It was supposed to be raining today… Yuck.  We had decided since the weather wasn’t going to be stellar, we would drive almost to Spain and check out some salt flats where there might be flamingos. I can’t believe I talked Matt into going flamingo searching, but YAY! 

We drove out to the little town called Castro Marim, where there was a natural park with lagoons and such… We did a little short hike, and I *think* I saw some flamingos way far away, but I might just be telling myself that to feel better. 

When we were finished with that little walk, we went into town, where we could check out different salt flats and then a castle. I’m generally all in for castles…  We parked and started walking towards the salt flats. Those were actually pretty interesting, we saw salt in various states of harvest and even saw some bags that looked destined to be shipped for processing. Or wherever salt goes. This was mostly speculation, there were no tour guides or signs or explanations of any sort. 

Then we continued over to the castle, the Castelo de Castro Marim (or something similar). It cost a whopping €1.10 per person, and it was totally worth it. We wandered around for a while, checking out the little museums and the walls that had stood since the 1300s…. Super cool!

When we finally had enough and went back to the car, we headed to Tavira for lunch. We found a place to park on the river and made our way to town. We wandered for a minute, then realized if we wanted lunch we should find a place, as many of the restaurants closed at 2:30 and it was really close to 2:15…. After going to a couple and striking out, we found a little place in an alley and sat. I am loving the grilled chicken here. Not as good as fish, but… 

After lunch, we wandered a bit longer and found another castle to check out. The views from the walls were awesome! And the inside was a botanical gardens of sorts, with beautiful plants that all had species placards on them. Then we wandered a bit longer and headed back to the hotel. 

We stopped at the grocery on our way and bought sandwiches and another (super cheap, €2.39!) bottle of wine for dinner. We were hoping for a pretty sunset from our west-facing balcony, but it was super cloudy… And so damned windy we ended up bringing the table and chairs inside and watching YouTube on the iPad while we ate. 

Then, an early bedtime…

We had another lovely breakfast on our balcony this morning. We chilled for a bit, and then started the walk around Olhão down to the ferry port – we were going to Ilha da Armona for the day – and we took the long way, wandering around town to see as much as we could on the way. . We got tickets for the ferry and sat down to wait with some coffee..

The ferry ride was fun, if uneventful. Boats are fun, no matter if they’re a 30 ft. monohull sailboat or a big ass ferry that shuttles 100s of people to barrier islands.

When we got to Armona, we literally walked across the entire island to the beach. Along the way, we saw all the cute little beach houses with the bougainvillea that you see in all the postcards… SO PRETTY. There’s not much to write about, and pictures don’t do it justice, but I sure tried.

We spent a lovely few hours on the beach, and then topped it off with a drink at a beach bar, complete with comfy chairs and our toes in the sand. 

Then in the evening, we went to the marina, where we caught a beautiful sunset from the rooftop bar overlooking the ocean. Afterwards, we went back to Mare Shrimp & Stuff, which was actually open this time, and had a lovely seafood dinner and a bottle of wine to end our time in Olhão.

At first, we weren’t sure about Olhão. It was way rougher than anything else we’d seen, and we didn’t know how to feel about it. In the end, though, after experiencing the town for a few days, we ended up liking it, maybe even the most of all of the places we went. It was real, it was gritty, it was where the people live. We felt like we finally got a taste of the “real” Portugal, not just the places where the tourists go… Too bad we have to leave tomorrow.

Today was the final road trip of the trip. Sniff sniff.

We got up, had breakfast, and finished packing up our stuff. We wasted a little time, loaded everything into the car, and took off for Lisbon. One last hurrah today.

We drove to the little town of Aljustrel, where supposedly there was this super cool local little restaurant that seemed interesting. We found a place to park, wandered around town for a bit, including climbing up to the church/castle up on the hill, which was actually really pretty, and then went to lunch at Tasca do Filipe.

What an experience! They didn’t speak any English (or Spanish, for that matter). I barely understand too much Portuguese. They told us there was the dish of the day and we went with it. We ended up with a giant grilled ribeye, which we split. On the side, rice, bread, olives, salami, cheese, fries, and salad. To drink, a (small) bottle of wine – which was actually just a 750 mL, a normal sized bottle of wine. Portuguese people don’t fuck around when it comes to wine.  The meal was delicious.  And it only cost us €28!! SO cheap! And SO good!

We kept driving after lunch, arriving at our hotel right around check in time. There was a small glitch getting us in – we’d changed our minds about where we were supposed to be staying a couple days before and had only booked two days previous – but then we got our room. 

It was AMAZING! King sized bed, sitting area with comfy chairs in front, TV, huge bathroom with a proper tub… Just beautiful! I was super sad that we were only staying here one night, between the awesome room and the free parking.

We had decided to stay on the outskirts of Lisbon instead of much closer to the city a couple days before, and the little town where we ended up was fantastic!  Alcochete was quaint, lively but quiet, and across the river from the craziness that is Lisbon. We wandered around a bit after we’d checked in, checking out the river and the water and the small streets…  We ended up at a river front bar for a drink, which was super relaxing and just really nice overall.

We went back to our room, showered, chilled for a little bit, then went out to dinner. Before we ate, we wandered a little bit more and watched the sun set over the river. Gorgeous! Afterwards, Matt wanted pizza, so we got pizza. And wine for me, of course. When we were finished eating, we went back to the hotel to get what little sleep we could. We have a 4:00 am wake up tomorrow to catch our flight home….

Today was 30 hours long. Literally. We woke up at 4:00 in the morning since our flight left at 7:20. We got up, shoved our crap in the car, and took off for one more crazy drive to the airport.

The drive wasn’t too bad until we had to find the rental car return place. There were signs, there were signs… There weren’t signs. We saw the (little, unlit, off the side of the road) sign right as we drove past it. Awesome. We reloaded the directions to the airport on Google Maps, and went all the way around the roundabout… Getting cut off and honked at the entire time. One more “I’m a fucking tourist, deal” episode before we left.

We FINALLY found the place, turned in the car, and headed to drop our bags. The ticket agent told us to go straight to our gate because passport control was taking a while. We cleared security, then found the Priority Pass lounge and stood in line waiting for it to open so we could grab breakfast, mistakenly thinking that “passport control” was the same as security. We went in, walked around for a second – the lounge was BEAUTIFUL – and then got paranoid about passport control.  Good thing, too. Matt got through no problem, but I got the pleasure of standing in line for a while because my passport didn’t scan. I finally got through, and we got to our gate with enough time to sit for a little bit.  

The Lisbon airport has this weird thing where they don’t announce anything over loudspeakers. It’s eerily quiet in there. I guess it’s kinda nice? It’s also pretty stressful, because if you’re not close enough to hear the gate agent calling boarding, you’d totally miss it.Glad we were paying attention. We were, luckily, and we got on board. 

The flight was uneventful, except that we got the pleasure of circling in a holding pattern for a little bit before landing, but no big deal. I got a beautiful view of London on final, since I actually had a window seat.

We got off the plane, went through security again, and found a board to tell us our connecting gate. They apparently don’t publish the gates until 30 minutes before the flight, so that was interesting. We had almost two hours before that, so we went and found the lounge at Terminal 1. We had to wait a few minutes, but as soon as I’d bought a latte, we got the message that we were in. It was another nice lounge, and we got some lunch. The food was really good – to be honest, these lounges are worth their weight in gold. Free food, free drinks… Lunch and a beer later, we finally learned our gate and took off for it.

We had to take the train to the rest of the gates in the terminal, and we were squished in there like sardines. We got to C gates, and went to our gate. 

We boarded, settled in, and took off for an  8 hour, 50 minute  flight.  There were soft drinks, dinner (pasta – it was really good, actually) accompanied by a glass of wine, and then a snack later. The snack was this adult Hot Pocket type thing with caramelized onions that was delicious! Then coffee…  Four movies watched later, we landed in Denver with no issues.  

We went through customs (SO easy – yay Global Entry!), waited for our bags, and grabbed an Uber home. 

What. A. TRIP!

Here’s the video: