Olhoa & Tavira

Today we hit the road heading East towards the border to Spain. In couple of weeks I will be flying to London for work for a few days, so this is practice for us as we will drive through the city of Faro where I will catch my flight. Turns out the practice run will not be the same route we will take. Once again GPS has decided to take us down all kinds of back roads, it was pretty, but not what we were looking to do when we started out today!

First stop we made was in a port city of Olhao, I asked Andre if we were in Hawaii or Portugal, sure sounds like a Hawaiian name to me. We drove right into the down town area, there are lots of sand bars here, people out digging for clams we think. Also this is a fishing town and there are many fishing boats. This is also market day, therefore crazy to find parking downtown. We did eventually find a parking spot, finally figured out how to pay the meter, well actually we really didn’t, it took our Euro, didn’t give us a ticket, but a guy pulled out a few spots from us and just gave us his when we asked for help. Lots of beautiful fruits and veg’s for sale, picked up some strawberries and almonds that we figure we will eat somewhere along the way today. We also went through the fish market, this was huge, and so crowded. The Portuguese sure do love their fish, and so many that we have never heard of before.

Fish Market in Olhoa

Get the car!!  I`m holding a spot for us

Getting fishing nets ready

From here we had off to Tavira which is where our plans are to be for the day. We have packed an overnight bag in case we decide to spend the night. Again it is busy in the down town old area but we luck into a parking spot and discover it is right across from tourist information. Picked up a map, and some names of places we may want to stay. We walked around, looked at a couple of places that had rooms (I think everyone has rooms here at this time of year) and decided on a place right off the river in the main square. It is 35.00 euros for a double including breakfast. I think this is a very old house that has been converted in to kind of a B&B, but it has lots of rooms so not like other B&B`s we have stayed in. We have our own bathroom, so I am happy. Unload some of our junk, how come we have this much stuff even for one night, and off we go to explore.

We start of by going to visit the castle, yes it is right downtown so we find this one. We climb up the castle walls to get a view of the city, very very pretty, but what a crazy climb. I was not very comfortable doing it, the stairs are definitely scary, and never would have been allowed in Canada, but I made it, and the view was worth it. Actually coming down was not as bad as going up, which surprised me. From the castle we then toured a couple of beautiful churches, and just wandered around the very pretty old part of the city.  There is also a convent here from the 1500`s that is now a pousada (hotel)  These are now very common in Portugal, but a little on the pricy side at 130.00 Euro a night here anyway, wonder what the nuns would think of the pool and bar in the convent?

Amazing tiles in this wooden church

View of roofs in city from castle walls

Climbing the "stairs" to the castle walls..do I look scared?

Posada, convent from 1500's

Different flowers, looked like swans

We are now getting hungry and thirsty so stop at a little Portuguese restaurant that is off another square that we find. Andre had a “regional sandwich”, which is a grilled ham and cheese we discover. I had a delicious salad with the most amazing tomatoes, we haven't found any that taste that good here yet, so now the hunt is on for good tomatoes when we get back to Albufeira. Andre had a big beer, and a small beer, I had a sangria, and we split 2 little appetizer pies, for a total 12.00 Euro. So far we really haven't found it expensive to eat out here, mind you we are not going to the overly touristy fancy places, but we are eating well.

Life is good....

This town also has a couple of bridges that cross over the river that make it very interesting. One of the bridges is an old wooden bridge that would be awful to drive over, and the other dates back a few more years, to the Roman times. We are quite sure it is not the original brick work on the bridge, but still interesting, and since it is pedestrian only doesn’t seem like any worry about it collapsing.

Roman bridge

After lunch we decide to hit the beach for a couple of hours. There is a ferry that you catch about 2KM from downtown, it is 1.40 Euro each for the boat ride over to a very nice island that has amazing beaches. The ferry ride is about 10 minutes, Andre told me this is our Mediterranean cruise.

Our Mediterranean cruise ship, no safety drill needed

Lots of teenagers wake boarding and surfing, but you certainly needed a web suit here, the water was cold. Very pretty to watch the waves, we haven’t seen waves anywhere like this since we have been here. Have to mention the bathrooms here, wow, the worst I have ever witnessed, this puts gross bathrooms in another league, so bad I went into the mens washrooms. The scary thing is there are some very nice looking restaurants on this Island, but after seeing the bathrooms no way would I have eaten at any of them. Enough of that....

So get back from the Island and head back to our hotel to get changed. The evenings really cool off and we will need jeans. It is an old Portuguese couple that run the hotel, they are so sweet, I am sure this house has been in the family forever, we see old pictures around the house. We get changed and head off to a Church that has live music tonight. Every Saturday night for the month of March they are holding live music concerts in a different Church in town. Tonight it is a pianist and a opera singer, what an amazing show. It is in a small Church and there are about 70 of us there that pretty much fill up the place. They went through about an hour worth of music dating from Haendel right up until Celine Dion and my favourite Gershwins Summertime. This cost us the grand total of 2.00 Euro each, we couldn’t believe it when we got there and that was the price.

Church concert

Church where concert was held

After the concert we walked around town a little before finding somewhere for supper. Like Albuferia it is very quiet, nearly spooky so. 

I was craving Indian so we found a restaurant that we had walked by earlier today that seemed good. What a meal! Nancy and Ron we really missed you, you would have loved it. We had no idea what half the stuff was on the menu, but I asked for a chicken dish that was a little spicy and Andre asked for lamb that was spicy. They brought me chicken Madras and Andre lamb Vendalo, both were excellent. A bottle of wine, rice, and 2 samosas for appetizers and some poppadum (spelling ???) and then they brought us 2 complimentary Baileys after dinner. All this for 30.00 Euros, again we thought we did well.

We are now back at the hotel. Breakfast is served starting at 8:30, not sure if they realize this is late for us. We haven't seen anyone else here yet except the owners, so we may be it tomorrow morning for breakfast. I have now seen a couple of other people, so we are not alone here.

Tomorrow we will explore the region more, and take the long way home, especially if we listen to Mrs. GPS!!!