Another day in the Algarve

I woke up the next day (Saturday) to my alarm going off an hour earlier than it should have. I had forgotten that Portugal was an hour behind Spain, so I was up at 7:30 instead of 8:30 in the morning. Great. I was about to fall back asleep when I heard thunder (which I hadn’t heard since coming to Europe). I decided that I should get the stuff from the balcony before it started to rain. Good thing I did, because it started pouring 15 minutes later.

Since I knew no one would be up that early, I got all my stuff packed away so I didn’t have to do it later. Then eventually I made my way down to breakfast where I ran into some people. There were scrambled eggs, bacon (still boiled, but at least this time it tasted like bacon), rolls, and bread. I ate way more than I should have eaten.

But anyway, since we didn’t have to check out until 11:45, and since I had already packed, I took a nap until about 11:30. (I didn’t really want to walk around in the rain in my last change of clothes.) But then since there wasn’t much to do in our little coastal suburb, we boarded the bus to take us to the downtown area. Brenna, Josh, Christina, and I walked around and did a little souvenir shopping (We lost Alisa.)

We walked down to the river and ended up at the Museu de Portimão. Lucky for us, it was World Tourism Day and the museum was free. We saw all these old artifacts, and also checked out a model of the pre-historic tribes building a tomb mound. There was an interactive map and timeline that went through periods of the city’s history (prehistoric, Roman, Islamic, Modern Era, contemporary) and showed the landmarks. There was also what was either a mock-up exhibit of an old fish factory, or an actual old fish factory complete with statues that showed how people prepared the catch.


The economy of Portimão, like many coastal towns in Iberia, used to be dominated by fishing (which still plays a big role) before tourism became its main source of income. We also checked out the photography exhibits—they had an underwater section that reminded me of the contest on display at the Natural History Museum this past summer as well as local photography.

Since we had a lot of time after we left the museum, we decided to walk back to our hotel instead of taking the bus. Josh led the way. We ended up stumbling upon the P1 Powerboat headquarters (there were all these speedboat races going on)—apparently the Grand Prix series had come to Portimão for the weekend. It was really cool—all the boats were there and we saw some of the drivers. Then we found this really really old staircase that led us into an old Portuguese fort (built in 1621 to keep the Spaniards and Moors out). When we got to the top, we could see the beach and boardwalk.

View from the fort.

We stopped for lunch at a place on the boardwalk. Not trying to spend too much money, we just ordered sandwiches and French fries. Sure, I cancelled that out by ordering 2 Cokes that cost just as much as my sandwich. While we were waiting for our food we hear helicopters, and when we looked outside we were very confused. There were three copters out over the water flying in different directions. One was spinning, and all three had smoke coming from their tails. At first I thought they might have collided, but eventually realized that it was an air show that was part of the race festivities. They started to do formations and fly past each other. It was really cool.


After lunch we walked back to the strip by our hotel. Then we heard a jet overhead—apparently they were also doing flyovers for the race. There were at least 2 planes that were circling around. It reminded me of Virginia Beach this year. We did more window shopping and went down by the beach one last time before getting on the bus and going home.


When the guys and I made it back to Triana (our neighborhood), we heard this band music outside and saw roads blocked off. Apparently there was a procession of people carrying a statue of Mary from this one church throughout the neighborhood. We heard the music from our casa until late that night (past 1). It was weird.

I forgot to mention the weather. The weather was very nice in Portugal (aside from the rain). The temperature was cool, and I was very comfortable. Today it rained all day in Seville (crazy, I know), so it was cool here too. After tomorrow, it’s going back into the upper 80s F, so I’m enjoying this while it lasts. The nights are definitely getting cooler though.

I’ll probably update Wednesday night after my round of classes. Next Friday a bunch of us are going to Morocco for the weekend—should be exciting.