Because we had to drive back to Lisbon later on in the day, the onus was on us to get as much done as we could doing things in the Algarve doing things. We got up early, to find that our Guy was up and prepared a nice little spread for us in the kitchen. Having some toast (but no tea) and fruit was a quintessential English breakfast, but it gave us enough carbs to at least tackle the morning!

The prior night, we settled on hiking the Seven Hanging Valleys Trail in Lagoa, and that would be the first thing we did. Driving there took about forty minutes, no thanks to some inconvenient road work being done in the town. Other than that, the trip there was straightforward thanks to it being early on the weekend. Already in the parking lot, the sun was beating down, but thankfully we had the whole place to ourselves.

There was the second and last destination of the day, which was in nearby Carvoeiro. Taking us half an hour to drive east, we arrived and parked by the beach. What attracted us was the Algar Seco nature trail, which was home to some nature as well as coral rocks. There was a long boardwalk that spanned the entire trail, but we only ended up walking through about halfway. It was an overcast day, so there weren’t many birds flying overhead but we enjoyed the view. As we walked, we saw a decent amount of people walking around and over the coral rocks a bit below, so that was where we headed to. These formations were apparently used in the past as a way of hiding and defending from pirates, and just walking around painted a pretty clear picture of that. My mom was walking around higher up whereas I was down closer to the sea, and it was honestly a bit more difficult getting around there due to some slippery parts. We lingered around a bit snapping pictures and generally enjoying the tranquil scenery, but soon enough it was lunchtime. Making our way back to where we parked, we drove around the small center of Carvoeiro to find some food. There were some highly-rated options near the beach, but all of them unfortunately weren’t open for another half an hour, and we didn’t want to wait that long to eat. However, I managed to find a café with an abundance of good reviews, and we set off for there. It was interesting seeing how small the town was, especially since it was finding that balance between catering to more tourism versus maintaining that traditional fisherman’s village feeling; I’m happy to say it wasn’t overrun with tourists like us, and as such it felt cozy. On that note, we eventually settled down for a brunch of banana pancakes and ham sandwiches-we wanted to fill up for the long drive back north to Lisbon. Bellies full, it was time to return to the capital.

I was driving for the first portion of the journey, and it was set to take around 5 hours. There were plenty of changes in the speed limit, but that was sort of expected since we were pulling out of the town and hadn’t hit the highway yet. It cannot be understated how annoying this was as a driver, since I’d always have to speed up, slow down, slow down more, speed up all the way to 90kmh, then speed down ad nauseum. Not helping things was how the car’s detector would always beep when I was over the speed limit, so that was the soundtrack of the drive. There was a moment when a tour bus honked at me because I was going too slow (i.e. the exact limit) once we were on a straight stretch of the road and the driver couldn’t pass me. Fortunately, I was able to eventually get into the right lane when it first showed up, so speed wasn’t an issue then. I do also want to take the time to briefly mention something on the Portuguese roads: you’re able to use the lane going in the opposite direction to pass people. This happened frequently regardless of who was there, and we quickly learned that this was a handy tool. There even were points of the road where signs indicated the stretch of the road was a no-pass zone, so that was something we found interesting.

Back to the driving, I had a highly unfortunate moment where my eyes started to water out of nowhere to the point where I had to pull over and switch with my mom. Thankfully I was still able to see the road in the time it took to find the chance to do so, but it was fairly scary how I was driving semi-blind. From there, it was her behind the wheel as my eyes quickly recovered from this random attack. Nothing of note happened from that point until about she asked if this was the quickest route; we were on the backroads going through village after village. As it turns out, both of us had “highways” checked off on Google Maps, which is why we had been on a longer route. Whoops! This was rectified quickly, and as it so happened, being redirected onto the highway meant we’d get to Libson in roughly over an hour (instead of two). We went through three tolls, but our car came with the sensor so we were able to breeze on through. Getting into the capital proper was interesting, as we went over a bridge that connected the surrounding region with it. It was pretty neat I’ll freely admit, and it was packed with people too. Before we knew it, we’d pulled up into the last hotel of the trip and blessedly checked in. Dinner was served courtesy of the grocery store literal doors down from where we were staying, as they had a little food court there. To clarify, when I say “food court”, it was more like a cafeteria-style pick-your-food-and-pay area that had some tables. For the last time in the country, I got a pork sandwich before heading back to relax and crash. Time had gone by in a blur, but it was finally time to head home in the morning.