Hello All!
Only 5 more days until I am home! I can't believe it but I am ready to head back, even though I know I will miss it once I leave! This week will consist of packing up my stuff and seeing a few last things before I leave. I am going to revisit some of my favorite places in this city such as Maria Luisa Park, the bar on the river, and the gardens in the Alcazar. I plan on writing my last blog while I am on my long plane ride home!
My friend Whitney left to go to Madrid today. It was so nice having a friend around these past couple of weeks. It worked out well because I was able to show her around to all the restaurants and see everything I wanted to for the last time as well. This the highlight was going Kayaking in the Guadalquivir river. Luckily we didn't fall in the river, lets just say the water isn't the cleanest! Afterwards we went out for ice cream at Rayas, the best ice cream joint in Sevilla! The weather was beautiful yesterday. Sunny, blue skies, with a nice breeze, it was great! At night we went out for tapas and drinks with a few friends. I am definitely going to miss all of the friends that I have met here. Not sure exactly when I will see them next and that is not the easiest to think about!
SOO I will save the rest of that talk for my next blog. Now onto talking about LAGOS, PORTUGAL!
Let's just say, this is the most beautiful place I have been too. Ireland was beautiful, don't get me wrong. But Portugal is just beyond words. You will just have to see for yourself in the pictures and you will see why.
What I loved about this trip was that in Lagos there is not much to see besides the beaches. So, there was no pressure to try to fit 10 things into a days schedule. Also our hotel was right on the most popular beach in town. It was a 30 second walk down to the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. We got a great deal. 18 euros a night for a sea view room with a balcony, a pool with a view of the ocean, 30 seconds away from the beach, a huge bed, and breakfast included! Can't find that anywhere in the states. We did a few things in the center such as visiting their slave "Museum". It turns out that Lagos was a port that they did slave trading. They had a mini museum which consisted of 1 one that explained a little about the history.
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| Our Beautiful beach! |
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| View from our Balcony |
As you all probably know, the economy is Portugal is going downhill. Just like Spain and Greece! I can see how it is affecting Portugal even more so than I see it in Spain. There were a lot more buildings that were vacant because of business that weren't able to keep their business going. There was a HUGE hotel next to ours that was shut down and blocked off so no one could go and live in there. We saw a few run down houses that you could tell squatters/homeless were living there. We went out to lunch one day and we asked how long many years they were open for and they said " We have been here for three years and we are so happy that we have been there for that long because no one is able to keep their business going here!" It is sad that a beautiful place like Lagos does not have the money to keep going. I hope that they find a way to get their economy up again! Another odd thing is that mostly everyone there was British. Almost everyone spoke English. I only met a handful of people that were actually Portuguese. Quite strange. Makes me wonder. How long will it take for that city to be completely taken over by Britain? It basically is now.
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| Just to give you a visual |
We also went on a boat tour that took you through all of the beautiful rocks and "caves". That was by far the high light of my trip. The boat drivers are so talented. They get you to fit into these little passage ways through rocks that have formed. There were at least 5 times I thought that we were going to hit some of the rocks but to my surprise we did not! Our boat driver was pretty cool. During the tour he asked
" Do you mind if we make a little detour so I can say hi to a friend?" We said sure.
Then he asked " Do you girls like free beer?" and we said "Of course!" And he said okay well I'll see what I can do.
... two minutes later we see a boat that they call the "booze cruises". Basically the young spring breakers pay to go on a boat and get drunk for a few hours. Our boat driver had friends that were driving the booze cruise boat and he threw us beer into our little boat. So we got a pretty sweet deal! 10 Euros for the coolest boat ride i've ever been on, and a beer included. Can't complain!
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| On our boat tour |
Pictures on our tour...
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| Our tour guide! |
There was also another cool thing that happened to us. Being so close the beach we went there everyday, naturally. Each day we were there we saw two young guys pull up with a boat and they kept docking the boat so that they could go and get beers to bring them on their boat. We saw the first two days but didnt say anything to them, then the third day we saw them I told Whitney: " Hey Whitney, why don't you go flirt with those guys so we can get on their boat?" So what did she do? She did what I asked her to and we got on their boat! It was GREAT! They took us for another boat ride around the caves. So that was good fun! The two guys were our age and they were from England. I always love hearing a British accent. Just the words they use are so comical, one of my favorites being" Oh bloody hell!". They use the word "bloody" in place of our swear words, thats what it seems like at least. On our last day the boys were up at 10am already at the beach and we were able to get another ride before we got on the dreadful 5 hour bus ride.
We were planning on heading back to Sevilla on that Sunday but our bus was sold out, so we had to come back on Monday instead. So we were stuck in Lagos for an extra day, not a bad place to be stuck in for an extra day. :)
We went to a really good hamburger joint called "Nah Nah Bah" ( suposed to sound like Banana Bar). I ordered their burger that is ranked in the top 50 hamburgers ( not sure if its ranked out of just Europe or what, but still pretty cool!). The burger was huge, I couldn't eat it all but it's ingriedients that made it special were the bacon and pineapple! There was an authentic Portguese restaurant that everyone told us to go to but of course it was closed for the three days that we were there due to "Personal reasons". Whatever those reasons were, we were not happy! What are the chances of that?
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| My Burger |
Other than that, we were just beach bums for the rest of the trip. It was the best last trip to end this adventure of mine. I am so happy that I chose to go to Lagos!
Now, just see for yourself the beauty of this city! This is exactly what I picture heaven to look like...
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