Vamos a la Playa!

This past weekend was yet another great trip, and a perfect vacation to end my big travels for the semester. I have 2 weekends left in Spain, which I’m finding really hard to believe. I’m not going into all that in this post, however. After a semester jam-packed with travels all over Europe (and Africa, too!), it kind of feels good to know that I’m done for a while. I’m a tad bit burnt out on long travel days, but I’m glad we got in one last big “hurrah” with a bunch of great friends this past weekend in Lagos, Portugal.

Normally, when I travel on weekends I make all the plans for myself. My friends and I research the hostels, search for cheap flights, book the buses to and from the airports, figure out our itineraries and what the best things to see in each city are, and so on. For this trip, a group of 12 of us from our program in Granada booked our trip through a travel company and miraculously, everything was planned FOR us! It was really nice not to have to do it all for once.

The travel company, Discover Excursions, had a bus pick us up along with about 30 other students from Granada at about 5:30 am on Friday. The bus ride to Lagos is about 7 hours, so it was good to start early despite being absolutely exhausted. We even got to watch a movie (in English!!) on the way! We arrived in Lagos, a beach town on the very southern coast of Portugal, at about 1pm and after checking into the hotel, made a beeline for the beach. Conveniently, the beach was about a 2-minute walk from the hotel and boasted beautiful aqua blue water and gorgeous rock formations. Oh..and unlimited free sangria!  YUM!

Discover Excursions also provides planned activities at an extra cost in addition to the excursions included in your trip package, and in Lagos they offer surfing, kayaking and a sangria boat cruise. Naturally, my friends and I signed up for the sangria boat cruise, which was scheduled for the first day. After a bit of sunning on the beach we met for the cruise, which took us in and out of the amazing grottos formed in all of the rock formations. It was unbelievable! The free sangria made it a little better as well. We were lucky to have amazing, warm weather all weekend, although the water was absolutely freezing. That didn’t stop my friends and I from jumping off the boat for a bit to take a little swim. I was out of the water in seconds, and back to enjoying the sunshine from the boat deck! At night, we went into the city center to visit Nah Nah Bah, the restaurant that is home to the Toucan burger, one of the top 50 burgers in the world! It absolutely lived up to its reputation; the special sauce and grilled pineapple were fabulous. I haven’t eaten much red meat since coming to Spain and it was so satisfying to sink my teeth in a big, juicy burger. I devoured the thing in an embarrassingly short amount of time, but according to the wristbands they gave us for the weekend, “You only Lagos once!”

 My friend Ari and I on the sangria boat cruise

 Inside the grottos

The famous Toucan Burger!

On Saturday, we met as a big group for the buses to take us to Ponte da Piedade, which is a lookout point where you can see some beautiful views of the ocean and rock formations we had seen on the boat tour. I couldn’t help but take a million photos because everything was so gorgeous! Afterwards, we headed to a beach called Maia Praia for the day and spent a perfect afternoon relaxing on the beach, getting tan, and drinking....you guessed it! Sangria. Upon returning to the hotel, we had a little time for some dinner before heading back on the bus to visit Cabo San Vicente, more popularly known as “The End of the World.” I can see where it got its name; the cliffs there were breathtaking. We sat and watched the sunset and I couldn’t help but think about how beautiful the world is and how lucky I am to have been able to see so much of it already. Sunsets make you think about deep things like that.

On our last day, we took advantage of every hour of sun possible. Most of our friends had signed up for surfing or kayaking and left right after breakfast for the day. Paige and I spend our day on the rooftop pool of the hotel where, for the majority of the day, we were the only two guests up there. From the rooftop, you could see out onto the ocean and it was the perfect last day in Lagos. I loved the whole weekend and really enjoyed not having to plan anything for once. I highly recommend Portugal if you ever have the chance to go, and I hope to return to visit Porta or Lisbon in the future!