Lagos and Luz, Portugal

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Not much time to write up/add extras to/spell-check these blogs as I'd like but hey, something is better than nothing. Maybe...

We woke up somehow to another picture-perfect day; the weather was not supposed to be this good while we were here and so we were happy to see the sun once again. We decided to walk to Luz (pronounced Loosh by the Portuguese) the next town down the coast, over the cliffs. There is a great hiking path that follows the coastline on the towering cliffs all along the Algarve coast. The walk to Luz (video) was gorgeous and took about an hour. Luz itself we found to be a happening little town with a beautifully developed waterfront area. There is a cobblestone promenade (the cobbling here is mind-boggling), Roman ruins dating back to 200AD that condos are basically built right on top of, and signs of life in the cafes. We practiced doing nothing sitting there in the beachfront café, drinking coffee, eating soup, graduating to a beer…the day was so lovely, little showers passing through then clearing off just as quickly.

We walked back up and over the huge cliffs to Burgau and jumped in the car to go check out Lagos, the largest of the little towns on this end of the coast. We parked just outside the city’s enormous old wall that dates back to the Moorish time (1200s I think). It is a massive thing. Lagos was lovely, again, cobbled streets, narrow roads, and huge compared to the other little towns we’ve seen here. Being New Year’s Eve the streets were jammed with people vacationing, the restaurants all getting ready for their big bashes. We found a little pizzeria and settled in to watch people and chat with the Canadians sitting next to us. We watched little old ladies yelling at each other in angry Portuguese (or maybe they were just talking about the weather, it’s hard to tell), girls dressed up in towering heels somehow negotiating the uneven ruts of the cobblestone streets without falling on their faces.

Back to Burgau where we had to wait out the time between 8 and midnight. We watched a little BBC to get a ration of bad news, some Rock and Chips, a show that must be considered borderline porn by the Brits, drank a bottle of wine, struggled to stay awake and then FINALLY 11pm rolled around. We went to the Veranda bar that we had visited on our first night but the music was so loud it made our ears bleed. Yes the quiet, quaint, empty, cozy fireplace bar- was now a thumping mess of teens and twenty somethings working on lung cancer and going deaf. Man, do I sound old. We wandered the 100’ across the street back to the Smugglers Bar, much quieter, and met a Welsh couple who are currently renovating the Casa Grande - the town’s most eccentric and oldest house. At midnight we went outside to the break-wall where the town meets the ocean and watched their New Year fireworks. We wondered what sort of fireworks might be drummed up by such a tiny community and didn’t really care as it was such a fun crowd of about 200 gathered around, but WOW, for 5 minutes they blasted off finale-type fireworks in a nonstop blitzkrieg of pyrotechnic fun. It was really impressive and just a perfect way to ring in the new year. Back to the bar we went where we met up again with Pat and Susan, the couple we had met the first night. We ended up sitting with them for the next three hours solving the problems of the world, drinking Sagres beer and adding our share to the rowdy and fun atmosphere that had taken over the cozy pub. It was a great evening.

Woke up with only a few rocks in my head and we packed up camp to head back to Spain. A four-hour ride back through the Algarve deposited us at the Casa Blues guesthouse here in Arcos de la Frontera, Spain. The town is perched precariously on the cliffs that have served for millenia as a defensive stronghold. The guesthouse itself seems to be teetering one earthquake away from nonexistence. Let’s hope for no rumblings for the next 72 hours...

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Comments

[anonymous]

Great photo!

[lucette]

romantic
impressed by coble stone work, beautiful architecture,scenery,good to have a chance to dicover portugal via my grand kids .