Breakfast the next morning in Odemira consisted of many-a-sweet treat eaten lazily while watching the weather decide what it wanted to do.
The forecast that week has been for rain (which is not a bad thing judging from how beautiful this sets off the coast line here) but by the time we were done with breakfast, the sun popped its bright face out, inviting us to head out and explore even more of this beautiful part of Portugal.
After a quick jaunt to check out even more part of our hotel in Odemira (which I’d missed the day before – including the indoor pool), we hopped into the car and this time headed for the Algarve.
The Algarve is one of those places I’d heard so much about but never really thought to visit.
Now that I think about it, I’m not even sure why. In fact, the only reason why I was intrigued by it this time was because of a place called Lagos in the Algarve.
I was born in Lagos (totally different Lagos to this one) and so my fascination with it was nothing more than a superficial curiosity to see the place the city I grew up in was named after.
Thank goodness for that superficial curiousity though as this part of Portugal is absolutely stunning!
Like as soon as you arrive, you understand very quickly why this is such a popular spot for holiday makers all across Europe.
We actually started off in Ponta da Piedade, a stunning series of jagged rock formations jutting of the ocean around Lagos.
It’s such an impressive place to visit in Portugal and pretty much shows you what to expect around the Algarve (there are a fair few impressive places like this all along the Algarve – even on the beaches here).
Eventually, we carried on to the town of Lagos – a pretty Portuguese town with thousands of years of history.
Despite its access to some rather stunning beaches, Lagos is actually a spot worth visiting in and of itself, even if just for a few hours like we did.
It’s also incredibly tricky to drive around in (thanks to its narrow streets) and even more so to park in so it’s worth parking outside of the city (or just nabbing the first parking space you find) and seeing it on foot.
After grabbing a quick bite to eat for lunch (it was nothing of note – ergo the lack of pictures), we hopped back into the car and headed for the very end of Europe – the village of Sagres.
Sagres, actually has a lot of history behind it but truth be told, you’re here more for the natural beauty that anything else. (It really is a fairly small place).
It’s another one of those spots in Portugal where on one side (looking toward Europe on the East), the waters are much calmer than the other side on the West which is so much rougher and dramatically different in many way.
This dramatic difference of course makes Sagres really famous as a surfing location as the waves here are epic (perhaps even scarily so).
We decided to kick it back here for a bit and watch the sunset with a couple of Sagres (beers named after the place – which seemed appropriate) before heading back to Aljezur for dinner at the restaurant we’d tried to go to the night before.
The restaurant, Gulli Bistrot, is actually more Italian/Mediterranean and as soon as we tucked into our first bite, we understood why we couldn’t get a table the first night (which surprised us then because we assumed it was all fairly quiet around here) – the food here is so good!
I thoroughly enjoyed every single thing (even the meals I didn’t order – I maaaaay have helped myself to Lloyd’s food too 😄 though to be fair, he did the same to me 😃).
My favourite though would have to be the linguine (it was truly one of those moments where you wished you could just lick your bowl (*I think I probably would have if a.] I was at home and b.] I’d run out of bread to mop up the sauce with 😋🍽).
I don’t know how it happened but somehow, we ended up spending over 3 hours eating and drinking Sangria at that restaurant (actually, it may have been longer because I remember getting back to the hotel really late that evening… also, we did order quite a bit of food so that may have why we were there till quite late).
Between the delicious food, and the day spent in the sunshine in the Algarve, I was definitely pleased with my decision to venture out of Lisbon and see even more parts of Portugal than we’d seen before.
Portugal has some absolutely beautiful gems and getting to explore it this way makes for such a brilliant holiday.
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