Lagos!

Europe » Portugal » Algarve » Lagos
October 11th 2010

Published: October 11th 2010

Edit Blog Post

AKaner

Lagos Bus

Method of transportation

This past weekend I took an excursion to Lagos, Portugal with 8 others from my CIEE program group. We traveled by bus since Google Maps approximated the travel time as 2 hours 34 minutes by car. In reality it took about 6 hours each way so that was pretty surprising. Luckily everyone was fine with sleeping for most of the ride after having gotten up around 6am that morning to catch the bus.

When we arrived in Lagos it was raining pretty steadily so we had to figure out where our hostel was in the rain which took some work. After we got settled in the hostel, the rain stopped for a bit in the afternoon so we took the opportunity to run down to the beach and get thrown around by some pretty large waves. After that it pretty much rained the rest of the day so we didn’t get another opportunity to see the beach on Friday.

Friday evening we all ate dinner at a Mexican place on the recommendation of the hostel owner and got some Chipotle-esque burritos. Following that we waddled around to some bars and found some interesting hangouts that were fun. It’s interesting

Our hostel - Stumble Inn

that probably 90% of all people we met spoke English as I was expecting a lot more Portuguese.

Saturday I got up in the morning around 7am when everyone else was sleeping to get out to the coast to take some pictures of things when the sun was rising. Most of the time the sun was behind the clouds, but I still got some cool shots. It started raining after about an hour so I headed back to the hostel to sleep for another few hours before going out. After getting some breakfast I went to a location called the Ponte de Piedad, or as it is called in English, Bridge of Mercy. It is at the southern tip of Lagos and had some pretty cool rock formations as the waves were crashing into it. Typically they offer grotto tours around these caves along the rocks, but because of the bad weather all weekend these were unfortunately not being offered.

For dinner, we went to a place that was highly recommended by the people at the hostel and also by places I had found online for traditional Portuguese food. Unfortunately Saturday is there biggest night so we were

The hostel

Much better than I thought it would be.

standing outside for a good 80min before finally being seated. It seems like Europeans really like to take their sweet time after finishing all their food for getting out of a restaurant, even when they can see people waiting. In any case, I ordered some steak - Portuguese style which was pretty tasty. It was wrapped in the famous Spanish ham and had some sort of interesting sauce with it. Not the greatest steak I’ve ever had, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless. I did manage to pick a squid off of the person sitting next to me’s plate which was surprisingly tasty.

Sunday I took a quick tour of the Church of Saint Antonio which also had a museum of some historical things from Lagos in it. I thought it was interesting, but was a little put off that they had signs everywhere saying you couldn’t take pictures. Being the rebel that I am I of course took pictures of the main attraction which was the church. Following that we went and walked around the streets looking at shops before turning to the hostel and heading to the bus station.

All in all it was a