March in the Algarve (Part 1)

In March we were getting a bit antsy with the all the Braga rain and wanted to travel a bit, but Marty was still “under Portuguese house arrest” (waiting for his AIMA appointment). So we figured it was as good a time as any to head on down to the Algarve, since I knew it would be way too hot for me in the summer months. Also, Marty got tickets to Jethro Tull at the Lisbon Coliseum, and it made sense to head on to the Algarve after a couple of days in Lisbon. We hadn’t been to the Algarve since our very first trip to Portugal 16 years ago! So I was curious to see if I’d been right in my assumptions that it wasn’t the right place for us to live.

But first, the concert.

Prologue – Lisbon

I never really listened to Jethro Tull back in the day. This concert was all Marty, taking advantage of entertainment we could see now that we were in Europe. The venue was astounding, here is a picture of the Lisbon Coliseum interior, a beautiful old concert hall. We had box seats! Yes, the stage is at an angle, but we were very close to the musicians and could see them easily.

The concert was amazing! They performed songs in chronological order, covering their history as a band. I didn’t know their roots were in R&B, so the first few songs had a really great groove to them. I was familiar with their sound, but didn’t realize it was due to the flute. Rock flute is a thing. I loved it. And Ian Anderson himself was amazing for a 70-something. He played flute while dangling one leg in the air, I don’t know why, but all I could think was “tree pose” and “this man is obviously a dryad.” It was a great evening.

Lisbon food notes: I’ll run these down pretty quickly, mainly for future reference.

1) Dinner Thursday, arrival night: Near our hotel was a restaurant, Santa Marta, that is totally worth a visit. It’s tucked into an old convent courtyard, and is very pretty. Like most Lisbon restaurants, it’s expensive compared to the rest of Portugal, but possibly not to the US. I had the duck confit with pistachio and coriander over rice, Marty had the grilled Azorean squid with broccoli and chorizo sauce, both excellent. Both entrées were around 25 Euros each, so that felt like American pricing. Service was okay. I’ve noticed that Lisbon service feels a bit less polished, and I’m guessing it’s because many temporary workers flock there and they need a lot of service staff. So it’s friendly, yes, but a bit less competent and professional than I’m experiencing in Braga.

2) Lunch Friday, wandering around Lisbon: Wow, I found a terrible place! I’m pretty forgiving about restaurants and not a picky reviewer at all, but THIS place? The name was Local (Your Healthy Kitchen). It might be a chain, I’m not sure. First, they got my order wrong. No worries, I don’t usually get aggro over that, I just pointed it out and they brought me the correct items. Second, the feta and roasted pepper hummus I ordered … did not taste like feta and roasted pepper hummus. Okay, I thought, that might be my bad, maybe this is what the recipe is like here. I’ve encountered that before. But then came the third strike, the prawn bisque I chose for my entrée. It looked like dishwater, or Dickensian gruel. It was completely blended, no visible prawns, and had one tiny chunk of meat floating in it. It tasted thin, and only vaguely like seafood. It was awful, and I couldn’t finish it. Marty ordered a poke bowl and he was happy with it, so that was good. But I CANNOT recommend this place if you’re ever in Lisbon.

3) After that, I wanted something reliable and substantial for dinner before the concert. We found a well-rated Mexican place (El Paso) right by the Coliseum, and I got a good burrito. €43.70 for two entrees, two mocktails, and two coffees.

Our hotel for the two nights was the Sana Capitol, and it was great. Comfortable room and bed, conveniently located near metro stops and the Marquis de Pombal Square, and had a generous buffet breakfast. I use hotels.com to find places with breakfast included, and two nights at the Sana Capitol in March ran us $251.50 USD with everything. For Lisbon, with breakfast, off season, that’s great.

Especially once we figured out the doors. When we got to our room, we faced a handle with no key card slot and no “tap here” symbol. I had to scrunch down with my phone flashlight to examine it before I saw the little silver square on the handle, seen here:

And you can only see it because it’s reflecting my phone flashlight. In the dark, it was completely invisible.

Tapping it worked and we got into our room. Good thing I’m not a usability person anymore, because no one should have to GUESS about how to use their key/card! Grrrrrrr.

Okay, I’m posting ONE picture of my grilled Azorean squid from Santa Marta, because it soothes my frazzled memories of that terrible prawn bisque.

On to Tavira.

Algarve Part 1 – Tavira

Saturday, the day after the concert, we took a long bus ride to Tavira in the eastern Algarve. We arrived late enough just to check in and grab a final snack from the tapas place across the street.

Sunday
On Sunday we scouted the neighborhood we were in. We discovered the Flavour Cafe by the river and ended up eating there every morning, it was so good. The biggest breakfast we had was a yogurt bowl with fruit (fresh pineapple and kiwi), another with granola, cheese bagel, three HUGE coffees (we were lingering) for €23.50. It had one of the cleanest bathrooms I’ve seen, which should occasionally be mentioned in restaurant reviews. And it was full of Brits, which is neither here nor there, but is utterly typical of the Algarve. Bring your sports enthusiasm and Ted Lasso references.

Then it was explore-Tavira day. Tavira is utterly charming, and it didn’t hurt that our days there were sunny and bright. The downtown is next to the river, and easily walkable. There was some kind of fitness festival happening that weekend, which made for some interesting traffic detours around events and races.

We saw signs for the Castelo and of course had to go there. It was up high above a couple of churches, admission by donation for upkeep, and had beautiful views and a lovely garden.

View of Tavira from the ramparts. I don’t know if they really were ramparts, I just like writing that.

The original castle is Moorish from the 10th and 11th centuries, and Tavira was conquered by the Christians in 1242. Tavira was big enough and important enough that in the late Middle Ages these walls enclosed five hectares (a big area). The remains are now a National Monument.

Random archaeological dig, because of course every town has one.

On our way down from the castle, we saw this dig behind a chain-link fence. That’s Portugal for ya, always an archaeologist on speed dial. According to the plaque, this spot held 1) a manor belonging to the Corte-Real maritime family in the 15th/16th centuries, 2) Islamic residential structures from the 12th/13th centuries, 3) and ox-hide shaped altar from the Turdetanian layer (?) of the 4th century BC, and 4) a Phoenician wall from the 8th century BC. All of this on top of each other in this one small spot! You can see why building anything here takes forever, since you can’t just add on top some more. They are planning a museum here dedicated to the Phoenician and Turdetanian periods, any takers on a pool as to when it will be finished? The 22nd century, perhaps?

After a day of wandering, we treated ourselves to dinner at Polvaria, which translates loosely to “Octopus-erie.” Grilled octopus is one of my absolute favorite dishes here, so I was curious what an entire restaurant dedicated to octopus dining was like. Marty had the grilled octopus this time, I couldn’t resist the paella. Which did have octopus scattered through the rice. The flavour was interesting, a bit citrusy and sharpish, which complemented the silky octopus perfectly.

Polvaria was €75.40 for two entrées, the usual couvert, a bottle of wine, and two coffees. This is still pretty reasonable, but the Algarve is definitely more expensive than Braga.

Monday

I should mention the hotel, the Downtown Alegria. It was a charming guesthouse and a very nice room, spacious and full of character, and the location was fantastic in the center of town. I would recommend it. But there was an issue we encountered. I book most things through hotels.com, and one of the things I typically look for is breakfast included in the price and coffee available in the rooms or at least centrally in the hotel. This is because Marty and I are on VERY different clocks, and I will be up for at least a couple of hours before him. I want to spend that time sipping coffee and reading, or making notes, and after one or two coffees I want to eat something pretty soon. This is how we travel.

The Alegria listing on hotels.com said “breakfast to order.” We didn’t worry about it Sunday morning because we got in late. But Sunday night I was looking for how we could get the promised breakfast. The Alegria is one of those places with self-checkin and no front desk, so I texted and called the listed numbers a couple of times. I know they got messages from me because we had a key problem and someone came and fixed it. But they ignored my questions about the breakfast. On Monday afternoon we ran into one of the cleaning staff and asked about it, and she said it was too early in the season and they weren’t doing that yet. Huh, okay. I get that. Off-season is a great time to visit the Algarve, because it’s rather peaceful and uncrowded, but I can see how hotels don’t invest in the full service experience because of low occupancy. But I might have chosen a different hotel if I’d known we were going to spend and extra 20 Euros per day getting breakfast.

I’m going into detail on this for two reasons: 1) I’m going to check this more carefully in future when I book. I don’t know if it was a hotels.com problem or not. Possibly. But the Alegria didn’t respond to my messages. 2) If you’re reading this, and you want to book a place with an included breakfast, be a little extra diligent if you’re using a third-party platform.

Back to the trip. This was a great day! We decided to take an Uber about 15 minutes east to a place called Cacela Velha, literally “old pot.” I think it is the smallest village I’ve ever actually stopped in, Portugal-wise. It was a few streets and houses, only one church (that’s how you know how small it is), one place to eat, and the estuary. We were here for the estuary. We got very lucky with the tide, the flats we wandered out onto were all under water by the time we broke for lunch.

See that beached boat? That piece of the flats was under water by the time we left.

The church and old walls from the estuary

Driftwood to the east. Lots of small fish in the shallow water.

And the town wall from the eastern flats

The castle wall is one of the oldest structures in the town, dating back to the first half of the 13th century and Islamic habitation of the area. The village was abandoned in the late 13th century when Christian invaders took over. The castle itself continued to be occupied but Cacela Velha never seemed to take root as a major port again. Eventually a church was built on the eastern side of the walls. The current church is on the west, so there’s a mystery for us. I will have to revisit ALL these posts and historical claims once I know enough Portuguese to know what’s going on.

Local street name, in case the Moorish heritage was unclear

After exploring up and down the bank and watching fish go this way and that, we retreated from the sun and the amazing Algarve blue sky for some lunch. There was exactly one place to eat, Casa Azul, so we were a little dubious, but it turned out to be wonderful.

I also wrote a dedicated restaurant review for this since I try to write one per trip. It’s a little different than the below, and you can read it here if you like.

The happy hour special (at lunchtime?) was 10 oysters plus an entire bottle of wine! I added soup.

The oysters were excellent, briny like a great olive, creamy and bright, and a toothy texture.

Marty’s lunch was octopus, boiled then sautéed. I tried it and it was properly chewy with a hint of crunch, like a firm steak. He asked if they could substitute boiled potatoes for mashed, and they happily accommodated him. And they were interesting, a tip of the tongue citrus note, not at all what I expected. We guess there was some white pepper liberally applied.

Marty having yet more octopus, after last night’s dinner …

… and thoroughly enjoying it. He says he likes his octopus extra tentacle-y.

This vinho verde was excellent, so it gets a picture.

Took one bite of the honey cake and remembered I needed to take a picture. In my defense, I’d had half a bottle of wine.

The afternoon was pretty lazy after that. We had a late dinner at Typical Indian Tandoori Restaurant (that is it’s real name) and had another great meal. I’m just going to say that the garlic naan was some of the best I’ve ever had and leave it there.

Tuesday

Another gorgeous sunny morning, so we took a ferry over to Isla de Tavira for the day (€2.70 per person round trip). One of the things that became clear to me on this Algarve trip: If I eventually want to post recommended itineraries as part of my site, then I need to do more research and structure things better. I came to the conclusion that I need to do a second trip to the Algarve just to focus on researching and reviewing things to see and do. This was more of a relaxing jaunt for us, so we missed things. For example, there is a Moorish history museum in Tavira that I regret not seeing, and apparently there are flamingos on Isla de Tavira. It’s best to take a boat excursion to the place where they are, because it’s a VERY long walk from the ferry side of the isle to the conservation side. Oh well, live and learn. This was a little vacation for us after so much immigration and relocation work over the winter, so I will go back for research. Think of this as a scouting trip for the real travelogue later.

We simply had a nice relaxed day wandering the long beach, just watching the waves. Next to watching fire, watching waves is one of the most meditative things I know. I had a strange (but good?) existential moment of suddenly feeling how big the world is, and how small and insignificant I am within it. The waves will keep going, long after I’m gone. This beach will change and I won’t be here to see it. I thought about the season finale of The Good Place, where Chidi talks about how your being is like a wave, just a different way for the water to be for a while, then we all dissolve back into the ocean, and how comforting that is when contemplating your eventual lack of existence. I am here, I am now, and it’s okay to just be.

So yeah, it was that kind of day.

And then we grabbed lunch at a place on the Island and had slightly upset stomachs later on, so it was also THAT kind of day. But luckily our trip to the Isla wasn’t ruined.