Lagos

The last Portuguese destination on my trip is the beach town of Lagos. It was nice to get a little rest and relaxation in the sun.

I had a little bit of a scare when I was boarding the train. Reed and I were on different escalators, and before I knew it, I completely lost him with about 4 minutes before the train left. I knew where I was and where our train was, but I didn’t know if he did. I literally ran around for a couple of minutes with that hefty backpack on my back to try to make sure he found the train. Eventually, I just had to get on and find my seat. I found Reed there unconcerned. I worked myself up over nothing, I guess. And I somehow managed to cover myself in soot. Other than that, the train to Lagos was uneventful… until Reed met Liz.

There are two types of airplane/train passengers in the world: the people who sit down, put on their headphones, and keep to themselves and the people who love to make small talk. This is well known in my family. It is also well established which of us will talk to anyone and which of us will ignore anyone. About 80% of the time, I keep to myself; I’ll make small talk for five minutes or so and call it quits. I am the first type. Reed, however, is the second type, and so was Liz.

Liz is a Scottish woman in her 50s who lives in Lagos. She and Reed made fast friends. They literally talked for hours about everything and about nothing at all. I was seated across from them, and I tactfully told them that I could not hear over the train. This was about 40% true. Once Liz and Reed had brought one another up to speed on their lives to-date, Liz gave us some nice recommendations for dinner, etc. Then, Liz offered to drive us from the train station to our hostel. It was not quite far enough to warrant a drive, but it was still nice. Then, Liz offered to wait for us outside of our hostel as we check in and change so that she could drive us to the beach. Um… Then, as we sat in her car, Liz offered to pick us up tomorrow morning and drive us to the Westernmost point in southern Portugal. She gave Reed her phone number, and told us to text her if we wanted to hang out tomorrow. I won’t be mean. She was a nice lady. But as I sat in the back seat, I was still glad that there weren’t child locks on the doors.

Once we were no longer in danger of becoming Liz’s BFFs, we started strolling toward the address that we had for the hostel - or “guesthouse” in this case. Eventually, we found ourselves in sort of a run-down area. The buildings were a little run tattered, and there were stray dogs everywhere. It looked like things were going to get interesting. As it turns out, that was more like the office address, and the woman who runs the hostel drove us to a much nicer area where we would actually be staying. That woman’s name was Zelinda Pereira. Since Pereira happens to be my mother’s maiden name, I thought it was worth mentioning. That really got the Portuguese flowing. After four days in Portugal, though, I started to get the hang of it. A great majority of Spanish and Portuguese words are spelled similarly, so it’s just a matter of picking up the different rules of pronunciation. By the end of our stay, I had a full conversation with our host in Portuguese. Well, it was something like Portuguese. She was speaking it properly, and I was speaking it in a sufficiently comprehensible manner. I’m still counting it as a major victory.

Lagos is a small town in the southern region of Portugal known as Algarve. It’s so small that within hours we no longer needed out map. The only real attractions in Lagos are the beaches, and those beaches are amazing. If there was any tiny doubt in my mind that Portugal is severely underrated after visiting Lisbon (unlikely), it disappeared after the first day in Lagos. The pictures describe the beaches best.

Usually, I am a bit of a baby about the ocean and its unpleasantly cold water. But here, the water was warm, and the sand was somewhat coarse. (I like big sand; it brushes right off. It’s the neat-freak thing.) So I was happy to go swimming even despite the obscene amount of Shark Week programming that I watched before the trip. I came out unscathed.

Throughout our stay in Lagos, the weather remained in the 90s – which again was ideal. I walked around town in just boardshorts for most of the time we were there. We pretty much just spent our time at the beach, though. On our only night there, we had a casual dinner at a popular restaurant. The next morning, I ducked into a few pastry shops to see if I could find filhos (fee-lohj). Filhos are the Portuguese’s take on the donut, and the most popular Portuguese food that I knew growing up. My grandmothers and my mom still make them from time to time. I didn’t see one for the entire trip until the very last morning. They had only one left, and I wasn’t sure that it was filhos – it looked much more like a normal donut than the ones I usually see. One bite confirmed it, though: delicious. We also had some Portuguese rice pudding while we were taking in the cuisine. It turns out I know a lot more about Portuguese culture than I thought.

We spent that final morning at the beach again before saying goodbye to Portugal and shoving off for Seville. I’m glad that we added Lagos to the itinerary. The beaches were beautiful and relaxing, and the people were incredibly nice. It reminded me a lot of Greece in that way. It was a great way to wrap up the Portuguese leg of the trip before heading back to Spain.

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More Pictures of Lagos: