I discovered the best things about Portugal
- Carina Thomae
- Aug 7, 2017
- 8 min read
I was wishing for a beach vacation after that long year of Canada´s cold, so fortunately my mom agreed and we made a trip to Portugal! Better saying the Algarve. And we were not alone, because our long known friends came with us. Nele, you got your part in here! So we were six people travelling to Lisbon, and missed the connection flight from Frankfurt to Lisbon, so we had nothing better to do than watching “despicable me 3” in the movie theatre and eating in an Italian restaurant at a shopping mall. We took our flight later and finally arrived in Lisbon at like 2am, we were kinda dead and went to sleep quickly.
Lisbon´s specialities
the next day, we had time to explore Lisbon. I honestly had no Idea what Lisbon is famous for, neither did I know at least one typical food for the country, but fortunately, I would figure that out soon. Those two weeks filled me up quite a lot but it was so worth it. I could bathe in those Natas, “pastel de Nata”, which is a custard tart with the size of a palm. You eat it with cinnamon and it´s amazing! Portugal is also known for their good sardines and fish in general, also the “cataplana” fish. They also have this special carob cake often made with nuts and figs. Every cafe makes them a little differently and sometimes you have more luck than other times, but I like the cake. One of my favourites is the “couvert” they serve you on demand (or they just bring it) which consists of cooked carrots, olives, bread and sardine paste and we fell in love with that little starter that filled us up before we even got our real starters.
another food highlight was that they press you fresh orange juice basically in every little beach bar or cafe you go, but apple juice is not a thing there at all.
As we drove by car through the landscape, we saw a lot of “Laranja” trees where they grow the oranges. Me and my dad kinda overcame our orange allergy there, because we figured out we actually didn´t have one…
what you need to see in Lisbon
in Lisbon we did some standard walking sight seen, because you can walk to a lot of places, or you take the really cute little tram there, which is overfilled and slower as an old lady walking tho. But yes, it is a highlight and it is cute. We saw the lift built by Gustave Eiffel which takes you to the upper part of Lisbon, because lisbon is known for their seven hills (which are actually eight) but they just wanted to act like the heritage of snow-white. You can take endless stairs through tight lanes everywhere up and down and explore the shops and restaurants. One evening, we found a rooftop bar at the top of “hotel Mundial”, where a lady looking like shakira sang songs and everyone enjoyed their cocktails with a nice view over the city and the castle. The next tip I can give is the “time out market” where one restaurant and food marked place followed the other in a chice designed indoor market place. But beware of the proudly exhibited dead bigs, burned in one piece. My vegetarian friends needed to see it, unfortunately. I could also recommend to visit the LX outdoor marked near the 25 de Abril bridge, where the outlet stores offer their clothes in style of a marked and it looked really nice, but we didn´t visit it, because it was so far away from our place and takes time to reach by train.
Our sweet place in the Algarve
So the next day we finally drove those 2 hours to the Algarve, where our house could be found in a village so small that the streets don´t even have names. The house was amazing and the pool was right next to the terrace, it had a big garden to play frisbee and enough space for six persons. It was funny, because the living room reminded me so much of eastern on some northern german island because of the lilac colours and window color. Me and my friend slept upstairs, and we could climb onto the roof and enjoy the view over the fields and dryness. It was so hot upstairs that I have up to sleep inside after two nights and moved on a sun lounger for the rest of the time, so did my dad and Jens. Sleeping under the stars was amazing, the milky way was visible some nights but a bunch of stars were always there, so was the sunrise waking me up in shy, pastel colours in the morning. A morning run revealed the dogs that kept me awake one night, and some men taking care of a whole herd of goats. They laughed at us how we were running in the heat…
Beach advice
Lying on the beaches of the Algarve for two weeks makes the expert of what to pay attention to on their beaches and stuff, so my tips follow:
don´t bring expensive sunshades, because the wind can brake them easily and we found at least two broken sunshades in the beaches garbage every day, so keep that in mind
the less people, the less expensive are the rides. On the city side are more people than further down, and when you want to rent a jetski or boat or you wanna ride the banana or the sofa, go where the least people are and you pay less. We could get it down to 12€ for the banana ride instead of 20€ on the busy side of the beach.
Try the “bolas de Berlim” which they sell you on the beach. It´s basically the “Berliners” well known in Germany, balls made of sweet dough filled with jam, but different. Here in Portugal they are “juicier” and filled with different things like custard creme, chocolate and the dough can be normal or with the typical Portuguese carob. It still tastes differently than German Berliners and is definitely tasty!
Ride the Banana, ride the sofa, take a kite fly! Beach adventures are endless and I can recommend highly to ride the banana boat when you want to have fun, the sofa when you want the thrill and wanna get shaken, and the kite motor fly to get the ultimate view on the beach from above!
Take your snorkelling gear with you, because especially on the rocks you will see some nice fish
Kayak plus Barbecue on the beach
I can tell you the best tour to do when you want to be active, have good food and want to admire the nature of the Rocks. I highly recommend the kayak and barbecue tour from algarvefreedomkayaks.pt , where me and my dad had the ultimate day on! We started from Praia Grande de Ferragudo (where you can spend an amazing beach day) and got pulled out in our kayaks by a motor boat to the caves and rocks. There, we paddled into some beautiful caves and explored the inside. For active people I can recommend to explore them by kayak, but the coast is long so if you want to see more caves in a shorter time, you should book a motor boat trip, what we did as well. However, the caves were amazing and such a beautiful creation of nature, the water was like a liquid emerald and the holes in the caves threw interesting light into them. On the way back, we stopped at a beach you can only reach by boat, where a really huge, open cave like a wale´s mouth gave us shade and the organizers did the barbecue in there for us. We had meat, fish, and calamari, all caught by those fishermen.
They also caught two sea stars, one spiky one and one looking like some spider snake alien. I could take them on my arm, as well as a sea urchin trying to eat my hand and my favourite, the sea cucumber which they call “penis of the sea”. I don´t know why but I find that thing really cute. It looks like a fat pickle, slimy and a bit squishy. We really didn´t want to leave that beautiful place, but after some fruits we got pulled back by the motor boat to the praia grande and me and my dad enjoyed a nice smoothie at one of the many beach bars on that beach, which highly rises the quality of that beach. The bars and cafes there give you a real Hawaii feeling without making the beach too touristic, because when you walk a bit, the beach is getting emptier.
cliff jumping
When we saw the caves by boat, we discovered a nice cliff jumping place and were convicted to visit it, so we did. It is hidden behind rocks and you can be sure not to hit rocks underwater, because the water is so clear you can see fish right on the sea floor from above 2 meters. There are different highs you can jump from and a cave where I dived through into another Lagoon, which was thrilling but really amazing. The water is damn cold, but you don´t really care as you survived that 4 meter jump! In the middle of the rocks, there is a beach bar with totally overpriced but amazing food like shrimp and carob cake. It was so fun there and I can just tell you to go there when you are around! The rocks are great to climb on and there is so much to explore.
slide and splash water park
Another great thing to do is visiting the splash and slide water park near Portimao, where me and my friend had a lot of fun. Come early at 10 when it opens, so you can do the nice slides before the lines are getting ridiculously long. The best one was the “big wave”, you go with four persons and slide down really steep, then slide up really high again before you go down. There are two slides looking like waves, and there you really need to squeeze everything together or water just rushes inside every opening it can find, and that´s not funny, me and my friend can tell you. It´s definitely worth to visit if you stay all day and except the long waiting in lines, it was great. At least we got super tanned that day!
the village festival
I honestly expected that festival to be like 20 old farmers coming together for a beer, but the village festival from our little no-name village was really cute. There were some little market stalls were they sold sangria, cake and pork sandwiches and in the front was a dj who played typical Portuguese songs you could dance to. People from around enjoyed the night with alcohol and music and it was a really nice atmosphere. Even though we were just some Germans on holiday here, we felt a little like we belonged.
Cape Sagres
I feel like everything we visited hear were some high places, so I´ll continue that and tell you we visited the Cape Sagres, the most south eastern point of Portugal with a light tower you can not climb on. The wind almost ripped all our clothes of and my hair looked like…I don’t even know, but the place was great. Probably the only place where you would buy overalls in Portugal, and a lot of retailer actually did there. You could see all those high cliffs and climb around and just enjoy the view. It is a popular place for hiking, you can hike 120km along the cliffs and sleep in hostels, actually sounds like a gerat adventure. As long as the wind doesn´t blow you down the cliffs, I mean.
So this is you optional to-do list for the Algarve in Portugal:
eat bolas de Berlim on the beach
go diving or snorkelling
eat Pastel de Nata
explore the caves
do cliff jumping
waterpark
eat fresh figs
visit Cape Sagres
get a tan
do a kite fly, ride the banana or the sofa (my hands burned from holding on but it was better than a rollercoaster)
do something crazy
relax
We are sad to leave this place and there is definitely so much more to to than we did, so we gotta come back! I never really thought about visiting Portugal because I thought it would be similar to Spain, but every country is different right? So I loved those weeks and can just recommend the Algarve or Portugal in general.
full Photo Album of the trip:
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