Lagos
Trip Start
Nov 23, 2005
1
118
133
Trip End
Feb 27, 2007
Lagos,
Portugal
Monday, October 2, 2006
Along with the rest of Portugal, Lagos has a rich history. It was here that Prince Henry the navigator had shipyards to build and launch his caravels. His trading company was in Lagos and he had a navigational school in the nearby town of Sagres. Information was brought back from the African coast to Lagos, as well as ivory and gold. Lagos also has the dubious distinction of being one of the first places to sell black Africans as slaves to Europeans in 1444. It later turned into a slave trading center.
In 1578 Dom Sebastio along with other Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and German buccaneers left on a disastrous crusade to Christianize North America
16th century parade, jesters and pirates
. There was a fortress built in the 17th century to protect the harbour, it still stands today and part of it serves as a museum. In the 16th century the city had walls built around it. They extend intermittently with 6 bastions for about 1.5 km's around the central town. There are also many churches that were built from the 14th through the 16th century. We stumbled into a lucky situation finding an apartment for rent here. Jack walked into a real estate agency, as many of them deal with property rentals as well. He asked the lady if they had any apartments for rent. She said they don't deal with rentals, but she did have one she could rent us. She had just sold the apartment to a gentleman and he left her the keys, telling her to rent it if she could. He lives in France. It was a huge apartment, it may have been bigger than our house. It had two bedrooms, a huge bathroom, living room and kitchen. It was all fully furnished and we even had a washing machine. We can't tell you how much we appreciated being able to wash our clothes at anytime after 10 months of traveling. The best part of the apartment was the view. We had a huge balcony off the living room and another one off the bedrooms. We got a spectacular glance over the city, the city wall and gate, and the beach down below. The location was also a bonus, only a few minutes walk to the town center. We really enjoyed being able to go to the grocery store and being able to cook our own meals
16th century parade, King Henry and his family
. We hadn't done this since being in Africa. The lady that rented us the apartment is a realtor. She goes to work and puts her car into a car park that has about 20 or so vehicles in it. There is limited space for parking so people are parked in behind each other, they just leave their keys in their cars all day, if you need out, you might have to move a car to get out of the way. This is the kind of place where people leave their house doors unlocked, and young children can run around the streets of their neighbourhood without the parents having to worry about them.
You just never know how things are going to work differently when you travel to places. Jack left one morning from the apartment without me while I was still sleeping. We only had one key. He didn't want to leave the door unlocked while I was asleep, so he did what most people would do, locked it behind him. I got up a bit later and got ready for the day. I decided I would go to the internet cafe and leave Jack a note to come meet me there after he got back to the apartment. I was going to have to leave the door unlocked since I had no key, but I wasn't too concerned, Lagos is about as safe a town as you can get. To my surprise when I went to go out the door, I found I could not get out.
16th century parade, knight
When you lock the door from the outside, it is locked inside too. There is no way to open it without the key. At first it didn't bother me too much. Then I started to think about it a bit more. The other issue was, we were on the 7th floor, the top floor. The buzzer for our apartment does not work, so no one can buzz to see if I am in there, we have no phone, what if there is a fire or something. I dug around the place and found a screw driver and started to try and take the lock device off the door. There was no use, it was mounted right into the door and not coming off. So I sat and waited, and waited and waited. I tried not to think about it too much, it was bothersome and a strange feeling to think you were locked inside an apartment. Finally Jack got back home. He felt horrible that he had locked me inside the apartment. We made light of it later, and joked about how I could have been burnt to a crisp, not being able to get out if there was a fire. We had a gas oven, neither one of us has any experience with this. We both don't like gas, it scares the crap out of us. The hot water tank was gas too. It was in a top cupboard in the kitchen. Every time you turned on the hot water you would here a big swoosh sound as the gas ignited in the tank. It was not a pleasant sound to hear. We don't know much about gas, but we're pretty sure the way they do things here would not be allowed at home
16th century parade, maiden
. The gas from the stove and the hot water tank is vented outside through a marble range hood above the stove. It is not sealed to the outside. The pipe ends where it connects to the marble range cover, it just freely goes up into the air inside the structure from there to make its way outside. Some of the stuff we have seen while traveling is very scary, especially the way electrical wiring is done in some countries. Be glad in Canada that we live in a country that tries to keep us safe. As annoying and costly as all the inspections are at home, they are for good reasons!We spent Jack's birthday here so I tried to bake him a cake in the oven. First of all I have no idea what the temperatures 1 to 6 mean on the oven dial. Secondly everything to buy for the ingredients is not quite like at home. The first cake turned out more like a pancake. I think it was partly to do with having no proper measuring instruments and putting in too much baking powder. As well it cooked way to fast, the gas must have been too high. It was full of popped bubbles. The second one turned out marginally better, and was edible, we'll leave it at that.
We went out for the evening to celebrate Jack's birthday. We had a nice dinner and then ended up at an Irish pub. It was quite funny. We (Canadians) were in Portugal sitting in an Irish pub drinking Guinness, surrounded by groups of British people and listening to people sing Karaoke. What a mixture of cultures! We watched a tiny man get up to the microphone, he couldn't have been 5 feet tall. We weren't expecting much, then suddenly a voice comes out of this man that had our mouths hanging open in awe. He was belting out Smoke gets in Your Eyes. His voice was amazing and had to be ten times bigger than he was
16th century parade, maidens
. The owner of the bar was very particular. Jack ordered a Guinness. The waitress sat it on our table, it was not there for more than a second when the owner snatched it up and took it back to the bar. It had been poured incorrectly. He made the bar pour another one. It was brought back with proper Guinness standards and it and my drink were on the house to compensate for the mistake. Needless to say, the owner is an Irishman.
We had to laugh at the names of a few of the bars here. Just around the corner from the Irish pub is the Juicey Boobie and the Scabby Goat.
We had a day of major rain and a wicked thunderstorm. The street in front of the apartment had a flash flood. Cars were having trouble moving through the water. At the same time Lisbon was having major flood problems. They were having to evacuate parts of the city, there were even a few fatalities.
We were lucky enough to be in Lagos for their annual festival. It is a 4 day event that celebrated the 16th century and the Age of Discoveries.
16th century parade, man with owl
One of the days is an official holiday for the town of Lagos. There is a huge parade to kick off the start of the fair. There had to be half the town involved in the parade and the other half lined alongside the streets to watch it. There were an array of colourful costumes all from the 16th century. Kings, Queens, princes and princesses walked the streets. There were also jesters, explorers and common folk dressed in outfits of the time. Stalls were set up in the streets selling local made products. There were street performers and demonstrations of medieval sword fighting and other weapons from the 16th century. The whole town really gets into the spirit of the event. We also chose Lagos to stay in because of the beaches. There is one very long stretch of sand called Mia Praia. Another feature of the area is the cliff walk. It goes for about 3 km's along rugged multi coloured bluffs. Down below are many beaches, some of them are very quiet coves of sand with no people, you can have them all to yourself. They all have access to get down from the cliff top. Along many parts of the beaches there are rock pinnacles jetting out of the water. Some areas have huge rocks along the shoreline with caves and tunnels though them. The views along this walk are amazing. Being well into October we were not expecting the sun to be so strong. After a day of walking around the beaches we both had a good burn.
We took a day trip on the train to a nearby town called Portomao. We got up in the morning and decided on the spur of the moment that we would go there. We looked at the train schedule and discovered we can either rush like mad to catch the next train that leaves in less than half an hour, or else we might as well wait until another day
16th century parade, noblemen
. The next train after that does not leave until 1pm, a bit late to go there for the day. We decide to try and make the train although it takes almost 20 minutes to walk to the other side of town to the train station. We ended up having to run and were covered in sweat by the time we get there. We have about 2 minutes to spare, we board the train and it leaves. We were in Portomao in about 20 minutes. We walked from the town center for about half hour to the beach dubbed as one of the nicest in all of the Algarve, Praia da Rocha. It was very nice, it had a beautiful stretch of golden sand. It is one of the beaches to get the European blue flag, it must meet very high standards to get this, for safety of swimming, lack of pollution, etc, Portomao was a very nice old town with lots of cobbled streets made into pedestrian only shopping areas. We found a Gelato shop that has its original shop in Venice. We have experienced Gelato a few different places while in Europe. There are a lot of places that call their product Gelato, but it is not the real thing. If you have tasted the real stuff and the fake stuff you won't believe the difference. The real deal is to die for and is like velvet butter in your mouth. It was really nice to see the different pace of life here in Lagos, to spend a good length of time in one place and experience the community. Kids are like real kids here, there are not a ton of toys, not even a dent of what is available in North America is here
16th century parade, nuns and monks
. Kids spend their days playing outside, we saw them building tree forts, running, laughing and having fun on their own accord, they have to use their imagination still, they don't have all these things to entertain and stimulate them like video games.Although we enjoyed having our own kitchen and cooking meals for ourselves, we did eat out a few times in Lagos. They have lots of selection for restaurants. We ate a few times at a great Indian place, we would stuff ourselves with all the tasty spicy vegetable dishes, naan bread, samosa and dips. We ate a lot of fresh grilled fish while here too. Sword fish and Sea bass were two of our favorites. The wines here are amazing, there are so many vineyards in Portugal. You wouldn't believe the selection of wines just in the grocery store, none of them are really expensive, in fact there are dozens of them at less than 2 or 3 euros, that's 3 to 4.50 Canadian. They are actually good, not like something you would buy at home for that cheap. Jack has tried a few ports, and reds, he was told to try one called Madeira which comes from an island of the same name. It is very similar to Port, but made differently. It is not aged like Port, but actually cooked to slowly carmalize the sugars in the wine and bring out the flavor. Jack really liked it. The shame is that many of the wines are only available locally. We won't be able to get them back home
16th century parade, parade line
. Portugal has not become a big world exporter of their wines, they are very underrated and just starting to get the recognition they deserve. We had a t.v. in the apartment. It only got about 6 channels. The only English channel was a sport one. It was pretty much non stop tennis and race car driving. We got the occasional English movie or sitcom on the other channels. Two and a half men was one of the sit coms broadcast here. We came across a show that had us cracking up. It is Portugal's version of the Millionaire. It is called Pedro O'Millionairio. It was really cheesy.
Unfortunately our great apartment deal ended with a sour note of problems. We had a bit of an issue with the gas when we first arrived. We had intermittent hot water for the first 4 days or so. A guy came to fix it, he said it was due to the place sitting empty for so long and not being used. Then we had a very traumatic evening when the owner of the apartment started to walk in the front door at about 9pm. We had been there for nearly two weeks, but the lady who rented it to us had not emailed the owner in France to tell him we were there yet. I guess she was under the impression that he would not be coming to Lagos to use the apartment until February, so she was free to rent it out until then
16th century parade, young muskateers
. Some miscommunication had obviously gone on. Jack heard the door opening and had to run to it in his underwear. Needless to say the owner and Jack were standing there staring at each other, both in shock. The owner was panicking and could barely speak. He must have been thinking we had broken into his place. Then it got really disturbing when we kept repeating the rental ladies name over and over and he was responding like he didn't know who she was. We got her business card and gave it to him and he finally acknowledged who she was. No one really knew what to do at this point. The man made several phone calls on his cell phone. I ran down the street to a pay phone and called the rental lady. She was in as much shock to find out he was there as we were. The owner ended up going to a friends house for the night and we were left to sort out things the next morning. The owner decided we could stay there for the next week that we had planned and he would stay at his friends, but this wasn't then end of the problems. The next day we came back to the apartment to make dinner. I turned on the tap to get some hot water. There was no hot water again. We thought the pilot light had gone out on the hot water tank again, but this was not the case. There appeared to be no gas at all. The stove would not work either. I had to go phone the rental lady again. She said she could not come over right away, but in a few hours
Audrey and Jack were here
. She suggested we try asking someone else in the building to see if they were having a problem or if it was just us. I knocked on many doors until I finally got an answer. The lady only spoke a few words of English so it was quite challenging to communicate. I pointed to the small doors on the wall outside her apartment that held the gas meters and asked if it was working. She understood and responded yes. I told her ours was not and she asked what apartment we were in. She couldn't understand which one I was trying to tell her, so she motioned for me to take her to it. She opened the door to our gas meter outside the apartment and we both stood in amazement. The whole gas meter had been taken. She spoke a hundred words a minute in Portuguese and was shaking her hands in the air, she could not believe it. We both thought the same thing, someone has not paid the bill, why else would they take the meter! To make a long story short, the owner and the rental lady tried to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible. It was not over an unpaid bill, apparently each time a place is sold an inspection has to be done of the gas to insure it is safe for the next owner. It had never been done, so the gas company cut it off. The rental lady said she would demand it all be reconnected the next day. Three days later we still had no gas. It kept dragging on and on. We finally got fed up with it and asked for our money back for the last 3 days we had spent with no hot water, and no ability to cook. We wouldn't be able to rent another apartment with such short notice so we decided we had seen enough of Lagos and had a good amount of relaxation. We would move on to Lisbon. 
