32 - Portugal's Algarve Coast

So, we left Sines and headed south to the Algarve region of Portugal - the southern region and home to the beautiful beach towns.  We had a mostly great sail (started out with little wind and we had to motor but the wind picked up nicely as we approached our anchorage just outside of the town of Sagres).  The coastline was amazing.  Lots of rock formations and caves.  This is the Lighthouse of Cabo de Sao Vincente welcoming us to the Algarve.

We stayed a couple of days at anchorage just enjoying the sunshine and warmth and then proceeded onto the boat's ultimate destination of the town of Lagos.  Lagos is probably the most popular boating sitting for sailors and is also very popular with many Europeans as it's an adorable little town with fabulous beaches and because its protected from the strong north winds, the weather was just perfect.  Not too hot but not too cold!  Just right!  We spent a little over a week exploring the town, the beaches, the grottos (the caves and rocky areas nearby) and even rented a scooter to travel the area between us and the next town of Portimao.

The boat will stay in Lagos for the winter.  She's being pulled and put on the hard (on land) for both winter storage and list of needed boat repairs and general maintenance.  On one of our morning walks, we discovered a cat colony called the Ferry Cats of Lagos.  It's maintained by volunteers who care for and feed the cats until they can find "furever" homes.  We contacted them and volunteered to feed the cats a couple of times a day while we were in town and quickly fell in love.  Most of the cats are very sweet and love attention.  Some of the more rotten ones convinced Pedro that they were used to being spoon fed (we had to get some wet food for a couple of them who were very old).  Can you say sucker?  Regardless, they were great for us to get our cat fix and I think we took some of the pressure off of the regular volunteers.  We know we'll be back and forth so we plan to volunteer again 

 

 With the cats being cared for by the regular volunteers and the boat under control of the boatyard, we boarded a train to Faro to catch our flight out the next morning to Edinburgh.  We only had one night but found a great Airbnb with a wonderful balcony right in the heart of town and minutes from the train station.  The owner gave us great information about the town and we explored most of it in our short time.  We found Igreja do Carmo, another church with a bone chapel.  It's fascinating!  They jokingly talked about needing volunteers for the missing bones in the chapel and Pedro sent my mom a picture asking her if she wanted to volunteer.  Yes, he's a brat!  We also found a great rooftop bar that had an amazing sunset view and yes, a fabulous Indian restaurant for dinner.  We loved Faro too! 

Another thing we loved about Faro was that on one of the cobblestone streets, the inlay was the numerical representation of PI.  This took up an entire city block (we forgot to count how many numbers they had but it was cool).  We took a picture of the beginning and the end.  Very neat!














The next morning, we caught a flight to Edinburgh for a long weekend.  As I type this, we are on a train from Edinburgh to London where we'll spend a few days with Dan and Alison of Equus before flying back the US for a few weeks to catch up on work and family.  We'll fill you in on our UK adventures next time.

Until next post!