Faro and Lagos, Portugal

I figure out that instead of going up through Spain through dry country that I can go from Sevilla to the Algarve coastline in Portugal, up to Lisbon, and take a night train to my final destination in Madrid. I'd never been to the Algarve, and I spent one full day in Lisbon the first time I went to Spain. I can't buy a bus ticket online. I go to the bus station, and she says that tomorrow's first departure is at 3 in the afternoon. I'm pissed, because I couldn't lose another day in Seville. I don't know why I even thought to ask, but I asked if there was a different bus company that left earlier. There was!! I could leave at 8 am. So I'm ahead of the game. I get on the bus, and I'm not even really tired, so I write all the thoughts in my head down, and I look at my watch. 2 hours go by in an instead! Only one more hour to go! Winning! Of course, the bus does not take another hour. It takes two. A minor setback. I made the hostel reservation just the other day, and I don't have a printout with directions. But I was smart enough to keep the page open with the instructions. But I still have trouble finding it, because I'm a complete spazz, and now I'm sweating and OF COURSE the streets are all cobblestoned, the one thing my brand new 360 degree spinning luggage can't handle. I use my shitty portuguese, and successfully ask a man where this street is. He says “I think it's down there!” I argue, as I was just there. I ask someone else. She says the same. The old man basically says “I told you so.” I go to the square I was just in, and I realized I had passed it twice. I can't check in the hostel, which is fine because I already pre-packed for the beach!! All my stuff was in my day bag, I was already wearing my bathing suit under my clothes, and with a room all to myself yesterday I had the luxury of depilating whatever needed to go yesterday!! It turns out there is no actual beach without another bus ride or a ferry ride. The ferry doesn't come for another 45 minutes, and takes 35 minutes to get there. Fuck. I figure maybe instead, this is a good time to go to Lagos, which Seline and Jesse described as the most beautiful beach they have ever seen. OK! I'm starving, having missed breakfast, and I find this little cafeteria full of amazing looking sweets and a menu of the day- they only have a couple of different dishes each day, and that's all you have to choose from. I love places like this! And today is bacalhao day! I somehow am able to avoid eating all of the sweets, and order soup and bacalhao. That's right, soup in the middle of the summer. Yesterday, in Sevilla, it was about 92 degrees and I'm fighting heat exhaustion. Now I'm ordering soup. Evidently, they really like soup in Portugal. Everyone has a soup of the day. Special summer soups. It's almost chilly here, certainly by Iberian standards. The soup is some kind of bean soup, thin but nice. Then comes the bacalhao- an ENORMOUS portion of something- consistency somewhere between a stew and a salad- it was the salt cod, and a cream sauce made of carrots and onions. So good! And only 4 euros. I could barely eat half, and I waas starving! It's called Cinderela. Like me! I'm going back for dessert later. I am having a GREAT DAY!! Portugal is an hour behind Spain! I gained an hour! HAHA! Back to the bus station, only a 6 minute walk withouth my suitcase, armed with my newly acquired sense of where shit is, a daypack, rudimentary portuguese, and a fresh bikini like, I get to the station at 12:30. The bus is at the station, ready to go. I ask the bus driver if I can buy a ticket on the bus. He said yes! I made it! I am SO CLEVER! This is where things start going south. I ask the driver how long it will be, reading somewhere that it was about an hour away. Wrong. He says about 2 hours. But really, it's almost 3. It's the local. I get to Lagos, and the beach is not right there. It's a port. I have to walk 15 minutes. I think enough to ask when the bus back to Faro is. The bus is at 5:15, only about 2 hours away. IT'S THE LAST BUS BACK. Faro is a dinky little down, evidently, and Lagos is where all the people go to spend their weekend. Guess I got all THAT backwards. So, in summary, today I got up, took a 3 hour bus ride to Faro, and now have to travel about 5 hours back and forth, just to be on the beach for less than two hours. Yeah, the beach was nice. Who gives a shit at this point. The water's cold. Fuck. I go into the bathroom. There are urinals. Why are there urinals in the woman's bathroom? Portugal is weird. I get out, and see the little man sign outside. It's not like I even confused the words. Due to the other day's gastrointestinal distress, I spend the whole time at the beach feeling like I am going to barf up the bacalhao, like I ate so much that there's a piece in my throat and there's no room for it to go down. And I didn't eat that much. I almost do throw up on the beach. I sit behind three English girls, one of whom is freaking the fuck out because she had a crazydrunkhostelnight last night, and she got SO drunk, that something happened that left her bruised and all scratched up and horribly embarassed. She had a bruise on her leg about 2 fists in diameter, and she was truly horrified, and I guess did some regrettable things with some guy, so much that she couldn't seem to take her hungover head out of her hands the whole time. Her friend deletes all pictures showcasing the incident. They now tell each other all of their torrid, tawdry, salacious shagging stories in gruesome and significant detail. I pretend I don't understand any of it, so they keep going. Really, the highlight of my day so far. I am now paranoid that I am going to be stuck here, so I leave the beach early, having at least gotten a little beijo from the Portuguese sun. Whatever. It's pretty. I'm not going to be all miserable about a couple of bad choices today. There's no problem getting a bus back. No one goes TO Faro for the weekend. But me. I start talking to the bus driver in Portuguese. He asks me if I am sozinha, a delicate way to ask “are you here alone by yourself?” and I say yes. He can't believe an american girl is here sozinha. I have a feeling in Portugal as well, a girl is not sozinha for long. The hostel is sparkling clean, and only a year old. It's playing a non-stop soundtrack of U2 and Bob Marley. Not a good sign. What the fuck is it with Europe and U2? Everywhere I go... it's one thing to be playing American music the whole time, but U2 from the early 90's?? I mean, I like all that as much as the next guy but my god. The man carries my bag up the stairs so I don't have to. I think my room only has a total of three people in it. An American who has been stufying in Amsterdam and her friend from there who is German. They don't have much interest in talking to me. Which is fine. It's freezing outside, and I wear pants and long sleeves for the first time in my whole trip. I ask the guy for a recommendation for dinner, even though I still haven't regained my appetite from this shitty stomach situation. Maybe a good meal is the answer. The girl from the hostel looks diappointed that I don't want to have their nightly dinner with the hostel people. This is the last thing I want. He recommends a little place around the corner, Cantinho da Ronha, away from the oceanfront, where everything is twice the price. Sounds great. This dinner was ridiculously good. More soup (I'm COLD now!) and a plate of about 8 large sardines, fresh off the grill, olives, delicious crusty and chewy bread for dipping in grill juice. The local beggar cat is my new best friend. It takes the waiter until dessert time to finally speak to me in his excellent English... it was so nice he let me practice. He said he had to practice his English, as all he gets are the french. And he's “up to here” with the french. Me, too. I refuse dessert, because I was worried about upsetting my stomach. He says “I hope you are not worried about getting fat, because you are perfect.” Well, that was a nice end to a spectacular meal. I walk around outside, looking for a place to have a nice glass of wine. There is preactically NOTHING going on. It's Friday night. A small cafeteria or two had a couple of people, but really not much to speak of. I go back to the hostel. There's a tapped keg, and a mess of boys, mostly Australian and Dutch, partying on the patio- some drinking game where each person has a sound and you have to remember the sounds and repeat them or something, I think I've played it before, but basically it sounds like Jurassic park on the patio. I help myself to a rather lofty glass of port and ask the girl at the desk what I owe her. Nothing, she says. I see two guys, a little older than me, carving into a ginormous watermelon. One is Diogo, who is 1/3 owner of the hostel. He opened the hostal a year ago, it's not even finished yet, but he's spend day and night for over a year doing all the work on the building with his partners. He lives there, and has been hiring local people who come to him knocking on the door, begging for jobs. The building is a famous and important house in the community, and it was vacant for a long time, and the neighborhood, instead of being annoyed at the idea of a hostel opening in the community, is really excited to see the home being reconstructed and business brought to the community. Diogo is warm, and friendly, and treats everyone, including these drunk, stupid, kids like longtime friends. I asked, “how can you take living with all this all the time?” He says, “some nights, I join them.” Diogo tells me that Portugal has the best hostels in the world, and that there's a commitment to service that Spain and other places do not have. This is not the last time I will hear about the Portuguese talking shit about Spaniards. I wind up hanging out with Diogo the whole time...he was very smart, and very interesting. In the end, I was treated to a fake and very drunk argument between two Dutch boys and a French guy. The French guy couldn't have had more of a pepe-le-pew accent if he tried. It went something like this: “Everyone hates the French!”“Everyone LOVES the French!” “You French guys are so short. Look at you. How tall are you anyway?”“And what about the Dutch... with your weed, and your heroin, and your whores, and your BICYCLES?” I nearly fell off my bean cushion. Sometimes, a night in a hostel is EXACTLY what you need.