This was the second of three travel days on the trip, and this time we’d be flying down to the very south of the country to experience the warmer climes. We could have technically taken the train, but doing so would’ve costed us a valuable seven or so hours, so flying less than 90 minutes was the option of choice. Our flight wasn’t until the early afternoon, meaning we had plenty of time to kill before we called the taxi to the airport.

Two days prior, we’d passed by the Portuguese Center of Photography on our walking tour, which happened to literally be around the corner from our hotel. Raquel had promised us that it would be a great place to spend an hour or two for free, and we’d put it on our list of things to do for today-it ended up being a wonderful morning! The museum itself used to be a prison with three floors: the first floor was for the poor people, the second for the female prisoners, and the top and third one for the rich people who’d paid to live in relative comfort. The first floor was home to the “Spectrum” exhibition, which was cool but didn’t take as much time to get through. However, once we were walking upstairs, that’s when the displays got more engaging. I liked it how the past and present merged, because it discussed the role that photography played in telling the stories of those incarcerated in the prison: the exhibition pointedly remarked how the way prisoners were posed gave us the lasting, if not misleading, ideas of who they were as people. As I said, it was poignant. Walking around outside of that was a timeline, as seen literally through the camera collections, of the evolution of photography.  From the massive ones that took a small army to set up to the pocket cameras we used to carry, it was super neat seeing just how far technology has advanced, as well as the variations from several countries. All in all, it was something I’d definitely recommend people checking out!

Once we left, it was time for an early lunch, and we stopped by a little café that was a few minutes away from our hotel. I got a ham burger (not to be confused with a hamburger) of sorts that surprisingly hit the spot very well, and my mom opted for a croissant. As it was 11AM, we weren’t super hungry, but we knew that flying on RyanAir meant that we wouldn’t get anything to eat until we were in the Algarve. We headed back to the hotel to pack up, which didn’t take too long, and call an Uber, which arrived in minutes. The trip to the outskirts of the city was eye opening, as we really were insulated from the shabbier residential areas near to the airport. Okay, maybe “shabby” isn’t the right word to use here, but the apartments weren’t as nice as what was in the center of the city, unsurprisingly. We didn’t have much time to ponder that fact though, as we soon arrived. Way early, as it happened. To the tune of three hours. One quirk we noticed in Portugal was how the airlines didn’t announce the flight gates until very close to departure, so once we passed through security, thanks to having already checked in, we found a place to park and kill time. Because this was a domestic flight, this part of the airport was more mellow, and that served us fine. Before we knew it, it was time to board and the gate was right by where we were! We’d be going with the infamous RyanAir, but oddly enough I wasn’t too bothered by things. You had to temper your expectations, though the flight was 75 minutes so the no-frills aspect wasn’t bad by any means. It did, however, help that we were in the emergency row and thus had plenty of legroom; I told the flight attendant that my Portuguese wasn’t quite up to handling emergencies, but that thankfully was a moot point. And, before we knew it, we had landed in the sunny southern part of the country!

Getting our rental car was a cinch, especially since the signage was clear and concise. By a fun quirk, the car we were given was the same Lexus my mom normally drives, except the premium version! That made things easier as we didn’t have a hard time adapting things, albeit we couldn’t quite figure out how to get the GPS nor the A/C working since it was a bit too smart of us. Time to drive 45 minutes to Lagos, where our AirBnB was. Pulling out of Faro led us into traffic, but that was to be expected. The road cleared up, but relatively early on I made a mistake and had us turn to make an unnecessary detour that costed us ten or so minutes. Getting back on track was easy since we literally just had to make a U-turn at a roundabout, and eventually we made it to the neighborhood where Guy and Caroline’s house was awaiting. We didn’t get out immediately since the address listed was confusing (akin to the Russian apartment numbering system), but a quick text to them and we there. After getting the rundown of the place, we got set up in the room while Guy blessedly called the local restaurants to reserve spots for us. The first place didn’t pick up, but the seafood place was, and he took care of us. A few minutes later, we were at the beachfront restaurant ordering. I got the shrimp curry while my mom got the fish, and the open sea a few hundred feet away served as the perfect background. Once we got home, it was time for us to call it a night-our last full day in the country awaited us, and it would be busy!