Last updated on 27 September 2016
This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase with one of these links, I recieve a small commission at no additional cost to you. Read the full Affiliate Policy.
Aaaaaaand, we’re back for part two! Woo! You can see part one of my adventures in Portugal in yesterday’s post, where I showed you pictures from Monday to Wednesday. I explained yesterday that I could have kept going and shown you the rest of the week, but on Thursday we took a mini tour of the southern province of Portugal, and it was that day I took the most photos, and we did the most in one go. So it needed more space, and I didn’t want to overload you.
I’m just going to continues on from where we got up to. Cool? Cool.
Day Four // Thursday
On Thursday, Dad hired a car, we grabbed a map, and try to navigate our way around sothern Portual. Actually, correction: Dad hired a car, we grabbed a map and I successfully directed us without any hiccups to four different places, sitting in the back of the car, with an actual, legit paper map (no SatNav here), which was all in Portuguese. I think that that’s pretty awesome.
We drove up to Silves first, a little town about 40 minutes away from our hotel. Here it is on the map, so you can get a general idea:
‘A’ is where our hotel is, and Silves is circled in red.
It was a really cute town! When we rounded the bend in the road and saw it for the first time, we were super excited because there was a castle! I love me some castles! From the top of the road, where we were first, you could see the entire town and the surrounding country side.
We drove down and parked the car, and started to wander through the streets. We didn’t really know what was there, we just sort of showed up and, as my Dad has been saying since the stone age, ‘took the adventure that was before us’. The town was super cute. There were lots of little alley ways, and cobbled paths that were rough and miss-matched and wonderful. There were Portuguese grannies hanging their washing out windows and we had to keep looking up in case someone threw their washing up water out their top floor windows.
Again, there were lots of pottery shops, and fun looking buildings. There were little cafes, and the one where we stopped for freshly squeezed laranjas juice (orange) was owned and run by a Brit, so that was a little odd. We walked up to the castle that we saw from the road, and Dad and I went in to check it out, while my mum and sisters went and got a smoothie.
The castle was really huge, and exceptionally well kept. All the walls were intact and they even had a cafe in there. There were trees and flowers in the castle grounds, and, even though all the signs were in Portuguese, it was great being able to walk around and see what things once would have looked like.
After Silves, I navigated us to the town of Monchique. It wasn’t too far from Silves, as you can see here, where I’ve circled it:
We were there for lunch, and found a place in the centre of town. There were quite a few people, both locals and tourists, and also a colossal amount of cyclists who biked through every so often. There must have been good bike trails around the place. Monchique was up in the mountains, so, if it had been a nicer day (it was a bit too cloudy), then the view would have been amazing. We had lunch and a little wander, but didn’t stay too long.
Yes, I had a burger and chips. But I had just finished lent and I really really wanted junky food. Don’t judge me. I love how the sign (last picture) says “Shop. Fire Water Honey” and the ‘and’ is shoved in the bottom. Haha! What does that even mean? Why would you want Fire, Water and Honey? Unless it’s Firewater…? Like a fire hydrant? But why would you want Honey with it…?
We jumped back in the car and drove to a look out place that apparently was famous for it’s rock formations. When you see the pictures, you’ll see why:
There were all these rocks piled high on top of each other. We made sure we made a stack before we left. By this time in the afternoon, and on top of that hill, it was actually really cold. Apparently Portugal isn’t hot all the time…
We drove over to the West coast, just for the drive really, and drove through Aljezur (which you can see on the map up there, basically straight out from Monchique, but on the coast). On the way there, we drove through the mountains and through cork trees, which were stripped from the bottom up (sounds rude, doesn’t it? Ha), and used to make corks for wine bottles.
From Aljezur, which we didn’t stop in, we drove down to Lagos. It was one of the places Mum wanted to see, so, even though we didn’t have a good look around as it was getting late, she can now say she’s been there.
In Lagos, we looked out across the sea again, and also into the city. It was quite big; pretty sure it’s one of the main ones down on that coast…could be wrong? I don’t know. There were heaps of boats and pretty cliffs, all red like back in Falesia. We went and had a coffee and a bit of Portuguese cake in a little shop before heading home along the bottom of the province.
And by the time we got back, it was dinner time. So that was our big adventure around the place. I’m still rather proud of my navigating skills, especially when I don’t read Portuguese. If it were Spanish, then I would have a better change. But it turns out Portuguese is actually quite different.
Day Five // Friday and Day Six // Saturday
By Friday, we were really tired. In fact, the next few days we didn’t really do too much, because we were exhausted. I think all the busy exploring, the fresh air and the over eating made us tired. Haha. We did go back down to the Falesia beach again, on the Friday, and also on Saturday. Though on Saturday, my sister and I went and looked in the shops down near the beach, and bought some more presents for people, and then got a smoothie at a cafe that over looked a sports academy place. Seriously, those people ran…a lot! On the first day we were there we wondered why there were so many people in fancy running clothes always out storming around. This was why.
Every night, because we were on an all inclusive holiday deal thing, we got free cocktails! Yay! That’s what we like! So that’s what the blue drink up there is. Also, that gigantic pink house is amazing and was on the way to the beach. It was really cool…but really pink! It was like a huge marshmallow. Those are sugar coated almonds, and chocolate coated almonds in a bowl. We couldn’t find Easter eggs anywhere, so these were the next best thing.
Oh, I nearly forgot; on Friday, which was Good Friday, we wanted to go to Church, because we knew that we wouldn’t be able to on Easter Sunday because of transport etc. You will probably know that I am a Christian, as well as my family, and we would normally go on Easter Sunday, so we thought we should go to Church over the weekend there instead.
We went to Catholic Mass at 5pm at the Mother Church in Albufeira, mostly for the experience of a typical Catholic Portuguese service really. We are not Catholic, and, with no offence intended to those of you may be, I’m very glad we are not. It.Was.Crazy! It didn’t help that we had no idea what was going on (though Mum did because she is fluent in Spanish, and it’s similar enough to be able to get the gist of things), and there was a lot of kissing statues and incense burning and things. Crazy as.
But it was a good experience I guess. I now know what Catholic Mass is like, even if it were a little hyped up for Good Friday, and I also know I don’t ever want to be Catholic. They did have pretty fabrics though…I wonder where they get them from…
Day Seven // Sunday
On Sunday, we bummed around the hotel in the morning playing cards and reading. I read two books while on holiday, on my new Kindle Fire, which I’ve called Kuzco, if you missed that post. On Sunday afternoon, Dad was getting cabin fever, so we had to leave and go and do something. We got a taxi to another nearby town, called Vilamoura, and it wasn’t that great. It was all very much geared to the rich people who come over for holidays. There were high rise buildings, casinos, and huge fancy hotels that were on every corner, and tacky, tacky shops on the marina. Basically, don’t go there. There’s no point.
On the marina there were hundreds of fancy boats, which were fun to look at and wonder what kind of people owned them, and there was an old sailing ship too. Didn’t stay there too long; there wasn’t any cute alleys or pottery shops to explore so we left. I did take a few pictures though:
And then it was Monday, and we got up at a stupid hour, and made the trip home! Ta daa!! Finished!!
So that was my trip! Just a couple of things to add:
– Portugal is the place of oranges! Seriously, every inch of field is covered in orange trees! It’s amazing! By the end of the week, whenever we saw a orange tree, or someone selling oranges on the side of the road we would joke and say things like ‘Oh hey, look! They grow oranges here!’ and ‘I’ve heard the grow oranges here’.
– The buildings are amazing. Not just the little cute ones with colourful doors and grandmas throwing washing out the windows, but every day housing around the place. They are all quite square, but have arches and columns and are painted really warms colours; pinks, yellows, oranges, peaches etc. If they are just white, then they usually have a colour with them, so like blue shutters or something. Really awesome!
– The Portuguese people are really nice! We made friends with Armundo the bar man; Isa, the receptionist; John, the man who looked after meal organisation; and Sergio (who we called Pistachio), the shuttle driver. Everyone in the towns were really friendly too. Even if some where a bit too persistent when they wanted you to buy something.
– The language, which I thought would be very similar to Spanish, was more difficult to understand than I thought. I know a little bit of Spanish, having done it at school, but Portuguese has a lot more ‘schl’ sort of sounds in it, and sounds a bit like Russian. We did learn some words though: laranjas (oranges); morango (strawberry); obrigado/a (thank you); cafe (coffee); aeroporto (airport); prohibido pescar (no fishing); bom dia (good morning, or good day); and Sponge Bob in Portuguese is ‘Bob Esponja’. HILARIOUS! That made me laugh so much. We decided that if we wanted to have a conversation with someone, we would either add an ‘o’ to all our English words, or just use words that already ended in ‘o’. So, when we said good bye to Sergio the shuttle driver (when we didn’t know his name), we said: “Avacado, Pistachio!”
And the last thing I want to share with you, are pictures of all the awesome doors I found! I mentioned that they had cool coloured doors, but they had some other really cool ones too, not necessarily coloured. Check it out:
Heh heh! That last one is a letter box! Super cute!
So there we have it! All finished! I really hope you’ve enjoyed following my trip! Next big adventure will hopefully be Greece in the summer with one of my very good friends who is coming over from NZ for a little while. It’s been our goal/dream since we were 16 to go to Greece together, ever since we took a Classics class in high school. We’re finally going to be able to do it! Fingers crossed it all works out!
