey at a castle in Italy and mine broke after only wearing them since we’ve been in Portugal. These cobblestone streets really have a way of tripping you up and eating your flip flops. We think it’s a clever strategy of the local markets to sell more flip flops to tourists (j/k). Oh well, I have another pair that my sister gave me before we left so that should last me for a while (right?).

Yesterday, we walked down to the marina in the morning so we could snag one of the 90 minute boat tours through the grottos (caves along the water). We were told the boat will go into more caves if you go at low tide when they first open so we made sure we got the first tour of the day. It was Tyson’s first boat ride so we had no idea how he would be on a boat. Looking back, that could have gone really bad if he didn’t like it and wanted to get off, but lucky enough he was great the entire time. Pretzel sticks and biscuits really did the trick when he started to fuss about having a big bulky life vest on.

We were on a small fishing boat with seven other people which happened to all be German, but the tour guide didn’t speak German so he did the whole thing in English. We rode past several beaches, one of which was a nudist beach. There were two guys standing on the edge of the water, one guys butt was facing us and the other guy’s dingaling was facing us. Thank goodness we were a good distance away so we couldn’t see all the details. We were all laughing and then we looked down to see Tyson had fallen asleep in his own lap. I guess that bulky life vest doubles as a nice comfy pillow. I held him the rest of the way so he could nap on my shoulder. When we got back to the marina the tour guide mentioned that we had a buy one get one free coupon on the back of our receipt for a place that overlooks the marina. We hit that up and walked to a nearby restaurant for lunch. We ordered a bunch of Tapas (appetizers) and waited…and waited…The waitress came up and asked us to change one of the choices since they didn’t have some of the items, so we did…then waited…and waited. Then the owner came up and apologized, then asked us to choose something else on the menu. It just so happened that they changed their menu that day so half the things we ordered hadn’t been delivered to them yet. We ended up just making up a bunch of stuff we knew Tyson would eat working with the ingredients they had. The food was amazing and Tyson enjoyed throwing the ketchup and mustard packets all over the table and then putting them back into the dish.

We ran into the couple from Texas living in Ireland when we got back to our hotel lobby and asked if they wanted to join us for dinner. We decided to go to a place called Nah Nah Bah that was across the street from a hostel called Rising Cock Hostel. You think that’s bad, the menu at Nah Nah Bah was X rated to say the least. The description of everything on the menu was very naughty so I’m thinking the same guy that owns the Rising Cock Hostel probably owns this restaurant too. I had a delicious chicken dish (surprise, surprise) and Marshall had a spicy jalapeno burger. This place lived up to all the great reviews online! We wanted to hang out with our new friends a little longer on our last night in Lagos so we picked up some wine and brought it back to the hotel to sip by the pool. We shared great conversation and we hope to stay in touch. If y’all are reading this, send us your email, we forgot to get it!! Next time we’re in Ireland we’d love to catch up.

Today we drove an hour East of Lagos to a town called Faro to drop off our rental car. We drove all over the town and got lost a few times before we finally found the beach. Faro is much larger than Lagos and has a bigger city feel. Granted we haven’t spent much time in Faro, but we are very happy with our decision to stay in Lagos for the majority of our time in Portugal. We absolutely loved Lagos and want to come back for a longer stay sometime. We felt torn between changing our plans and skipping Spain entirely to spend more time here, but in the end we knew it was best to go off and experience new things. We’ll keep Lagos on our list of places to come back to and see if we can add another from Spain.

As for tonight, there is not a lot as far as entertainment near our hotel so we’ve mostly been hanging out in the room watching American movies. This is very rare to come by that a hotel has channels in English, especially movie channels, so we’ve been enjoying just relaxing on the bed cuddling up and having a family movie night.

Tomorrow we are taking a three hour bus ride (yikes) across the border to Spain. Tyson hasn’t been on a bus for that long so we’re crossing our fingers that he naps most of the time. Either way, we’re all excited to get to our next destination.

Next stop: Seville, Spain