Our day trip on Sunday

For today’s check list, visited a Church, a museum and a castle. All of the things you must do while you are in Europe have now been looked after.

We started off this morning driving to Monchique. Once again our GPS took us on a lovely route. Part of the problem is they have a new toll system in Portugal that is still a bit of a mess. Some of the toll roads they simply take a picture of your license plate and you need to go to the post office within 5 days to pay the toll. Yep, it is true, very fun for those of us using rental cars. Then there are regular toll roads like we are used to at home, you get a ticket and then when you get off the toll road there is a window that you pay at. So on the way to Monchique we got on a pay toll road, I hate this. Yesterday it cost us around 21.00 Euro just to drive from Lisbon to here. So I said no toll roads today, the GPS did not like this, so we were on one for about 5 minutes and it cost us 1.00 Euro. So we tried to change the GPS to say no freeways, stupid GPS, this includes secondary freeways I guess, so we`d get in a town, it would veer us off the main road, and send us on roads that I am sure were for the horse and buggy, then 5 minutes later it would send us back onto the road we just go off of...A few choice words were said to the GPS, it is lucky it is still alive. Yesterday Andre said at the gas station we do not need a better map than our rent a wreck car place gave us, tomorrow he is going to go and find a better map...

So off to Monchique. This city is inland, a pretty drive there, saw the insides a few few little main towns (see above paragraph re GPS). The reason we were going here is Andre read there was a sausage festival there this week-end. It was actually quite fun, though not a sausage festival I wouldn’t say. They had 2 huge tents set up and all kinds of things for sale inside, and some beer booths. I bought some honey, and some lemon jelly. Andre sampled many sausage, but didn’t buy any. They have black sausage in the region, and they had pictures of the pigs on the walls, and they are black, thus the black sausage I guess. Andre said it was OK, but too greasy so he didn’t buy any. The region is also popular for firewater which is a snaps type of liquor except the are probably over 40% liquor. Andre tried once but I think he did not like it as he did not even finish his sample. We walked around town a little, visited the Church here, then decided to move on for the afternoon to Silves. This was supposed to be on the way back to our place in Albuferia, but I have no idea where we actually drove, thank-you once again GPS, we did get there, but it took us twice as long as it should have. We did have a very pretty drive, lots of lemon and orange trees, very hilly, and lots of people out on bikes, it would have killed me, so hilly.

From sausage festival

Our first Church visit

so many steps!!

Silves is a city with a huge wall surrounding a castle which was built by the Moors around 1050. Again a very hilly city. We parked at the bottom of the town and then walked around the city. Stopped for lunch at a little pub. The waitress did not speak a word of English, but we managed. She made us a pitcher of Sangria which what we both needed since the temperature was around 21 degrees. After the tour of the castle we visited a archeological museum that had a lot of artifacts from the castle. It was a fun town to look around, but our next visits will hopefully be to towns along the sea, and with a good map!!

Castle in Silves

Now I know what Marc feels like when he is with me or Ron

Liked this door

Found our way home, again adding more miles to the car than we needed to. But, we did come into town a totally different route, we know we have lots more to discover just in this city we are in. Again lots of oranges for sale along the side of the road for amazing prices. Did not count the round about (traffic circle) but we must have do 200 of them today.

Arrived home and decided to go for a walk to the beach. We skipped the escalators today and walked down to the beach. I wore sandals, but won’t make that mistake again. Plan was to walk in bare feet on the sand, but it is full of shells, and hard to walk on, I needed sneakers. Walked the beach for about ½ hour, if I do this every day it will get me in shape, this is soft sinky sand, nothing like we had in Mexico, it is a very good work out just walking for ½ hour. Back into town from the beach and discovered a while new section we didn't see yesterday. You can tell this town must be really hopping in tourist season, so many restaurants with no one in them. You can easily find a meal here including wine for less than 10.00 Euro per person,not sure how good the wine would be but since we are drinking 2.00 Euro wine at home I am sure it would do. Also found a dollar store (well a Portuguese one). So we've added more tea towels, a juicer and kleenex to the stock at the apartment.

Just finished supper. Andre made fish, do not ask us what kind it was, it was white. I made a salad to go with it. Everything is just a little different here, the red peppers are really hard, nearly like our celery, and Andre said the lettuce was twiggy, whatever that means. I bought some cheese to put on the salad, it had a picture of a goat on the front, definitely it was not goat cheese what we are used to, maybe it was meant to feed the goats? Anyway it is going in the garbage. The fish was really good though, except now the small apartment smells a little like a fish shack. The windows here open WIDE open, like the wall opens up, and there are no screens. Haven't seen any bugs yet, and the windows were open for a while.

It is now 9:00 PM, no naps today, so I think we have pretty much flipped our clocks already. Andre is still battling his cold, he thinks he will stay around the apartment tomorrow. I still need to figure out my phone, so we may venture out and figure that out. I am going to try Skype first and see how that goes. I will finish this off and ask Andre to post a couple of pics. Will be in touch again soon... 

One of the thousands of orange trees we saw today