Blogs from Algarve, Portugal, Europe - page 2

Over two days, I’d say maybe 55 hours it’s been since my last tart. That’s just marginally shorter than our flight over here, and honestly, I’m not dealing. At least I’ve not been spewed on through this ordeal. Lucky I have lots of wholesome outdoor activity to numb the pain. Managed to stretch the doze til about 7 this morning so definitely on the improve. Lazy wait for fresh bread to complete our breakfast basket, but I would have happily eaten the cake three times, but the bread was good. Suited up for our horse adventure which included fetching the horses from the paddocks, grooming them and cleaning their feet, which was fun and something we’d never done before. Not too long til we were in the saddles and headed towards the cliffs. We were mostly ... read more

Yesterday, I got up early and walked up the beach to catch the sunrise, but then later in the morning, it started raining. It rained off and on the majority of the day, so I had a lazy day on the couch with a book, and picked up some junk food for good measure. By sunset, the rain had stopped, so I took a short walk on the beach to see the sunset. Fortunately today, the sun was back. We headed east along the shoreline for awhile. There were a few nice trails up along the rocks, but then we got to a point that seemed difficult to pass, so we opted to find a spot on the beach and relax for awhile. At lunchtime, we made out way back to the apartment. The tide had ... read more

Yesterday, we were planning to do another ride share, to get from Seville to Albufeira, Portugal but the only one offered at a time we wanted had a 1 star review. Only 1 review, and it was from 6 years ago, commenting that the car didn't have a/c and that the driver was 40 min late. We decided to give him a try anyway, reasoning that 1 bad review isn't necessarily accurate. He communicated right away, so we thought that was a good start. Then the night before, he asked if we could move the departure time from 11 to 12:30. We agreed to that, but then yesterday morning, he said he'd be a bit late, and then said he was taking his car to the mechanic. We had him cancel the ride share, and took ... read more

Loulé/Faro to Lagos 100.46 km A first day on the bike. In general a good day, but with some hiccups. We started slightly after 8.00 and arrived 9 hours and 100 km later in Lagos. We stopped twice, for coffee and lunch and battery charging for at least 1.5 hours. No real rush. The road was diverse: regular roads and rocky/sandy roads and paths. On more than one occasion, we had to get off our bikes and walk some distance which is not pleasant with heavy bikes. It seems that the route we planned was more for mountain bikers than for regular bikers such as us. I slipped and fell on 2 occasions, but nothing serious. We need to review our road planning; these rocky roads are slow and for me, dangerous. Overall we followed the ... read more

We had to pack up early and be out of the airbnb at 10am this morning since the ladies that run this one own 20 of them and they do all the cleaning themselves. They had even sent us a message earlier asking if we were flying out that morning, probably hoping to get in as early as possible to start cleaning. Anyways, we got out on time and since our Lisbon checkin was at 3pm we went to Lagos to see the town. We parked the car in an old part of the city and stumbled onto a surf shop where we bought some cool souvenirs of our surf experience. We got some good tips of where to go from the lady at the cultural center so we did some visiting and shopping, getting souvenirs ... read more