Advertisement
Published: October 28th 2012
Lagos Saturday Market
As always we love going to the market - this one had a few different things than we have seen before - figs, olives, pomegranate, peanuts, as well as walnuts and almonds fresh from the treesWe have now been in Lagos, Portugal since October 3
rd– hard to believe that almost a month has gone by. We have met quite a few of the cruisers that are here for the winter in the marina – most are from Europe and many are repeat customers coming back to Lagos year after year. One of the first comments we heard was that many call Lagos, “Port Velcro”. We understood what was meant by this as we had heard the same comments made about Georgetown, Bahamas and those that stay in Grenada during the hurricane season. Now that we have been here for a few weeks we understand the comment. One of the things that first attracted us to this marina was the convenience to the train and bus station so we could explore other areas of the country. The area near the marina has plenty of restaurants where you can have everything from an English breakfast (fried egg, baked beans, fried tomato, fried mushrooms, hash browns and toast – did you read “fried”) to a variety of lunch menus to Pizza Hut (yes, the same one although this one serves chocolate fondue!), bars with live music in the evenings
Lagos City Wall
The Lagos town walls originally enclosed the center of the town, but they were enlarged in the 16th century to protect a much larger area. The Governors castle built by the Arabs in 1189 became the governors headquarters in the 14th century. It was rebuilt in the 18th century with improvements in 1959 & 1960. and of course ice cream stands. On the other side of the river that separates the marina from the town you have a wide selection of shops, restaurants and historic areas to visit. There is also a cruisers net on the VHF every Monday and Friday which announces various activities. We have already taken advantage of a few of them – a very nice Italian dinner at a local restaurant where we had a chance to meet others in the marina, a barbeque hosted by the local boat yard with folk dancers for entertainment, listening to an excellent jazz band at a local hotel (check them out at www.algarvejazz.com), attending a book exchange and took in the local Saturday market and the gypsy flea market as we heard about both through this system of announcements. They even have a great website which everyone can access to see what is for sale, learn more about the area, get numbers for doctors and hospitals if needed, and many other useful pieces of information.
Fortunately we had gotten used to our schedules being changed while in the Azores so we continue to take evening walks about 9:30 or 10PM here as well.
The Slave Market
The slave market was one of the first places slaves were sold when they arrived in 1444 in Portugal from Africa. In this way we get to enjoy the nightly activities in town. These include listening to music either by buskers on the town square or groups playing in local cafes, watching the other buskers that entertain just by making huge bubbles from soapy water, taking in a concert of the local sociedade filarmonica (band) and even seeing a local gentleman riding his beautiful horse through town. We have found out however that if we want to eat out we can do so inexpensively by having a late lunch/early dinner as many restaurants have 50% off menus - guess it is like the early bird specials back home! Now that we just made it to the age of 60 we are guessing some of our habits are getting to be age-related OR is it just that we are watching our budget. Either way it is a nice way to spend an afternoon. In this way, we can get out and see a few things, have a meal out and still get back out later to take in the nightly activities.
The weather has definitely changed recently with it getting much cooler in the mornings and evenings. This has changed the
The coastline near Lagos
Many of the bluffs are eroded away creating very interesting structures close to the shore making for a picturesque scene. activities in town and places are starting to close up a little earlier in the evening. This will allow us to change our schedule some as well. We have gotten out our small electric heater and are using in pretty regularly now to take the chill off. We know those of you in the north won’t feel sorry for us but we have seen temperatures down to the low 50’s already. Fortunately the daytime temperatures are still getting up to the low 70’s when it is sunny.
Last week we enjoyed a great day with our friends, Sandra and John whom we had first met when we all lived in Botswana. We had seen them again in the early 80’s in England, but since then it has been our Christmas letter connections that have kept us in touch. The great thing about friends like these is that even after all these years it was as if no time had gone by – we had no trouble finding things to talk about and thoroughly enjoyed our day together. The weather didn’t cooperate for showing us around the area too much, but what we did see we can now understand why
The Grottoes
The grottoes are quite a tourist attraction here and you can visit them by small boat or kayak which we plan to do soon. they decided to settle here in Portugal. They have built a beautiful home here and have settled in nicely to the area. Thanks again Sandra & John for such a lovely day out and of course the great meal at your place. We have gotten together twice so far & plan to do so again before we leave Portugal for other ports of call.
Recently we took a train trip to a neighboring city, Silves. This town was founded by Phoenician traders and in the time of the Moors it was the most important city in the Algarve (southern region of Portugal). The Christians attacked it and took it over in 1189, but they lost it again in 1191, bouncing back to the Christians in 1231. Remains of the castle (Castelo de Silves) from the last Moorish ruler is the best preserved in the Algarve region of Portugal. It is still quite impressive as it stands on the top of the hill overlooking the valley below. It has 11 towers and thick walls that enclose an area of 12,000 square meters. The cistern located in the castle is the most impressive in that it could supply the castle with
water for a whole year. It is 65 ft. long, 52 ft. wide and 23 feet high- quite an engineering marvel! Sé de Silves (Cathedral of Silves) is one of the Algarve’s few remaining gothic monuments with ancient tombs which sits next to the castle on the hill. This is the first of gothic design we have seen in Portugal. Even though the town itself is an enjoyable one to explore a highlight was meeting Teresa and her husband, Luis who have a small studio where they make ceramics. They were both a wealth of knowledge about the history of ceramics in the area and considering the fact that much of this area was under the control of the Moors (Arabs) it is a fascinating history. Many of the tiles that you see here are Portuguese traditional blue and white very similar to what we saw when visiting the churches in the Azores. We learned from them that those tiles that have yellow in them are from a period in history when Spain controlled Portugal (1580-1640). The yellow comes from a mineral only found in Spain and once the Portuguese drove out the Spaniards they no longer had access to
Very Inviting
The cliffs are spectacular as well as the various stone structures that are created along the coast this mineral thus eliminating the yellow color in the tiles. This means it is very easy to date tiles that contain the yellow pigment. We gladly purchased a bowl made by them and thanked them for freely giving us of their time. They offered us a wonderful gift of a tile with a sailboat design with a very interesting history. In 1755 Lisbon and much of Portugal were hit by a devastating earthquake. At this point in time Lisbon was easily one of the largest cities in Europe. The wealth that was coming in to Portugal from its colonies was driving the economy and creating a haven for some of Europe’s finest architects and artist. The earthquake not only destroyed much of the city but also started a fire that caused far more damage. This resulted in large numbers of orphans and no way to support them. Someone came up with the idea of teaching the children how to paint simple sailboat designs on to tiles to earn money. With the major reconstruction effort of Lisbon painted ceramic tiles were in great demand and thus enabling the orphanages to support themselves. This was our first adventure outside of Lagos and
Beautiful Views
Every turn you made on the walk you had beautiful views of the coastline it turned out to be a wonderful day.
We will be heading by bus to visit Porto and Lisbon for a week starting October 29
th. We had originally planned to visit both of these places by boat, but as we came directly to Lagos from the Azores we will do the exploration by land. We are sure we will have lots to share with you about these 2 cities when we return from our travels.
We have been following the weather and know that hurricane Sandy is being watched by many of you – we hope that all of you remain safe and are out of harm’s way. Best wishes to all!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.113s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 11; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0483s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
