Lagos 2003

LAGOS - Portugal - pronounced Lagosh, not to be confused with Lagos of Africa fame.

Beautiful town, clean, bright, friendly and blessed with some of the best restaurants on the Alagrve, well in my opinion anyway and I think my other half might agree.

Lagos has a long esplanade running beside the long approach to the marina, entered under a lift bridge. The main shopping and bar areas can be found in this area but there are a number of very good restaurants in the main town, understandably specialising in seafood recipes.

Trips to St Vincent, Sagres and Silves are plentiful and it is a good day out. Also as can be seen from the photos the Grotto trips are as popular here as anywhere in coastal Europe.

St Vincent is the Southernmost tip of Europe (or is it the most Westerly?), the name Sagres can be found on the bottled beer but is more famous as the place from where Henry The Navigator set up his school of navigation and Silves well it’s a nice quiet town but was once a Roman settlement, discovered if I remember when the castle floor was renovated. I have some shots of the archaeology in my collection. I will need to scan them in. Don’t fall for the ‘Best Market On The Algarve’ spin, Loule Market is not all its cracked up to be. You are better off just sightseeing in the town

The railway system is surprisingly punctual and cheap, though walking over the tracks between platforms is not the safest method. For example a 50 minute trip from Lagos to Portimao, to savour the shopping, cost only 1 Euro in 2002. See how far you could get for that here in the UK.

Unfortunately during our stay the Algarve suffered some fairly serious forest fires due to the extended dry periods and we were affected by the smoke for a day or two with ash and carbon deposits covering everything and polluting the pool