With just a few days left of this grand adventure, we decided we wanted to go back to the Algarve for some more beach time. It's about 5 driving hours to get there and before hitting the road we decided to explore Porto a little more. The city is quite pretty with interesting architecture. It's also very hilly. Every town / city in Portugal is on the hillier side, but Porto so far has everywhere else beat. Lisbon is a tough contender but the hills there didn't seem as steep as in Porto. Dave took some lovely photos on our hilly escapade.
I, on the other hand, was in a bit of an odd photographing state. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen from walking up the hills? I thought the buses had a very unique, rather space agey look to them.
One thing that's neat in Porto that we haven't noticed in other cities is that almost every shop had drawing on the windows, several with clever sayings or quotes.
There were some fun colorful touches about the city.
Some rather creepy looking things. Not sure you can see just how creepy the statue guy's face looks, just trust me that you feel quite sorry for the lady he's holding onto. And why does he get to be in fancy, lavish clothing while she's all nudey. The feminist in me was definitely disturbed by that statue. And the display of heads totally creeped me out. You can't really see it well, but in the top right window of the building with tile had a lineup of dolls looking out and watching passersby. More odd than creepy, but interesting for sure.
And finally, there were some things that simply put smiles on my face, such as the fact that you can get a bottle of vinho verde for less than 2 Euros, Portugal has a super cool post office logo, there's a cool vintage store with a Star Trek theme (that one's for you, mom), and fun translations - food with memory - cute.
After meandering around Porto, we drove to cave country. There were beautiful landscapes and countryside, which is a good thing because it softened the blow when we showed up at a cave that was closed on Mondays. If only someone (me) was better at reading the fine print in the guide book. Luckily, there was another cave (Mira de Aire) nearby that we got to tour. It was recently awarded first place in the Wonders of Portugal competition, cave division. That made me chuckle. The cave was awesome! It was discovered in the 1940s and has only been open to the public since the 1970s. The photos don't do it justice. Super duper cool!
After our cave explorations we headed south to the Algarve and decided to stay in Albufeira for the night - a small resort town about 30 minutes from Lagos (where we stayed previously). We found a hotel overlooking the beach and went to get some dinner. We had our first pitcher of sangria, the largest ice cream sundae we've ever had, and the smallest drink (a traditional Portuguese after-dinner digestivo made from sour cherries). The moon over the water looked amazing and it was nice to fall asleep to the sounds of waves crashing on the shore.
