I’m a little behind but thought I would use this morning to catch up on the blog post. We finished up our short visit to the very charming town of Evora with a nice dinner at a little restaurant that we found. Octopus is very popular here so I tried it again and it was delicious.
Yesterday morning we headed for Lagos which is about a three hour drive. It was an easy drive and we saw more of the interior of Portugal. We have enjoyed seeing all of the different parts of the country. The road system here is great although sometimes in the cities it can be ‘interesting’, like when you are going down a one way street/alleyway paved with cobblestones that is barely wide enough for our Kia Kauai! But the freeways are top notch and smooth as silk.
We found our condo (rented on Airbnb) with no problem and met the host here. He gave us a quick tour, showed us our parking space, and gave us his phone number in case we needed anything and left us to get settled in. I had to take a picture of the sign in the elevator just to show the interesting use of words you sometimes run across. I loved the word ‘incarceration’ to mean ‘if you get trapped in the elevator’ rather than anything to do with the Portuguese penal system!
The condo is right off the beach and the views are spectacular. This is the off season so it was easy to book. I’m sure during summer, the price would be three or four times what we are paying and bookings would be much harder to come by. Old Town Lagos is a 15 or 20 minute walk and it is an ideal spot as a base of operations for exploring the Algarve region of Portugal.
After we got all settled in, it was lunch time and there is a rooftop restaurant in the hotel next door so we opted to just walk over there. It was another delicious lunch while sitting in the sun on the terrace overlooking the ocean. Tough to beat. Going home is getting harder and harder.
We found our way to a grocery store to pick up a few things since we will be here a while. Barb, unfortunately, has to leave on Sunday to begin her trip back to Phoenix due to some work requirements but I won’t be leaving for another week. I’m stopping in New York to spend Thanksgiving with my daughter and her mom and it is far less expensive for me to stay here in Lagos than in New York City – and I can’t hear the ocean from my hotel room in New York!
After we got stocked up, we went to Old Town Lagos to walk around. It is a really neat place with all kinds of shops and restaurants. As we were strolling around we stopped to look at some of the listings posted in the offices of various real estate offices and were surprised to see that there are still affordable places to be had. The down side of some place like Lagos is that it will be very crowded in the summertime due to the influx of tourists.
When we got back to our condo, the moon was just coming up and it was beautiful. Photo time. And then this morning when we got up, the sun was just rising. Another photo op. We feel fortunate to have booked this condo as the location can’t be beat with respect to the views.
Today we are going to drive down to Tavira and Faro which are about an hour east of here just to check out some other places along the Algarve. Tavira is a little less ‘touristy’ but still right on the water so we’ll check out the real estate and the town down there.
