After time in Lisbon, Terese and I trained all the way to southern Portugal to the Algarve. While it was still March, it was not perfect beach weather but by mid-afternoon of our beach day, the weather had warmed and cleared up and we got some good coast strolling time. The cliffs were amazing! Their drama beckoned for photos but maybe we should have thought a little longer after the signs said, "Careful, edges of rocks may fall."
This was a celebration photo of our cliff-climbing...and er, lack of planning. Terese and I had walked for a few hours down the beach, stopped for lunch at a near-deserted restaurant where we only 3 other Irish customers were patronizing, and indulged in our adopted Spanish tradition, the siesta. All this to find that as we started back to the town, the tide had come in and was well up the side of the cliff in some places making it uncrossable. This meant the only way to cross was to go up and over them, in bare feet. At least in most places there were trails further up where we needed to go. One led by an interesting set-up where a restaurant had a pulley system set up to zip-line supplies back and forth from the the other side of a gulley to the restaurant. At one point when we tried to time the waves just right and cross in between where some waves were hitting the cliffs, we scurried through while the water ebbed away, only to find a naked man around the corner, unabashedly enjoying some rays.
Terese on the outdoor escalator. Europe has got the art of these figured out! Loved seeing several while there, especially the ones in Barcelona (where Facto Delafé made this awesome video-how sad is it that every time we had a huge stretch of rainy days in Galicia I would put this video on repeat so I could just pretend I was seeing sun like the glorious Mediterranean sun in the video).
Because it wasn't tourist season the little town was fairly unpopulated, with the main demographic there being retired British and Dutch people. We stayed in a hotel where I think only one other room was filled. It was 8 euros a night per person, but it's true that you get what you pay for!--might have been kind of shady. One night Terese and I decided take the ukulele out and just take some silly pictures playing it on a bench. We stopped in a bar where we were the youngest people by at least 35 years, and the most sober. Drunk Dutch senior citizens always makes for good entertainment. Since we obviously stood out, we were asked by the night's singer (jamming out some great beach tunes from James Taylor to Jack Johnson) where we were from. When I said, "Alabama," everyone responded with the like-clockwork-response, "Oh, sweet home!" They asked if I knew how to play it and if I could play it with him. Gotta love how music can bring people together. We played and sang it with the man in the photo throwing in some inebriated "Alabama!" interjections every verse.