lagos/evora

Izzi and I rented a car on Tuesday morning while little Danny slept in. We rented rom Altea, which is associated with National. Some companies do not allow you to leave the country with the car. Most don’t like it if you want to drop it off in another country and charge you a big fee. It ended up being about 250 euro from Tuesday am to Sunday AM, which is plenty. The convenience factor was huge though. Parking was annoying, but not impossible in Lisbon. Driving around in the cities sucked, but that’s just because I hate driving in any city. Driving in Boston is much worse. Portuguese drivers have a reputation for being really bad. According to Let’s Go Portugal has the highest road mortality rate in Europe. The Spanish were like “driving in Portugal? good luck.” I didn’t really notice a big difference between Spanish and Portuguese drivers. Both drive little cars on little roads and high speeds and make passes on two-lane roads that you wouldn’t think about in the states first because it’s illegal and second because it’s illogical. I started to get into it though driving back from Ronda with Jon to the point where he was uncomfortable, which is always fun. We took multi-lane highways through most of Portugal so we didn’t have to deal with getting around slow trucks, which was nice. The lime-green Citroen C2 that we rented had zero pickup compared to the car Jon and I had rented the week before so it would not have been fun to attempt to pass slower-moving traffic with this guy. Gas and tolls in Portugal can add up also. Gas was an average of 10-20 cents more per liter. That adds up fast. We paid one toll that was 20 euro, which isn’t as bad as France but it’s not very much fun. The car was purely for convenience and time efficiency. And speedy it was, compared with public transport. I have heard tales of woe concerning the 7-hour bus ride from Lisbon to Sevilla. Dan and I made the drive in about 3.5. We did get kind of lost, ok pretty damn turned around in Lisbon when we arrived, but that was our only real car mishap. It was like driving around Brooklyn for an hour trying to find the Village.

We drove about 2.5 hours along the southern coast at a steady 150 km/hr to Lagos, Portugal. My friends from Sandwich had all pumped this place up as possibly the best place they had gone on their European trip the summer before, so I had high expectations. It was a bummer becasuse we really didn’t have the weather we were banking on. The week before when Paddy and Linni were here it was hot and sunny every day. In Lagos it rained at least some every day. Lisbon was better but not much. We stayed at the Rising Cock hostel, which isn’t as inappropriate of a name as it sounds. The national symbol of Portugal is the rooster and you see it everywhere like the toro in Spain. The hostel is owned by two brothers of Portuguese descent who went to BC and Northeastern and are under 30. Their parents work there too, making crepes and lemon tea for breakfast and helping out at reception, etc. They also own the restaurant across the street, which is not cheap but has good quality food. We stayed in a little room in a separate building away from the actiona little bit, which turned out to be what made the stay so great. It was 18 euro each/night as I had paid for dorm rooms. The room had two double beds. It’s a little more thean I had hoped to pay, having heard that portugal was really cheap. The hostel was full of English-speakers, mostly American, mostly studying abroad somewhere in Spain and on Spring break. Those who were not on Spring break were travel lifers.Frequent exchange: “how long have you been here?” “just a week.” “really? I’ve been here 16 days. I think I might head out next week.” Are you serious? Why did you come here at all? Just go to Daytona Beach! Everyone we talked to said that all there is to do is go to the beach and the same four bars every day. Anyways, we felt old immediately upon entering. The three of also matched perfectly in our zip hoodies, jeans, hipster arafat scarves, sneakers, plastic glasses and haircuts. This place would have been perfect 5 years ago, but we felt a little out of place. Dan cooked an awesome pasta in the kitchen with the chorizo we bought in the grocery store nearby. The common room had a bunch of couches, coffee tables and a porch. There was free internet on the computers in the lounge, and one of the computers was connected by magic t a big screen tv and speakers so you could blast music videos. This helped to turn this lounge into a sort of meat market for 20-yr olds around 1030 at night. Everyone who’s “in” calls it the Hrd Cock Cafe. Cute. We drank our litros on the terraza and watched the show. can’t go wrong. The most ridiculous part is that the employees and pseudo-residents and the parents themselves insist that everyone call them Mama and Papa. That is never going to happen. I don’t even call my own parents that, and I’m not 6, so there’s no way I’mgoing to start using that terminology now.

We headed out to check out the bars around 1. Everyone who had been at the Cock was trashed . The first spot we went to, Three Monkeys had darts which was cool. They also had a funnel, which was not. Patrons there are encouraged to funnel a beer so tha t tally mark can be placed next to your country of origin on a big chalkboard. OK we did it. Izzi has a photo of the board with three tallies next to Kyrgyzstan. The we went t oa bar up the street called Inside Out. They were playing great dance music. For the second straight bar we tried to start a dance party to no avail. Even dancing on some furniture. The young kids were too wasted to even move. Chicks were totally digging us though. They even played some MJ, and to paraphrase Dan, if MJ fails to get the people moving , it’s hopeless.

We drove to Sages, the southwestern tip of Europe, the next day. There was a huge fort and cliffs all around. It;’s where Prince henry the navigator had his famnous (I guess) school for explorers. I went swimming just to prove a point. We had dinner in a little village and went on a wild megaliticos chase. It was a good little excursion. The night was exactly like the one before, and it was Wednesday.

The next day we drove to Evoras, which is about 45 minutes east of Lisbon, specifically to check out the Capilla dos Ossos. Yes we added an extra hour and a half of driving to see a church made entirely of bones. It was totally worth it. So effing creepy. It was made with bones dug up from the old cemetery in town and is probably a good 10x15 meters. Lot’s of femurs, skulls, fibias a nd tibias and good times. There are also the mummified bodies of a father and son hanging from one of the walls. So wierd and awesome. The Catholic church does some really awesome things once in a while.