Trip to the Algarve, Portugal - Part 2

Last updated 6 June, 2010

Page 2 of 2. You can click to enlarge the images.

Day 4

On this day we drove all the way west, to Cape St. Vincente. These was where boats used to leave for their long explorations of the New World. It's an incredibly windy place, but it was a lovely morning, and the lighthouse and rocky shore looked very dramatic.

We then visited neighbouring Sagres. We didn't see anything of particular note there, having decided to skip its fort, but we did have lunch while looking out over their harbor, which was nice.

We then drove east somewhat, to Lagos. After some disorientation, we managed to find their local museum which, once again, was all labelled in Portuguese. It was kind of weird mix of items—pickled animal specimens, samples of cork art, historic ceramics.... Attached to the museum was a church called the Golden Church. It was the most ornate thing you could imagine, largely done in gold. We weren't allowed to take photos of it (to boost postcard sales, perhaps?), but we did take a video. Which I won't post here.

Although it had started to sprinkle again at this point, we walked through some of the more interesting pedestrian streets. I was struck by the lack of “neat” shops to attract tourists. Although every city there had an incredible number of restaurants, shops were pretty prosaic—clothes, shoes, groceries... Ceramics were about the only “gift” item regularly on offer, and we didn't find too much of that appealing.

We were pretty hungry at this point, so we decided to go to Alvor for dinner. This would be yet another beach town, quite close to Portimão, but featuring numerous grilled fish restaurants on the beach. After a bit of sticker shock (Jean tended to just double the price, though the actual exchange rate was more like 1.75), we chose one that had been recommended. We shared a paella-like shellfish stew that was, in fact, very delicious.

Day 5

With the sun beckoning, we decided this would be a good time to go to Albufeira, the major beach resort town of the area. This is where we finally found the shops I'd been expecting but hadn't seen anywhere else: the postcards, the sunglasses, the tacky T-shirts, ice cream... your usual beach town store frontage. Since it was all new on this trip, it was quite fun to walk through it. We even bought a leather, cat-shaped Carnaval mask. (Carnaval celebrations had occurred on Tuesday, but we figured we wouldn't enjoy the crowds, and avoided them.)

And of course, we visited the Albufeira beach. We had lunch on at a restaurant overlooking the beach, and were surprised how good it was. I finally tried to chicken piri-piri, which is spicy grilled chicken, basically. Very good. We also liked the sangria.

We then headed to the neighbouring Praia D'ours, also known as The Strip. That featured even more shops and such, but we mostly sat on the beach there. Jean decided that he just had to try to water. It was freezing. Still, I dipped my toes in as well.

We tried a Thai restaurant for dinner that night. The food wasn't totally successful, but the cocktails were nice.

Day 6

Having avoided the little town of Loulé on Carnaval day, we decided to visit it today, the day before its big market day. (All of this to avoid parking nightmares.) Once again, we visited their small museum, and the castle remnants. Neither were quite as good as the ones we'd seen previously. But the restaurants had a good reputation, so we ate at a bustling family place that was a good value.

Then we decided to check out the nearby town of Villamoura. Being dominated by a large marina, it had a very different feel than any other place we'd been. It was quite serene and resort-like—perhaps more modern yet sedate. At any rate, a very good place to walk around and check out boats of all price ranges,

Next stop was a brief one, at the beach of Quartermeira. It wasn't distinguished in any particular way.

For supper, we went to the Italian restaurant again. This time I had the fish special of sea bass, with no numbness resulting.

Day 7

Our last day before flying out, and we thought it was time to visit Portimão, which had a reputation for good shopping. Carefully avoiding the donkey carts, we drove to a parking lot near the river, parked and walked around. There certainly were many shoe, clothing, brass, leather, and pottery shops. Nothing much struck our fancy, though, except for a shop that wasn't particularly Portuguese, but did have a neat collection of candles, jewelry, wine holders, and so on. We did buy a few things there.

After lunch we headed to our neighbouring Praia de Rocha, to see it in the daytime, for a change. Quite pretty! And also, we discovered, very much within walking distance of our hotel. We really hadn't needed the car those other times. Oh well. We checked out the menus of what sounded like the three best restaurants in town, and decided on one called Squash for dinner. Then we went for sangria on the beach.

Our dinner at Squash was very nice. It was possibly the poshest looking place we ate at, yet wasn't all that expensive. And it was blessedly lacking in smokers, although that was just luck (since Portugal has no such thing as a non-smoking section, let alone a non-smoking restaurant).

And with that, we returned to pack for our departure.