So it's my final post and yes, it's been a very long time since this amazing vacation. I can only say that life of course got busy as usual when we returned home to Boston from Europe - but I still wanted to share the awesome-ness of Portugal with you all. (Thank goodness I kept a good travel journal to help!)
Jay and I really struggled what to do with ourselves for two weeks at the end of the assignment in Europe. There were just so many choices and we didn't want to mess it up. So we literally planned our trip a couple weeks before we left. After city hopping around Europe for so many months, we decided we wanted to actually stay put somewhere. We also were in desparate need for some SUN!!! March in Europe is like March in the states, cold and you have to go south to get any warmth. So we picked the Algarve region in Portugal. I found a cool house that we could rent on a farm for pretty cheap and it looked pretty cool to be so close to the water and not be staying in another hotel! The farm ended up being quite adventurous - more to come on that!
My last week of work was hectic and I was both sad and excited to have my final day that Friday. It was so fun and cool to work in Europe, but we were ready to start the end of our trip and have our longest vacation ever! Luckily we had given ourselves some time to pack up the apartment before our trip started.
We left on Sunday to fly out to Faro and then picked up our rental car. We were warned that nowhere in Europe in March would we be guaranteed good weather, and the days before we left it had forecasted for rain for our entire trip. We even thought of canceling, but luckily we didn't. When we arrived the forecast was right for the first few hours - it was POURING rain, and I think we both were pretty nervous that we'd have that weather for the entire week. Luckily we kept on driving and the rain had let up.
We pulled into the farm and the look on Jay's face was priceless, he was like, where the heck are we? I think the next look of shock was when the owner of the house met us and his "helpers" were getting our fire started - which would be our only source of heat in the house. They were piling up the wood (the only time that we didn't have to go out and get our own wood to make the fire). The place was really spacious and really unique, we were just pretty thrilled to have a door on the bathroom ..... (you'll have to ask!)
The best part of the house was by far the view! Oh and the orange trees! Yes, we woke up in the mornings and picked fresh oranges and made fresh oj - it was awesome! The negative part of the house was the fact that there was no heat, other than the fire, and although it was warm during the day - it was cold at night. We also didn't have hot water for the shower. I think if that happened once, it would have been ok, every day - it was painful. We would have to talk ourselves into getting the guts to get in the shower... it was funny now thinking about it, but then it was almost tear worthy! I always woke up and hoped it would be warm, fat chance!
On Tuesday we drove into the local town Tavira and had our best dinner ever at a small restaurant called Golphino - we had a dish called fish cateplana, which was sea bass slow cooked with shrimp, mussels, clams and various vegetables in a roasted tomato sauce. (Jay has since bought a special cateplana dish and re-created the recipe back at home and it was amazing!).
On Wednesday we woke up and it was gorgeous and sunny - we picked some oranges for our fresh oj and then went into a small town called Fuzeta to their local market. We came back and made amazing fresh breakfast sandwiches with bacon from the local butcher and fresh eggs, tomatoes, cheese. We ended up relaxing at the house until it was time to venture out to another small town for another delicious dinner. Yes - the food in Portugal was absolutely awesome! That night I tried a local specialty, octupus - very yummy but not a dish I'd repeat anytime soon, just a little too weird for me :)
On Thursday we woke up and again, sunny!!! We drove into Faro - which is such a quaint city in the Algarve region, a must visit if you go down there. We walked around town and had a great lunch outside - the specialty for lunches there was either meat or fish, you would get a piece of steak/pork fried and yummy and a side salad or a fresh fish (head on) grilled in olive oil with a small salad. We then grabbed some yummy sangria by the marina. We then headed to the beach to watch the sunset which was amazing!
From there we headed back towards the house to the highly recommended restaurant by all of the people at the farm, it was called O'Forno - we had some amazing lambchops and pork belly with some great wine.
On Friday morning we woke up to the rain we had been expecting all week. We chilled for awhile and then Jay had the most ingenious idea of taking advantageous of Algarve's "spa week". This was awesome for many reasons, but mostly, I saw a hot shower in my near future!!! We drove to the ritziest hotel we could find and both got great deals on massages. We then were able to use their pool, sauna and of course had a hot shower!!! We totally took advantageous of everything the hotel had to offer. That night we had drinks out on their porch bar and watched the storm roll by. We took the bartenders advice and went to a nearby restaurant called Alambique for some more great seafood and some of the best port we had ever had.
On Saturday morning we woke up to a sunny day again and headed to Faro to take a boat over to the beach and the Natural Park. We walked up and down the beach and had a great lunch overlooking the ocean.
We then wanted to check out the local resort town Albufeira so we headed down to the beach and grabbed drinks and dinner overlooking the water.
On Sunday we drove to the Isle of Tavira and spent the day there, then went to Adoca for dinner.
On Monday we decided to make a trip up to Lisbon to spend Monday and Tuesday. I had been to Lisbon before when I studied abroad in Spain and it is one of my favorite cities in the world.
On car ride on the way up we hit up the resort town of Lagos which was "ok" but definitely can be skipped if you are visiting this region.
We continued up to Lisbon, checked into our hotel and had our second hot shower of the week, very exciting for us! We then hit up the Barrio Alto for dinner and drinks. The Barrio Alto ended up being quite the party section of town and the bars we hit up were cool and crowded with young people, ended up being a crazy night! On Tuesday we spent a beautiful sunny day in Lisbon and visiting the major sights, my favorite still, the Castle of Sao George for the awesome views. On the way home we hit up an amazing Italian restaurant in Almacil.
On Wednesday we took advantageous of the close proximity to Spain and drove east to the Guadiana river where we drove along the river until we hit a small town of where we could take a boat to cross into Spain. In 2 minutes we had crossed the border and were in Spain looking over at Portugal across the river. It was a great way to end our final day, and even better was another dinner at our favorite restaurant on the way back to our house, Golphino.
When we got back to Brussels we explored a little bit more of the city before we left... including the Cantillon Brewery with the famous Gueze beer. Let's just say that I am definitely not a fan, and Jay had to choke it down as well.
Cinquantenaire Park
The Parliament
On our last night we were able to celebrate our last night in Brussels with my colleague Christa from the Chicago office who was just starting her half of the Brussels office assignment. What was so fun was that we had the exact last night in Brussels as Jay and I did on the first night. We were able to show Christa and her boyfriend the ropes and it was pretty neat to feel that we had really gotten to know the city well in the past 5 months - well at least the inside of Delirium!!!!
At the beginning of the night, Jay and I took all of our Euro coins and brought them down to our neighborhood bar, Ye Olde Inn and said, we'd like to finish these up if you could just keep serving ;) Many Belgian beers later we had celebrated our final evening in Brussels and hopped on the plane back to the States.
It was so great to come home and see both of our families. Belgium and traveling Europe was an AMAZING experience but we both realized that home is pretty darn awesome too. What I also realized was that our blog, or even our time over there was a culinary tour of Europe, our bodies realized it too. It has taken many months since we've been back to get back into the shape we were in before we left... but it was all worth it!
Thanks for reading the blog, I know for me and Jay it will be great to be able to look back and have these memories in the years to come :)
