There is something called first impression and Portugal started off very good and so far, we are very happy what we have seen although we haven’t seen much yet 🙂
I found out that travelling for more than a month is a tiring job (don’t think I am complaining, I am loving it, just sometimes you need relaxing time) as we like seeing historic sites we try to see everything out of the cities as well. So, we have decided to start our Portugal trip by resting for a day or two.
We drove from Seville to Portugal by stopping on the way to see couple of world heritage sites that Shane wrote about in the last blog. When we passed over a river you’re suddenly in Portugal. One good side of the European Union is no borders and no hustle and bustle to check into a country, although Shane wasn’t happy with the welcoming which was just “Welcome to Portugal” in 4 languages. He said he expected something more impressive. (I really don’t know what could they do different, a red carpet? 🙂 )
We decided to stay in Sao Bras de Alportel (little town an hour away from the coastal area) for convenience as that way we can drive to some cities by the seaside easily and to Lisbon. It was a really tiny town just above Faro (popular seaside town on the coast) and actually I didn’t expect anything or didn’t know what to expect really. First of all, this town is just beautiful and full of tourists and because of that hotels are full and prices are high (compared to big cities and Spain – around 70 dollar a night). Although in this tiny town to find our hotel we drove around 20 minutes in circles like dog trying to catch its tail due to some wrong direction that a guy has given to us. we finally made it to our hotel and we were welcomed by Juan the owner and we were happy to find an English-speaking person as it was really hard to find it in Spain. I loved that he brought us cold bottle of water and offered some fruits from his garden. I think it’s just great welcome after a tiring day!
Funny thing about this town is it’s full of British people like they had an agreement with British people. What is funnier is we went out for dinner and found an Indian restaurant and as we both love Indian we had Indian food in a restaurant full of British people but in Portugal 🙂 (basically everyone else in the restaurant was British and I am taking about 10-15 tables). This little town has exceeded our expectations with its cute little buildings, nice cafes at its little square, free wi fi in the town and a very nice hotel. We suggest you stay in this beautiful hotel which is an old house with added rooms at the back side. Let’s see what other nice Surprises Portugal has in store for us! So far so good…
