This most recent week we had a holiday on Thursday and a holiday on Monday (today). For the long weekend I went with some of my friends to Lagos, Portugal. I didn't really know what to expect but had heard good things from other people I knew who had visited earlier. After surviving the miserable 6 1/2 hour bus ride there, we checked into our hostel which was called the Gold Coast. I was skeptical at first due to the fact that the hostel didn't even have a sign out front. Luckily, I was wrong, and the reason there was no sign yet was because the hostel was brand new. After quickly unpacking, we all threw on our bathing suits, grabbed our towels, and headed for the beaches.
Lagos is a very small town, and almost everyone there speaks English due to the fact that most of England and Australia comes here to vacation. It reminds me a lot of the Mexican beach towns which led us to all joke about being on spring break. It is a very touristy town, but I can't really complain because the food there was incredible.
Every morning we went to this small hole in the wall bar called The Odeon which served English style breakfast... hashbrowns, eggs, toast, bacon, pancakes; in fact all of this together was only 3 Euros and way better than anywhere I've had in the US.
The night life in Lagos consisted of a good meal for dinner and bar hopping for the rest of the night. The town is very small and you can easily walk from one end to the other in under 10 minutes. On Saturday night, I searched the whole town trying to find a bar with satellite playing the Texas/Oklahoma game. The problem was that at the same time the World Cup qualifying matches were being played, so all the bars around Lagos had these on. Luckily after an hour of searching I stumbled across an empty bar playing the Texas game. I went in and sat there by myself watching the game until half time when they suddenly switched the game to the Portugal/Sweden soccer game. I argued with the bar tender for a while about this... he kept telling me, "you're in Portugal right now, this is more important". First off, I was the only person in the bar and second everyone who worked at the bar was Australian, so I didn't understand why anyone would care as it was. I finally got to put the game back on, and I am so glad I got to see the rest. For those of you who didn't see the game, it was an instant classic with Texas pulling a come from behind victory. It is definitely a game I won't forget.
As for the rest of the time at Lagos, I went hiking through the cliffs by myself on one of the days that everyone was resting. I found some really cool secluded beaches and some great scenery.
Unfortunately, the sea was really rough so we couldn't rent kayaks to go exploring through the oceanic caves along the cliffs. I heard that it is a really cool excursion and hopefully I'll have another chance same day. We left Lagos on Sunday and had to suffer though a 7 1/2 hour bus ride back where we stopped in every town along the coast in Portugal picking up and dropping off passengers.
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