Walking Lagos

June 10, 2024

We didn’t have any set plans for the day so we didn’t set an alarm. It was nice to sleep in a little bit and I think we woke up around 8:00. For breakfast I hard boiled the eggs I bought at the supermarket and we also shared the croissant as well as ate the tomato that I had acquired in Lisbon (I hadn’t seen it when I accidentally kicked it walking down the sidewalk. I think it fell out of a case of tomatoes near a restaurant. It had held up pretty good after I had gently kicked it and I decided it wouldn’t go to waste). This was a great European breakfast to start our day.

We walked down the big hill to the beach and walked the entire beach in both directions. This beach is longer than others we have been on thus far in Portugal, but still short in comparison to other beaches I walk. It was an overcast morning, but still pleasant and I did find a good handful of sea glass.

Our host had pointed out a hiking path up the cliff next to the beach. We set to tackle this next. It was quite the uphill at the start, but it did level off as we walked along the cliff. As a bonus, there was even three geocaches for me to do along the trail. The views were great and I really enjoyed the hike. It’s a good thing it was overcast because I know Tom wouldn’t have been enjoying the hike if the sun was beating down. The sun did come out on our way back and it warmed up quick.

It was just after 2:30 when we got done with our hike and we decided to have lunch at the seaside restaurant. We shared a ham and cheese baguette and a chicken Caesar salad. Both were just ok, but the strawberry mojito I had was very tasty. We felt like we both had earned desserts so Tom had an ice cream type dessert and I had an almond cake. They were both good, but the almond cake was the winner of the meal.

We were both exhausted after the beach walk and cliff hike so we walked up the huge hill back to our apartment. We already had almost 20,000 steps in at this point. I knew Tom was going to take a nap and I thought I might head out to hit a couple more geocaches, but I too felt tired. I laid down and was asleep before I knew it. Thankfully Tom set an alarm so we didn’t sleep the evening away.

Up from our nap we set back out to explore more of Lagos. We walked the streets in the direction of a lighthouse we wanted to check out. We ran into an epic walking path the consisted both of paved paths, boardwalks, and dirt paths. It was one of the most awesome walking paths I’ve been on as it ran along the cliff with views of the sea and boardwalks to look out points. I don’t think our host talked up this path enough. I think he mentioned it, but not to the extent I would. There were several geocaches along the way and I did another 3. There are more to do, but we ran out of time as the sun was setting and we needed to get back so we could make it to town in time for our dinner reservation. I’m hoping to hit the trail again on Wednesday to finish up the remaining caches. I do have to say that Portugal is a pretty geocaching friendly country. There is not really a shortage of them to do.

We picked up the car and drove back into town for dinner, parking in about the same spot we had the night before. At the restaurant we shared a mixed grill plate that had ribs, pork, and a sausage (more like a breakfast link), potatoes and coleslaw. It was good, but not great. For dessert we shared a lime mousse. Sharing the meal was absolutely the right choice.