Algarve - Day 3 continued, Lagos and Cape de St Vincent.

 We did a quick grocery shop as when we booked the afternoons tour we were told it would leave at 1pm and be home by 6pm, so we'd be tired and wanting something quick.

We were picked up on time and then spent the next hour traveling from hotel to hotel in Albufeira, picking up other tourists. Aimee and I both felt so grateful that Tara had recommended our hotel, when she sent us our choices. We are in a far more low key and low rise area. Albufeira is crammed with high rise apartment blocks and hotels, and people. It only has a permanent population of 40,000 but is a much bigger city than that.

We drove through the countryside to Lagos (3rd largest city in the Algarve - Faro is the largest and Albufeira 2nd). Our tour guide told us, in English and French, that it grew important when Henrique "the Navigator", son of the king, moved here and made it the port from which the Portuguese set sail to explore. This honour later moved to Lisbon.

We had an hour and a half to wander the churches, museums

and the pedestrian shopping streets.

We didn't feel it was enough time to really do the educational stuff and wanted to be outside, so explored the old area of town.

None of the buildings were any older than 1755, when the same earthquake that destroyed much of Lisbon also wrecked havoc in the Algarve.

This building had some lovely Art Nouveau rose tiles.

We wandered in and out of some shops. Lots of ceramics (this one, Aimee particularly liked as it was colourful and 3 dimensional) and, surprisingly, wool sweaters and ponchos. We bought a couple of small souvenirs.

From the pedestrian street we caught glimpses of the river and bay, where the wind was building.

Rather than walk back the same way,

we walked back along the river where we could see the marina

and the fortress at the entrance to the bay.

Photo for Chris, who performed a couple of times in The Vagina Monologues.

He was not there for the tourists; drove up to the church and filled jugs and buckets from the water tap there.

Back to the bus

and we continued East

to the lighthouse on Cape de St Vincent. Otherwise known as "the end of the world" as it was the last thing that the sailors saw, sailing off into the unknown.

It is the most south west tip of Continental Europe.

The promontory  was first occupied by a monastery as the area was considered sacred. The monks built the first lighthouse.

The current light can be seen from 60km away as it is high up on the cliffs.

There wasn't much to see there, just a couple of gift shops. This cat seemed quite fascinated with the ceramic fish.

The star of the show was the wind and the resultant crashing waves. Looking West - the Atlantic.

Looking East to the next lighthouse down the coast. It is still considered the Atlantic here, until you reach Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean Sea begins. 

Windblown and breathless we climbed back into the bus and made our way back, dropping people at the hotels we had picked them up at. It was nearly 8pm when we got home. Tired and hungry, we had our wine, vegetable pie and headed for bed, too exhausted to write the blog that night.