Drive to Lagos

So last night we went out to see what the Lisbon night life scene looked like. We headed out around 10:30 and the streets were already jumping with people. We were staying on one of the party streets so right out the door we were being asked if we wanted free shots as we walked by each bar. No thanks. We found an Irish pub (not the same one we went to the other night) where we had a pint of beer. We enjoyed people watching and making up stories of what we thought they were talking about. We left after one beer to head to a bar called Incognito that I read about in the travel guide book. The book said they played 1980’s and 90’s alternative rock which I thought would be right up our alley. Tom navigated us there (it was several streets away) and as we got closer I saw two bouncer types standing outside a door that didn’t have any signage. I asked Tom if we were close since the name of the place is Incognito that maybe there wouldn’t be a sign. Sure enough, we had found it. By this time it was almost 11:30, but the bouncers told us that it was pretty empty inside as they had just opened at 11:00. We went in anyway and ordered some drinks. I had a rum and coke and Tom had a Moscow mule. They went down pretty easy and so we ordered another as people started to fill the bar. By the time we ordered our third drink the bar was really hopping and the dance floor was pretty full. We didn’t hear any songs we recognized but we did make it a point to go dance. The dance floor had a huge mirror on one of the walls and we observed one of the guys dancing near us really enjoying watching himself as he danced. Tom clinked glasses with him and the next thing we knew we were all dancing together. The phrase of the night from this man was “Celebrate Yourself!”. I don’t even know how many times he said it, but it was kind of funny. Although we were having a good time we knew morning was going to come fast so we left at 1:30ish (even though the bars are open until 4:00a.m.) and headed back to our apartment. Right next door to our apartment is a pizza and kebab place. We thought it would be a good idea to eat the Lisbon version of 2:00a.m. Taco Bell and shared a chicken wrap and falafel. I’m glad we went out. It was a lot of fun. Celebrate yourself!!

Tom woke me up at 8:50 and neither one of us felt too bad. We got ready and packed our stuff and headed to reunite with our car in the parking garage. I took the parking ticket up to the machine to pay. The moment of truth . . . how much did this parking cost? It ended up being only 52.70 Euro which I didn’t think was too bad for 4 nights of parking. I was all set to pay with my credit card when I noticed the machine only accepted cash. We did not have this much Euro on us so we went on an ATM scavenger hunt. The first two ATMs we found didn’t work, but the third one was the charm. We took out 250 Euro and was surprised when the machine spat out 50 Euro bills for 200 of it, instead of 20’s. Back at the parking ticket machine I almost cried when I saw it didn’t take 50 Euro bills, but thankfully we had enough smaller bills to pay.

We set out to cross the 25th of April bridge to go to Cristo Rei (https://cristorei.pt/), the big statue of Jesus on the other side of the river. We had learned from our previous tours that a Portuguese cardinal had visited Brazil in 1934 and saw the Christ the Redeemer statue and was inspired to build one in Lisbon. After we bought our tickets the worker helping us told us there was a 45 minute wait to go to the top and sometimes the wait can be as long as 3 hours. That information probably would have been nice to know before we bought the tickets. We were ok with 45 minutes, but if it would haven been 3 hours we would have passed. I did time it and it ended up being almost exactly an hour from the time we first stood in line to the time we stepped foot on the platform at the base of the statue. Unfortunately it was a cloudy day so we didn’t have the best views, but it was still pretty awesome to see the statue that close.

Back down on the ground we took a few more pictures of the 25th of April bridge. When we had been standing in line Tom had offered his phone to me to check for geocaches. There was one virtual and one physical cache on the site. After we had taken our pictures we did the virtual (which we actually were standing on top of when we took our pictures) and then set off for the physical cache. It was a good one and an easy find.

We had spent about 2 hours at this location and it was time to get on the road to our next destination of Lagos in the Algarve province. Unfortunately I missed the turn for the on-ramp so we ended up crossing back over the 25th of April bridge and taking a bunch of side streets before we were re-routed and crossed back across the bridge one more time, now going in the right direction to our next destination. We were planning on taking the freeway the whole way, but some billboards for McDonald’s got to us. We had already passed one McDonald’s that was just off the freeway that I had thought about stopping (something about a road trip and a quick bite sounded good). I didn’t verbalize it though and after we passed the billboard much later Tom asked if I wanted McDonald’s. We were both thinking the same thing. Well I never did come across another McDonald’s just off the freeway, but as we were coming upon a bigger city Tom looked on his phone and it appeared there was a McDonald’s just 8 minutes off the freeway. We went for it (because when something gets stuck in your head it’s hard to let it go). Unfortunately there wasn’t actually a McDonald’s in that location. I’m not sure why Google thought there was. We re-looked and saw there was one in another town 30 minutes away that was still on the way to our final destination, but just not via the freeway. We went for it and found this one no problem. It was a rather large McDonald’s. Although there were a couple of menu items that were different than the American menu, I stuck with a double cheeseburger and Tom a Big Mac. It hit the spot for me, Tom not so much. The rest of our drive to Lagos was on back roads where we felt like we were constantly behind Sunday drivers. It was a pretty drive however, so I’m not upset that we went this route.

We got to our Airbnb just after 6:00p.m. We are staying in a hotel, but have a two bedroom suite with another awesome balcony and small kitchen area. The owner came up to our room and spent about a half hour with us providing recommendations for the area (restaurants and beaches) and giving us a nice map of the area. The area we are in feels much more like a suburban subdivision. It was a 15 minute walk to the nearest mini-market where we picked up a 5 liter of water, a bottle of wine, two Somersby’s, a croissant and six eggs for a grand total of 11.60 Euro. We got back in time to watch the sunset, although it did cloud up so it wasn’t the most spectacular sunset.

We then set out to find dinner. One street over from our hotel is another hotel with a restaurant so we went there first. Unfortunately they only take reservations, so we were out of luck there. Since we are not staying in the city center there is not a lot in walking distance, so we got in the car and drove. We found some free street parking and walked down into the town. The first restaurant we stopped at smelled amazing, but they too were not taking walk-ins. We did make a reservation for tomorrow at 9:30p.m. (the only time slot they had available). A little further down the street we liked the menu at Casa do Prego. Here there was a wait list, but they said we could wait in their rooftop bar area. We gladly said yes to this option. Tom ordered a sangria and I ordered a half-pint of beer and waited about 30 minutes for a table. We ordered a Portuguese steak sandwich to share and thought it was very good. It was the perfect amount of food for such a late meal. When we got back to the hotel I checked the map with the recommendations that our host had for us and was pleased to see the place we chose was #5 of 11 places he recommended.