Alte and a few other small towns.

Woke up a little earlier this morning and we saw a little bit of a sunrise. Very pretty on the old town view that we have off our balcony.

This afternoon we did a car tour of some little towns around Albufeira where we are staying. Started off in Paderne where we were going to walk around town and go to the castle. We packed a lunch and decided to stop at a little Church right on the edge of town and have lunch on some benches that were outside the Church. We thought something might be up when people started arriving dressed in black. We had our sandwiches, then Andre got up to take some pictures of the Church, oops it is a funeral parlour, and there is a casket and flowers inside. We quickly pack up the rest of our lunch, we will finish it somewhere else. From here we crossed the street to look around the cemetery, something different we saw here is that nearly every marker had a picture of the person on it, haven’t seen that before. After our quick lunch walked into town and just looked around. We then decided to ask where to find the castle. We got directions, saw the castle in the distance, but never did find the road to get there and gave up. Oh well I’m sure we’ll see a castle again at some point this trip. 

Church that is now a funeral home

Next stop is a little town called Alte. This town had a beautiful old Church from the 1600`s that we went to visit. Again we walked around town, including a nice walk along the river. Saw a few campers that people must be touring in and staying here for a while, I cant imagine driving one of those on the tiny streets we went on!

Alte

For my mother in law because she is so special

Following Alte we picked a couple more small towns to visit, Salir which we found another Church perched right on top of a hill. I could have sworn it was a one way street it was so narrow, but we had to return back the same way so I guess it was 2 way. I asked Andre to walk ahead and make sure no one was coming up the hill, it was crazy. Andre really liked this church, there was a bar right outside the entrance. The views were very pretty from here, we were so high up the mountain. There are also some old ruins to visit in this town, not much to see, and the woman actually had to unlock the door for us to go outside to see more and this was about 3 in the afternoon, very few tourists around. A neat thing we saw is instead of screen doors, they had stings of bead hanging. No mosquitoes here. 

From the car, yes this is a 2 way steet!!

Church with the bar right outside

Some interesting things we saw on the drive today. Many many orchards of oranges and some lemons as well. So many mountains, not at all what I expected here. We also saw a place where they do something with cork, there were hundreds of cork peels outside, not sure what the proper wording is for that, but it was impressive. The views were quite beautiful, lots of farmland and small villages, very different from where we are staying.

 When you leave a town here, there a sign that has a red stripe on it.

Cork

Notice the name of the town we are leaving, wegot a green light!

We then returned home, stopped for a few groceries for supper, Andre made homemade sangria & some delicious trout for supper. 

After supper we walked down to old town just so I wouldn’t fall asleep at 8PM. It is so very quiet in town, I have no idea how these restaurants survive at this time of year, there are hundreds and hundreds of empty tables, kind of sad to see.

Tomorrow we are heading towards Tavira, towards the border with Spain. We are packing a suitcase in case we decide to stay overnight somewhere.