Month: January 2025

Tavira, Portugal

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Grillad bläckfisk i Tavira, Portugal

We chose to spend New Year’s Eve “at home”, with take-away food and a fight against our internal clock to stay awake until midnight, a fight we lost by about an hour even though the bubble was on cooling and we woke up to the sound of bombs and rockets at midnight.
It was probably a real party yesterday because when we decided to drive to Tavira this morning, we were pretty much alone out, both in the villages and on the roads.

I read somewhere that Tavira is the most beautiful town on the Algarve coast but after visiting Faro and being quite disappointed my expectations were not very high and I admit, I was wrong. The town, which is older than old, has clear traces of Roman times and the Moors but as the simple man that I am, I chose to wander around the narrow alleys, look at the orange/lemon trees with the fruit in full bloom, enjoy the sun and above all enjoy life instead of burying myself in history. Everything here feels taken care of and if you compare it to Faro it is like night and day, of course there are abandoned houses and graffiti here too but not at all to the same extent. No matter how I turn and twist it, Tavira makes me want to just get lost in the alleys and back streets while Faro made me be a little wary of which alley you entered. There was probably a big party yesterday because when we decided to drive to Tavira this morning we were pretty much alone out, both in the villages and on the roads.

I heard that Tavira is also the octopus capital, whether it’s true or not I’ll leave it unsaid but I had grilled octopus for lunch and even though it took almost an hour to get it to the table due to a mess in the kitchen, it was worth the wait, absolutely delicious!

Tavira, Portugal
Tavira, Portugal
Tavira, Portugal
Tavira, Portugal
Santa Maria church, Tavira, Portugal
Santa Maria church, Tavira, Portugal
Found traces back to 800BC here at Tavira, Portugal
Found traces back to 800BC here at Tavira, Portugal
Tavira, Portugal
Tavira, Portugal
Grilled squid at Tavira, Porugal
Grilled squid at Tavira, Porugal

Albufeira, Portugal

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Albufeira, Portugal

Albufeira is located in the exact opposite direction of Lagos, which was our destination for the day, so of course we headed there. A small town, built for mass tourism and according to rumors in town everyone goes here to party. We had no plans to party at all, but it might be fun to check out another village before we check out of our apartment in Armação de Pêra and drive to Lagos.

Driving in Portugal is easy, sure, there is maybe a bit more traffic than back home in Sweden but not chaos like in some countries (cough, Albania, cough) and even though they have tolls everywhere, they are smooth and above all, there is plenty of free parking. Of course there are parking garages you can pay to park in but so far we have managed to avoid having to pay for a single parking space, we like that! But enough about them, how was Albufeira?

I probably would have loved them 20-25 years ago, English and Irish pubs everywhere. Sloppy but fast and cheap food. Everything seems to be built to handle the English hordes who do their best to dry Portugal out of beer. As a 40+ man, they are not interesting anymore but I got a really good breakfast at a cafe anyway. If you look away from the central party districts, the city was clean, nice and quite cozy to walk around in and what a beach it has, wow! Would I have managed to stay here longer than the few hours I was there? Doubtful, even though it was barely lunchtime you could see how the Guinness was flowing and as I said, I am too old to hang out with drunk tourists.

Lagos, Portugal

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Lagos, Portugal

New day, new city. Maybe we should have had a camper van but thanks to Airbnb we manage to keep the accommodation costs down quite well while living really well. In Armação de Pêra we lived in a super nice apartment with a sea view and now, in Lagos we have rented an even nicer apartment with a large bathroom with a bathtub, 60″ TV (what are we going to do with it?!) and a really nice patio. The location is not as good so no sea view and it is located in a “tourist complex”, the advantage of a tourist complex is however the heated pool, own tennis courts. and that all services you may need is just around the corner.

Traveling with a baby has been so much better and easier than I ever thought. He usually behaves himself, which of course makes life easier for us, but the people here in Portugal seem to really love children and it is more the rule than the exception that you see someone looking at and flirting with the little guy. Last night, however, there was a screaming party all evening and today he got up before dawn, playing around on on maximum volume of course. With the thin walls we have in the house, I just had to apologize to the neighbour when I bumped into him, but no no, it’s just fun with children. Not sure if I would have been as forgiving in that situation!

But never mind the accommodation, what is Lagos like? Well, to be honest, we haven’t really had time to explore it yet, but so far it seems very promising. If Faro is run-down and worn, Armação de Pêra for sleepy pensioners and Albufeira is for party people, then Lagos seems to be somewhere in between all three. Plenty of restaurants and pubs but not just for partying, cozy streets and alleys to get lost in and from a distance it looked like they have really nice beaches too. We didn’t visit the beach or the old town today, but rather stayed around the area around the harbour and the slightly more modern center and so far most of the indications are that Lagos could become the new favorite here on the Algarve coast

Silves, Portugal

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Slottet i Silves

The youngest member of the travel party is a bit of an early bird and at 5:00 AM at the latest he thinks it’s time to get up and start playing. True to his habit, he woke up before the rooster crowed today and started playing relatively loudly and when he managed to wake us, the neighbors and their baby so that it started crying (yes, it’s terribly sensitive here) I decided to go out for a morning walk with him.
Lagos was stone-dead at that time of day and during my trip through the harbor and its surrounding areas I didn’t meet a single person, I continued towards the city and thought about visiting the fish market just when it opens. Good plan but since it’s Saturday it opens at 8:00 AM so I was almost two hours early. I continued through the old town and wandered into the residential areas so I had to use Google Maps to find my way back, all without encountering a single person. Despite the total lack of both light and people, you feel safe here and you don’t have to be afraid to take out your phone and check where the hell you are.

Once the sun had risen, I was back home and had breakfast, so we decided to go on a day trip to Silves, which is located a bit inland. Silves was previously (we’re talking a super long time ago, during the time of the Moors) the capital of the Algarve and can therefore be considered historically interesting. I personally thought it was a super cozy little village that had a mighty castle at the top, a massive church that was once a mosque (for all of you who complain about the conversion of Hagia Sophia) and a cozy little center where there was a market when we got there. The city itself is small, however, and you can go through all the sights in about an hour, add a coffee and a lunch and the day is done. The castle itself is definitely mighty on the outside but when you go inside it’s a little more meh, the archaeological museum is probably good, if you can speak Portuguese but still, I definitely recommend a visit if you’re nearby.

Ponta da Piedade, Portugal

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Ponta da Piedade, Portugal

Still in Lagos and yesterday we had pretty boring weather with rain showers and chilly weather, in other words we were mostly at home and took it easy, took the opportunity to go down to the supermarket to fill up the supplies between the showers and judge by my surprise when a team with a donkey and cart arrives, stops in front of Pingo (the equivalent of Costco), ties the donkey to a lamppost and goes in and does some shopping. The contrast is incredible with all those Teslas, Mercedes AMGs and a donkey, indescribable and as the tourist I am, of course I snap a picture.

The day today started with showers but cleared up quickly so we got in the car and drove out to Ponta da Piedade. Ponta da Piedade is a type of rock formation that stands on the cape just outside Lagos. Most tourists take a boat trip out and visit the rocks and its caves this way and yes, it is probably the coolest way to be honest but visiting and seeing from the top was also really impressive and hard to capture in a picture.

The more I travel here the more amazed I am by this country, a gigantic tourist attraction as above and I can only imagine how chaotic they must be during peak season, it was a really extensive system of trestles, bridges and lookouts, everything adapted for the disabled and stroller friendly. I probably wouldn’t have thought about them before but now I really feel how much I appreciate it and that they offer this for free…wow!

Last night in Lagos

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Praia de São Roque, Lagos Portugal

Last night in Lagos and I have to sum it up as the favorite so far closely followed by Tavira. Carro gave the facebook comment “Go to Lagos, Fantastically cozy there” and I can only agree. It isclean, nice people, small cozy alleys to wander lost in while you look in both modern shops such as Billabong or Ripcurl interspersed with ceramics and with traditional clothing stores. We are here off-season so many bars and nightclubs have closed but I suspect there are and will be over if you are interested in partying!
Off-season also means cold in the water and even though the surf shops are open there is not a queue to rent surf and kites, you do see many cars with boards on the roof so obviously the breaks are here if you want to go out.

It’s a much quieter trip than I usually go on for obvious reasons, but we still try to go out to cafes and restaurants. Most of the time they’ve been good even though they look like a hurricane has passed where we’ve been sitting. What strikes me, though, is that almost all of them have a high chair to offer, both male and female waiters flirt and play hello wildly with the little guy, and they’re happy to help heat up baby food. However, Portuguese baby food is a total no-no for our young master, so we’ve now learned to just order some bread with butter for him and then he gets to eat from our plates, which has resulted in him starting to get used to a diet of squid, mussels, swordfish, sea bass… it’s going to be expensive if we’re going to maintain this diet once we are back in Sweden.

Sagres, Portugal

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Välkommen till Sagres, Portugal

Early check-out together with late check-in at our new accommodation in Sagres gave us the opportunity to explore yet another coastal village, Portimão. Coastal village was wrong, we thought it were a coastal village but it turned out to be a city of almost 40,000 inhabitants. Once there we realize that we parked at the beach but then what? It was a really nice beach like all the other beaches we have seen here on the Algarve coast but our idea of ​​walking in yet another cozy center, narrow alleys and walkways, sitting at a coffee shop or two kind of ran out of steam as we never found any “real” center, on the other hand we found many abandoned houses, semi-modern concrete complexes and homeless people/alkis.
I realize that I had not done my research properly and I am convinced that Portimão has more to offer but at the moment it is at the bottom of the list of nice places in Portugal and we drove away as fast as we got there.

Now we are in Sagres which is as far southwest as you can get in Portugal and probably the whole of Europe? This is the exact opposite of everything we have experienced so far in Portugal and we read somewhere that you either love or hate Sagres. It is small, according to Wikipedia the village has 2000 inhabitants and there is not a fish restaurant as far as the eye can see, instead vegan cafes and surf shops dominate. Here they have signs everywhere that camping is prohibited but still one camper van after another stands in a row and we are not talking about luxury motorhomes, no here are the so-called tin houses where the contents (surfboards) are probably worth more than the cars. Here are all the signs, menus and it almost feels like everyone is starting to speak English instead of Portuguese. You go here simply to surf, watch birds and just take it easy, you either love it or you hate it.

What we’re going to do here is a good question, but we’ll take the days as they come and so far I have to say that I love the calm breeze and hippie atmosphere that surrounds the village.

Sagres Fort

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Kanonerna med olika kaliber i Sagres Fort

The fort in Sagres was built in the 15th century to protect Sagres and the Algarve coast in general against Moorish pirates. The fort, which is strategically located on a cape, surrounded by approximately 30-40m high, vertical cliffs, feels impregnable from the water and one broadside after the other would be burned down by incoming hostile ships before they could land at Praia da Mareta. In addition to being a purely defensive structure, it also served as a navigation school and if it was from Lagos that many of the conquistadors started, it was here that they were trained and taught how to conquer the world. A dark time in the history of perhaps especially South America, but it still feels much better to visit a former navigation school than the old slave market that is now a tourist magnet in Lagos.

The surroundings of the fort are still impressive today, but nowadays it is not soldiers hanging along the cliff side, no, today it is Portuguese fishermen who, without any protective equipment whatsoever, balance on the cliff edge with their fishing rods. One fish after another is pulled up and I cannot help but be impressed by their fishing luck but also their courage, a fall down here would first mean a free fall of about 30-40m into the cold Atlantic waters and then being tumbled around by waves that have built up all the way from South America, doubtful if you would survive that but what do you do for fresh fish.

North, lets go north

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Utsikt över Aljezur

Time to pack the car once again, check out of our accommodation and for the first time on this trip, head north. The goal for the day is to head north to Vila Nova de Milfontes, which is about halfway between Sagres and Lisbon. We really don’t have any stress going north so we decided to drive on small roads, which meant that we got to see a little more of Portugal’s nature, which you don’t see directly from the highway, but also much more fun driving, serpentine roads up and down the mountains, narrow, crooked and very beautiful.
It wasn’t just us who thought so, though, the roads were full of middle-aged men in lycra on their racing bikes, some looked like they were training for the Tour de France, others were a little more reserved, but regardless, I wouldn’t want to drive during peak season, people would have gone crazy.

About an hour’s drive in we arrived at Aljezur, a modest little mountain village that was very reminiscent of Silves. The “town” is ancient and has the ruins of a castle, the last one the Arabs managed to hold in Portugal before the Christians completely expelled them, but the area has been inhabited for longer than that, traces dating back to the Bronze Age has been found here.

Today, however, it is the ultra-modern hippies and the recurring lycra-clad middle-aged men who are here. We stopped and had lunch at a completely vegan cafe where you sat on mats directly on the floor, while the food was being prepared we heard the staff talking about going on some self-realization course, that’s probably good but regardless of how much of a hippie they were, the food was really good and the atmosphere in the cafe was fantastically cozy.

Vila Nova de Milfontes, Portugal

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Vila Nova de Milfontes

I didn’t have high hopes for the small village of Vila Nova de Milfontes but the location is perfect, halfway between Sagres and Lisbon which is our next destination on the trip so why not stay here for a night or two, we are in no hurry. The village which is located next to the west coast is divided by the Mira river and interestingly I read on Wikipedia that the community was founded by prisoners convicted of minor crimes in the 15th century, in 50 years they grew to a little more than 10 families and now, 600 years later there are almost 5000 inhabitants here, probably not all of them are convicted of crimes these days.

This is one of the first villages we visit where you actually feel that people really live here and they are not just there for the sake of tourism. Of course there is a lot of tourism here too. The surf shops, hotels and houses for rent replace each other but the majority are still inhabited and when you walk around the narrow streets you have to watch out because suddenly there may be a drying rack in the middle of the street because someone has a laundry day. On the morning walk this morning every “café” was packed as everyone would drink their morning coffee, smoke their cigarette and talk a little bit of shit before it was time to go to work. I, who walked around in a T-shirt and shorts, really stood out as leather jackets and hats were the most common clothing among the locals.

Something else that stands out is the proportion of cats, I see cats everywhere and even if it is unclear whether they are wild or not, they are lying on the roof of the car, sunbathing on the street or just sneaking around the alleys in the city. A strange feeling that I have seen this before, in Istanbul arises but whether this is really so or if I am influenced by the fact that the Arab culture has a strong foothold here, I will leave it unsaid. Regardless, this is probably the new favorite in Portugal. There is not a lot to do here but it is a beautiful, cozy and nice city and as I said, it feels authentic and not a touristy city.

Alfama, Lisbon

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Här någonstans bor vi. Miradouro das Portas do Sol, Lissabon

I have now checked into our accommodation here in Alfama, Lisbon and a big, heavy stone has finally been lifted from my heart, the rental car. If I were a car manufacturer, I would have seen rental cars as an advertising window towards potential customers and thus tried to make all rental cars of my brand well equipped, comfortable, complete and working without problems. Our rental car met exactly zero of those criteria.

After almost two weeks of driving, CarPlay suddenly started to work yesterday, even though I chose No when asked if I wanted to allow CarPlay. A little curious is that I have tried to get this function to work since I picked up the car without success, but now, for no apparent reason, it started. The comfort in the car was beyond criticism, I have sat on park benches that are more comfortable, the AC in the car gave neither cold nor hot air. The car usually started but sometimes it just died right after starting, another attempt to start the car seems to work and even though it is 120km/h on the motorways in Portugal, I never got up to that speed, I was about to bounce off the road due to the lousy roadholding. As I said, a large stone has now come loose when I returned the car and it will take a lot for me to buy a Citroën in the future.

Alfama where we live now is one of Lisbon’s oldest areas and it shows, the houses are close together, the streets are more alleys that wind up the hill and here they are teeming with churches, forts, cafes, restaurants and tourists, lots of tourists. Of course, this can also contribute to the fact that it is nice to leave the car because it was no fun to drive here. One-way, narrow, hilly and people everywhere. Add to that trams and traffic signs in a language you don’t understand and I think it is acceptable that the stress level increased a level or two but we got there in the end.

Baixa-Chiado, Lisbon

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Baixa-Chiado, Lisbon

Our curiosity and spirit of discovery continued today and if we focus on the nearby area of ​​Alfama yesterday, today we wandered a little further towards Lisbon’s historic center Baixa de Lissabon and Chiado. The neighborhood looks pretty much the same with a lot of old, a little new, but most of it was pretty fresh and nice even though there was a lot of graffiti everywhere, which in itself feels like it is all over the country. I don’t know if they paint like crazy here or if they’re just worse at washing it off, but if there’s a free space, they paint it. I don’t mind and since there are a lot of throwups and more paintings instead of just bombing their tag, I think it can be a bit fun to see.

The areas we walked around today were a bit more up-to-date than where we live and we found one or two clean shopping streets with everything from Gucci to Rolex stores, nothing was bought in any of those stores but we did have lunch at McDonald’s. Now we may not have chosen McDonald’s because of the culinary delights served there but because it is convenient with a changing room and heating baby food but anyway, we came in, we ordered our food at the self-service kiosk and boom, an employee was right there and took our receipt to make sure we would get our food right away. Apparently, it is a law that pregnant women, people with small children like us, pensioners and probably more have the right to priority and we passed probably 30 other customers who were waiting for their food. The same goes for grocery stores, they have a separate checkout for us with toddlers and we are actually let forward in line to avoid queuing, fantastic and even though our son is certainly behaving himself, I can imagine that it is nice for everyone to avoid screaming toddlers 😉

This, combined with the fact that the people here are extremely child-friendly, everyone does their utmost to help and hopefully get to spend some time with the child, means that I have to say that Portugal is the #1 country to travel to with small children.