It would have been nice to have one more day but I think you can say that about every place you have enjoyed. Our first step involved schlepping our bags and backpacks up the cobblestone sidewalks to the San Bento Train station. A pretty good uphill grind to get the heart pumping in the morning.
The first roadblock was the non functioning ticket machine at the "Metro", the LRT/Subway system of Porto. One of the employees noticed us staring at the blank screen and directed us to another area of the station where there were functioning ticket machines. After a couple attempts we obtained our passes.
We were headed to the Airport which was about the same distance as Pearson to Union Station. Ticket cost - 1.90 euros, what a bargain. Fifty minutes later we arrived at the very modern airport. We had little trouble in locating the Avis car rental kiosk and were whisked away in a shuttle to pick up our vehicle. Tiego was the nicest agent I have met, no upselling for extra insurance, diesel car, gps etc. We did opt for the transponder that speeds up travel on the toll roads.
We got an almost brand new VW Polo with a slightly crushed right rear fender. Hope that isn't a bad omen!
I had brought my own GPS loaded with the latest European maps and it was very helpful in assisting us in the congested areas although they were few and far between. The main highway system in Portugal is very modern with little traffic once you get away from the core of the large cities. The speed limit is 120 kph which by the way, is about all you want to do in a 3 cylinder one litre VW Polo. Here we are cruising the bypass around Lisbon and not a car in sight.
You do have to keep your eye on the rearview mirror however as we did get passed by Audi's and Mercedes travelling well in excess of 160 kph despite the speed cameras.
We exited the freeway a bit after Lisbon and drove regional roads the remainder of the way to Lagos. Our GPS didn't want to take the address we were provided for the apartment by Google Maps was able to locate it and we used the iPhone for the final bit of navigation. We arrived at around 18:00 h.
We were met by Ana (I think all rental agents here are called Ana) and shown through our apartment. Nice, clean, Portugese decor with some new appliances and a tube TV!
It's a walk up, 3rd floor which we discovered is actually the 4th floor as the ground floor is floor 0. Guess we will stay in shape. We have living room, dining room, eat-in kitchen, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and balcony.
We have a nice southern view from the balcony, we are only two blocks from the ocean which we can see from here.
We made a quick trip to a local supermarket to pick up initial supplies then we went to one of the restaurants on the ground floor of our building at about 20:00. It was good, grilled pork tenderloin kebab for Chris and sliced sirloin steak for me. Maybe we were hungry as we had not stopped for lunch on our way here.
We returned, had a glass of wine and off to bed.
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