Day 10 Ferragudo

We had planned to take a boat to see all the pretty coastal caves but the spring weather, wind and waves had other ideas, and our trip was cancelled. At some point we realized the trip from Lagos to the cave is likely the longer of the trips we could take. It'd be easier to get a boat trip from a charter that was closer to the caves. Less water to cross, etc.

Anyhow, the important thing is that my wife and I, as we often do, found a small little loop that'd we repeat ad nauseum, along the lines of: 

"Ohh, so, it's you know, BECAUSE it's so far away.."

"Right, right, we should get a boat trip from a company CLOSER"

"Totally, because then it would be closer, right, less water, less likely to be cancelled"

"Because Lagos is, you know, so FAR AWAY."

And somehow find a way to loop it back or give it a rest until we bring  it up again. Merely to troll our teenagers. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, our kids are pretty immune to this, so it takes quite a few performances to even crack their I Am Not Annoyed And Or Embarrassed by You Two exterior. We have so precious few years together with our kids, we really know how to drag it out.

Families that Troll Together Stay Together, or something.

So we went to Ferragudo. A touristy town to the east, yeah, let's say to the east of Lagos. I just follow wherever Google maps tells me to, even if it might drop me in the middle of a pedestrian only cobbled street, deep within a European town during Holy Week. The apps speaks so authoritatively. I mean, to some extent. It has a tendency to have the worst of the worst American accents when saying Portuguese street names, which normally would just be jarring, but we are in Portugal, so we end up feeling this low grade resentment towards Americans. Ugh, they just butcher the language that I took cannot speak at all.

We found a lovely spot with that bordered a canal that had approximately fifty restaurants all fronting a square. Ok, it might not have been fifty, it just felt like it. And you had that a situation when there is over competition for tourist dollars. Restaurants owners standing at the door of their restaurants, hoping they can will you inside, others approaching and talking far too much about their menus for any tourist foolish enough to linger and read the restaurant placards. I suppose we were visiting before true tourist season so it was definitely a case of, too many restaurants not enough tourists.

But I finally got to try paella. True, it's a Spanish dish inside Portugal, but that's pretty close. As I'm not a connoisseur of paella or a foodie with an educated palate, or.. much of palate at all, full stop, this is close enough. Paella to me is always a dish you should say if there was a trivia question asking about Spanish dishes and you needed an answer that makes you seem both well-travelled and well-read. Possibly with a following anecdote about backpacking in Andalusia.

You can almost hear the Portuguese teenagers all
 complaining at the same time ,
"As soon as I'm of age I'm OUT of here"

Ferragudo is a tourist/fishing town. Really the definition of a sleepy town. Tiny cobbled streets, narrow and winding. Architecture that looks like it hasn't had an update since corsairs invading from the Ottoman Empire were a real concerns. 

Somewhere up this street, around the corner,
 past a few more warning
 and past those bushes, I hear the
 houses are absolutely darling.

It has become a bit of a social media darling because of a street where the houses (contiguous houses.. I'm not sure what they are called.. townhouses without a strata? houses with limited yard space?) are painted in bright colours. Of course, this has only lead the town to put up signs forbidding anyone to wander the streets looking for the perfect selfie. I can't blame them.

Anyhow, we then go to see the Benagil caves from above. Benagil caves are these ocean caves, with a gigantic hole that opens into it from above. It has a large, sensible wood perimeter around it. I can only imagine the number of Instagram/selfie deaths/maimings that this hole has caused. It's a very low gate, and is, like may safety measures, merely a strong suggestion. I see far too many tourist climb over it to get a better look at the hole while the Atlantic ocean rages inside. 

Every cave here reminds of the 2000's remake of the Count of Monte Cristo, or probably, if I'm being even more honest, one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I expect to see plunder floating somewhere or a vicious knife fight to the death in 17th century appropriate clothing.

And we wrap it up trying to see a sunset back at Lagos. The sunsets and sunrises here have been lackluster for the same reasons they can be lackluster in Vancouver. The clouds. 

The buffeting winds and Blink And It'll Change Weather made it interesting, however. I positively saw birds start flying from a bush, then kinda nope right back to where they started. Luckily the wind is blowing from the ocean to land, if it was the other way around I would not have left the parking lot.

Our final dinner is at slightly fancy fish and chips place. All seafood here is incredibly fresh, even for seafood battered and deep fried, so much so that even my non-palate can taste the difference. 

It as a lovely day, nice sights, good food, and I hardly noticed the American accent on the drive back.