Ah, Portugal...

This year Matt won an achievement award at his company - the prize was an all-expenses paid trip to anywhere in Europe, plus an additional 2 days of vacation for Matt. We had already been planning to do a weekend getaway to a beach destination in September to relax before the wedding, so this was perfect because now we could go longer and virtually for free! After toying with the ideas of Sardinia and Greece but deciding that they were too much trouble to get to for a weekend trip, we decided on lovely Portugal.

Matt and I have both been to Lagos - he while studying abroad in Italy his junior year, and I two and a half years ago, after just arriving in Amsterdam and while Matt was studying for the last part of the CFA. Lagos is the most popular destination in the Algarve (the southwest region of Portugal known for its beatiful beaches). We decided to go somewhere new, and with less British tourists. I found a "pousada" that was a converted convent in a town called Tavira, less than 30 minutes east of the main Algarvian city of Faro, where the airport is. We flew out on the morning of the second Friday in September (the 12th)at 6:30am. We slept through our alarm since the night before we went to a dinner for Matt's company where we ate 5 courses and several glasses of varied wine until past 11 o'clock. Thankfully, Matt woke up 15 minutes before we were planning on calling our taxi, so we made it, although sans showers.

After a short layover in Lisbon, we arrived in Faro looking for our car service. We had booked Faro Airport Transfers and they are the worst! The guy could only be described as a sublime a-hole. Thankfully the ride was short and in less than 30 minutes we were at our pousada. It was really windy when we arrived, so we decided to skip the beach and instead head into the town for some bacalhau (a Portuguese codfish dish). After stuffing ourselves with yummy fish, we strolled back to the pousada and relaxed by the pool. We later had drinks at the hotel, and since we were exhausted from the previous night and our early morning trip and still stuffed from a massive lunch, we skipped dinner and went right to sleep.

The next morning we woke up with the sun and after breakfast made our way to the port to catch the ferry to the island. The ferry moves very slowly, and takes 20 minutes to get to the beach. On the island is a campgrounds and several restaurants and a few miles of beach. Some parts of the beach had a weird lime-green algae that was washed up, but it made for some cool pics.

For the rest of the weekend, we parked ourselves on the beach and did some hard-core relaxing. It has been said that Portugal has the best fish, and we would have to agree. Every meal we ate fresh fish that had just been caught that day. Mixed with some cold beers, they certainly hit the spot each time. Two days we lunched at the same restaurant on the beach that had a crazy Italian manager who told us stories about how cheap Dutch people are. That, of course, cracked us up.

Portugal can also be dubbed the place where Matt has dug thelargest hole of his life to date. It was so big you could look across the sand and not see his head popping out. He stayed in there to avoid the sun, and even fell asleep at one point in there, which I found incredible...

For dinner we hit up a spot on the boardwalk in Tavira leading up to the place where the ferry takes off from - we liked it so much we also returned to it the next night. The servers here were also hilarious, and super friendly. On our last day, we spent the morning on the beach before taking a water taxi back to town at around 2 so we wouldn't miss our ride to the airport. Walking back to the pousada we stopped by the restaurant and had a very interesting drink with one of our new friends - white port with tonic, ice and a lemon slice. Really good!