Algarve

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

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.