Advertisement
Published: March 19th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Well, I surprised Camille with a trip to Faro, Portugal, with the intentions of sitting on a different beach for a couple days. I normally sit on the beach in Alicante, so a change of pace and the opportunity to reunite with my ocean of the last 22 years, the Atlantic was irresistible. She was a bit cold, but I didn’t mind. I just hope she doesn’t find out that I’ve been cheating on her with the Mediterranean for the last three months.
Anyway we to Madrid the night before on the 14th of March, almost a four hour train ride, but it wasn’t too bad. We arrived in Madrid just before midnight and had to find a place to stay along with carry around Camille’s suitcase (I had a backpack). After a couple failed hostel searches, we found one and hit the sack, well drank a bottle wine that hit the sack. Our flight was at 12:50pm, so we arrived at the airport slightly before and enjoyed an expensive breakfast.
Alright, arrived in Faro, grabbed a taxi to Hotel Eva **** (high roller). We got to our room and found a lovely fruit bowl, so I indulged myself
in an orange and Camille was eating one of the apples. Then a knock on the door, that wasn’t our room and that wasn’t our fruit. Oh well, onto our actual room, with a large balcony overlooking the main road in Faro. Naturally it was time to hit the city, there isn’t much to see, simply a quaint little fishing town with a port, Ria Formosa Natural Reserve, city wall, a couple nice churches, and of course a beach. We stopped for a bite to eat and bottle of wine at a small restaurant in from of Cathedral and the city hall. Next we had another bottle of wine overlooking the port, but there was slight language barrier and only received a couple glasses of wine. I must say English was spoken nearly everywhere we went, or we attempted to make Portuguese into Spanish. Later that night, after a siesta, we went to a couple bars in the barrio section of town. Chessenta Bar was a bit odd, but they had a live guitarist playing and he played a Damien Rice song. It was slow until around 3am, when many Portuguese people were sitting on the edges of the streets
consoling a friend because they were too intoxicated. One more bar, a disgusting hot dog from a street vender, a little indigestion, and a mattress later, it was the next day.
We started the day off right with a large complementary breakfast and caught the 16 bus to the beach around 11am. We were still in the area of the Ria Formosa Natural Reserve, but also right next to Praia de Faro. Sitting on the beach soaking in the rays got old after about three hours, so we sat at a local “beach bar shop” for another hour. Walking down the street parallel with the beach we stopped and ate a “toast”, a huge pressed sandwich, with ham and cheese for about 4euros. Once again we sat there for about two hours gazing into the water of the Atlantic from our ocean side restaurant. Once back in our hotel, we passed out until 10pm. We ordered a fruit salad and sandwich with the room service and once again, passed out until 1am or so. Go out or stay in a comfortable bed with a beautiful lady, we stayed in bed.
Woke up the next morning refreshed, had our
continental breakfast over looking the port once again and explored the city in search of a pint glass, to add to my collection. Without luck we gave up returned to our room packed up and went to the airport. We arrived in line at the airport and directly in front of us are six other students from our university in Alicante. They went to Lagos for a few days and coincidently are on our same flight back to Madrid. Camille and I enjoyed a couple preflight beers; I got my mug in the airport and walked over to our gate. We sat down, with intentions to wait until the line was smaller. Then I hear “Mr. Bader”, it was the women that checked our tickets in before, and gave us priority boarding. I was uncertain why, but it was nice, that she remembered us and just wanted to have us board the plane before everyone else?
Once back in Madrid, after a “great” landing that deserve and quick prayer, we went to the train station, and ate a good buffet. Well this was after we searched for about 30 minutes for something to eat and nothing looked appealing with
exception to this place. Then we boarded the wrong train to Alicante, but the ticket guy didn’t mind since the train was late and could have been easily confused for our train that was supposed to arrive about 30 minutes later. The train ride back to Alicante was a bit long, even though Fun with Dick and Jane was on in Spanish. Rest up, LAS FALLAS, tomorrow.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.121s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 76; dbt: 0.0823s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Camille Sowers
non-member comment
Miss you Mr. Bader