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!

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.