Monday 9 November 2009

Portugal - Algarve

From Evora we drove down to the South coast area of Portugal - Algarve.

We stayed in Silves, which was the Moorish centre of Portugal and has an impressive fort at the top of the hill in the town.


We were a little underwhelmed by Silves, however, and soon continued on to Lagos on the coast with some amazing cliff-top views, where we watched the sun set. We stayed for a delicious seafood dinner before returning to Silves for the night.



The next day we returned to Lagos for a tour on a fishing boat around the cliffs, which was really amazing and we took hundreds of photos.



There was fish everywhere in the water - it's hard to see how a fisherman could fail to catch anything!

We continued around the coast to Sagres which is the most south-westerly point in Europe, where you really feel like the Atlantic Ocean begins. This is the point where many famous Portugese explorers set out on their epic voyages.

We went first to Sagres Point where there is a fort on the cliff-tops. We watched the cliff-top fishermen, who seemed somewhat crazy, cast their lines off the cliffs into the water 75m below.

Then we continued on to Cape St. Vincent, where we took photos of ourselves looking out over the Atlantic and watched the sun breaking through the clouds in the distance.



It was a really amazing place to visit, and it was only unfortunate that we didn't have more time to spend there, however it is a long way back from Algarve to Lisbon and rather than spend our last day in Portugal stressing about the long drive back, we decided to drive up the West coast to Vila Nova de Milefontes.

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