Friday, September 23, 2005

Lagos, Portugal - DAY ONE






We left Seville at 8:00am (Those early mornings are not getting any easier even though we've been doing them for 2 months now....) to head to Lagos, Portugal and THE BEACHES..... SANDY beaches!
We arrived at about 10:30am and we were impressed as soon as we walked from the bus to the hostel office. What a beautiful country. Even as we crossed the border from Spain the scenery changed drastically and was probably the most beautiful scenery we have seen from the bus so far. (Pat, you're a lucky bastard to be from this wonderful country!).
We lined up to check in and as we were waiting the receptionist called out "Does anyone want a double room?" Luke and I were booked to be in a 4 bed room but we looked at eachother and I said "Ah, fuck it, let's just do it...." and we did. We checked in and waited to be taken to our apartment. (The way it works here is that they have apartments all over the town where they put everyone). Miles and Jo had checked in before us and came down from their apartment. We asked how their room was (They booked a double as well) and they told us they had a private bedroom and a kitchen, etc and CABLE T.V:! (Luke and I haven't seen English T.V. since we left). They mentioned right after that they thought they might be the only ones with that luxury because when the woman told them about it she made it sound that way. Luke and I crossed our fingers, hoping that we'd get at least the news in English so we can catch up with what's going on in the world...). Well, we lucked out.... We arrived at our place, were let into the front door, walked up the stairs and led into our apartment. It was incredible... (Keep in mind we've mainly been living in rooms with a few, if not many other people and that the only times we've had privacy we were in tents or trailers, none of which had kitchens or private bathrooms) we had a bathroom (Shared with only ONE other person) a dining room (Shared), a kitchen (Shared but with stove, fridge, microwave and all the cutlery and dishes we could ask for). We were taken through the kitchen to the BACKYARD (God.... to access the outdoors without going down a million stairs or an elevator!)where there was.... wait for it.... wait for it.... A POOL! A BBQ! LOUNGE CHAIRS! GRASS! A PATIO TABLE! We were blown away! And then we were showed to our room. The woman took us into the backyard, unlocked a set of sliding glass doors on the side of the house and then we saw it.... our room.... HUGE! A 4-poster bed! A T.V. with cable and about 20 English channels! A full-length mirror! We were in heaven (See photos of everything!!!). After checking in we followed the receptionist to a laundrette where we dropped ALL of our clothes off to wash out the bed bugs. It ended up costing us €32 but we were able to pick half of it up at 6:30pm and the second half at 11:30am the following day. From there we headed out to the fresh food market and a wander. We got to the market, hoping to find some fresh mussels but didn't and we weren't exactly sure what we had at the apt. and how we would go about cooking most of the fish, etc that was at the market so we hit up the supermarket afterwards. There we boughts some prawns, calamari, cheese, eggs, bread, milk, chips, juice, wine, spagetti sauce, fusili noodles, HP sauce, margarine, etc... It was just like being at home! Oh, the meals we could cook!
We wandered around town keeping an eye out for Miles and Jo as we had told them earlier that we would see them at the laundrette but we didn't go to the same one that they went to so we figured we'd take a poke around to see what they were up to. We came across them ordering lunch so we stopped for a minute but Luke and I continued on to the apt to make our lunch.
We headed back to the apt. and made lunch... tuna sandwiches and home made sangria. Fabulous. Yummy and refreshing. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around, reading magazines in the sun in the backyard because neither of us had our bathing suits or anything to swim in because EVERYTHING was in the laundry.
Luke ended up taking a bit of a lie down so I decided to befriend a couple that were sitting in the backyard.... Nice couple, from Australia of course, isn't everyone? And eventually 6:30pm rolled around so we walked to the laundrette to fetch our clothes. We weren't sure if she would wash mine or Luke's bunch first so we were both crossing our fingers for ourself and, the wonderfully smart lady behind the counter had combined our stuff so we both had something to wear! YAY! Clean clothes... FINALLY! (Truthfully not only were the clothes buggy, they were also pretty dirty and stinky!).
We headed back with our booty and started prepping dinner.... fusili noodles with spagetti sauce, baby shrimp, calamari, peppers and onions... to die for! Afterwards we had a few drinks in the backyard and relaxed until bedtime. We were ready to hit the sack early cause I've got my yearly nasty case of bronchitis so neither of us has slept a full night in about a week...... it's pretty tiring and frustrating but hopefully it'll pass soon.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow, talk about living it up! Love Mom xo

6:39 AM  

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