Christmas in Portugal

Sorry this blog is out of order. I wasn't going to post about Portugal because I had done it when we were there for our honeymoon but I just went back to read that post and noticed that it only had a few sentences and one picture from Portugal. And, since I seem to spend more time in Portugal than most other places, I figured I should tell a little more about it.

We spent Christmas in Lagos, Portugal, where Martin's parents own themselves a nice 3-bedroom condo. Lagos is on the southern shore of Portugal and it's actually quite touristy. Seems to be most popular with Brits and Germans but I couldn't tell you why. I think for the Brits it's warmer than England and beachy and not too far away but you don't have to go into a different time zone to be there. I'm not sure about the pull for the Germans but German was the language on many signs around Lagos, after Portuguese and English.

Winter is the rainy season in southern Portugal so most of our days there were cloudy with showers with temperatures in the 50's or low 60's. The rains make all the grass very green but at the same time they destabilize the cliffs so you can't walk along them because you might fall to your death. So we didn't take many scenic photos this last trip. We did find a few minutes of sunshine to go up to the roof and take a few shots though. This is the view of the big beach from the roof of our building:



This beach is 2.5+ miles long and we try to walk the entirety of it (all the way down it and back again) every trip. We have only succeeded one time out of three but we would have made it this time if there hadn't been a huge river of water from the ocean blocking our way. Here are Martin and Mareika towards the end of our walk:



There is a nice restaurant in Lagos called Artistos where we ate dinner on Christmas. It was filled with foreigners, most of them English speaking, so apparently going out to dinner is not something the Portuguese do on Christmas. When we walked in the door we were handed glasses of Glühwein to enjoy before being seated:



Here are Martin and I at the restaurant:



The lot across the street from the McLaughlin's building has a big palm tree in it (which looks like it's dead but it used to be healthy) and about 15 cats. And, new this year, a dog whom we named Bello (aka Barky) because he likes to bark all the time but especially around 7am. Martin likes to take pictures of the cats:



And here's another view from the roof, of a church I think:



And here's a random rainbow we saw while driving around:



I have a large amount of sunny pictures from our previous trips to Portugal, one of which included significant time in places other than Lagos, so I will try to post other blogs about Portugal just because it's something new and interesting and maybe it will spark somebody's interest to go visit Portugal! Their economy needs you. :)