Welcome back...enjoy the posts from the other side as we head to Europe and beyond this Fall, 2016...
We book our flights with just days before flying out of Canada. We have a rough plan (as usual) about what to see and where to go...so up, up and away!
After 3 flights and 30+ hours of traveling, we arrive in Lagos, Portugal. This section of the Algarve is truly stunning...craggy cliffs, quiet beaches, epic sunsets... it's something from a travel article.
We spend several days here.. visiting our daughter and taking a trip to Portugal's version of Land's End - Sagres!
The summer crowds in Lagos and along the Algarve have vanished by late October. Days are mild, not sweaty hot; while nights are cool.
The final good-bye to the frenetic tourist season is Halloween. Started a number of years ago by the expats living in Lagos and homesick for crappy candies and scary clowns, it has morphed into one ghoulish send off to the summer.
Celebrities thought to be Virgin Airlines' Richard Branson and the President of Flight Operations dropped by...
....along with Big Bird and friend
And legendary rock icon Ozzy Osbourne....
Putting costumes away, we head east towards Spain to the gorgeous Portuguese town of Tavira. It is as every bit laid back as Lagos is booming with tourists and young backpacker's energy.
Quiet tree lined streets and empty of tourists at the beginning of November. Shopkeepers are preparing for a mid November shut down of most restaurants, cafes etc and will spend the winter repairing energy, interiors and organizing for another tourist season in 2017.
We leave Lagos on an easy, efficient, clean bus for Seville. Like Lagos, we were here over 30 years ago. We find a room near old Town, walk the streets.
Marvel at the architecture, drink wonderful wines, eat tapas and sweets.
Seville is a world class big city, vibrant, full of people, shopping, talking around a cafe con leche, scanning a morning newspaper over a cigarette.
We wander into old cathedrals and just enjoy the European way.
We say goodbye to Seville and head out on the bus for Tarifa. It's west of Gibraltar and the closest land point to Morocco.
Here the Mediterranean Sea on the left and the Atlantic Ocean on the right meet at Tarifa, Spain.
Europe is soon to be behind us.
Tarifa is home to a huge kite surfing crowd on Playa de Los Lances. Surfing on the winds and waves that roll in on the Atlantic Ocean.
St. Catalina Castle - Tarifa
Playa de Los Lances
Our home in Tarifa old town is at the wonderful Hostel Africa. Friendly, clean, safe and quiet....OK..that 4 am bar crowd was a bit noisy!
We take a side trip to the massive rock of Gibraltar...
a wonderful step back to a Merry Old England that was 40-50 yrs ago. English phone booths, fish 'n chips, beer...this little enclave has quite an historical history. The rock has guarded and been witness to the passing of maritime and world events over the last several hundred years.
We take the usual tour...see the resident Barbary macaque monkeys ... the only wild monkey population in Europe
...visit a magical natural cavern where concerts are regularly held and music is played as you progress through it
View the scenery from the highest point of over 400 m (that's Morocco in the distance)
The 30 000 populated city that sits at the base of
"the rock" with airport, too.
And...walk through the tunnels engineered into the rock starting over 200 years ago, now consisting of more than 40 km
Oh, what secrets this Rock could tell....Shh!
Our final night in Tarifa is spent at a lovely seaside bar watching the sun dip into the Atlantic or is it the Mediterranean ?
But, we say good bye to Europe...as we ferry across to Morocco and onto the next leg of our journey.
Adios and Cheers!!
S & Y
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