Sagres and Lagos (Thursday 3/30)

A day of adventuring in a minibus! But really, thank goodness for Andrew, the only one of us with any degree of willingness to a) drive a stick shift, b) drive a minibus, c) drive a stick-shift minibus around a million Portuguese roundabouts. 

Our first destination of the day: Sagres, the end of the earth, the westernmost point of Europe. It was suitably dramatic, with the ocean crashing below against rocky cliffs, and of course no barriers or railings to keep us from falling over the edge as we tramped over extremely rocky ground. 

We stopped for a few souvenirs at a ceramics place, then headed into the town of Sagres for lunch. We sat outside a little restaurant called Cafe Conchinha. I had a dish of clams, my fave. Mom had sole, Greta had cod (both of those fishes were bone-in fish), Dad and Andrew had piri piri chicken, and Lucia had lasagna. 

Then we walked down to the nearest beach, Praia da Mareta, which was of course beautiful. The kids ran at the edge of the water and decided the wanted to swim--which we said they could do at the next stop.

So we continued on toward Lagos and stopped at Praia do Camilo, one of the top beaches according to a lot of lists we'd found. And it really was spectacular. It's a small cove beach surrounded by very high cliffs--to get down to the beach, we walked down 400 steps. The girls did indeed swim, despite the water being cold. Then we hunted for sea glass and found a nice collection. 

The day went so fast--at that point, the sun was going down. We drove into the town of Lagos, which was so beautiful--we needed a whole day to explore it. But we didn't have a whole day, so we got gelato and walked around just a bit before heading back toward our hotel. 

We were all exhausted from our day of adventuring, and not very hungry, so we just sat at the hotel bar to enjoy some much-deserved drinks and a few appetizers. It was an excellent day, but also frustrating, because we need way more time here. There is so much to see. We only saw a handful of beaches! I wish we could stay.

Alas, instead, we packed our suitcases and prepared to depart the Algarve tomorrow.