"The End of the World"

Today we went to Portugal.  And, since there's a time change, we had to get up extra-early.

Now, last night was rough.  It was about 200ºF outside and inside, so I spent a lot of the night on the cold stone floor in a desperate attempt to cool off.  Additionally, my roomies had apparently had too much coffee, so they were bouncing around the appartment, slamming doors on their way to the bathroom.  I think I heard the bathroom door slam (it has a distinctive sound) around five times.

So we didn't get a lot of sleep.

The ride to Portugal was about three hours, but the time change shaved one of them off so it only officially took two.  We stopped once at a little place where I had some delicious Portuguese coffee- it's well-known in Spain that Portugal has some of the best coffee in the world- and we realized that none of us speak Portuguese.

Well, that's ok because they speak super good English, and it's actually better than their Spanish so we get to talk in English all this weekend.  However, it's a surprisingly hard habit to break, speaking in Spanish.  We've just gotten so used to ordering and asking questions.  I suppose that's a good thing.

We came to Portugal and didn't get a passport stamp.  That makes me very sad, because I was looking forward to getting it stamped at the border.  Portugal doesn't care as much as Gibraltar about border-control, I guess.

We walked to lunch.  I bought a hat and a ham and cheese.  On WHEAT BREAD ooooohhh I've missed you wheat bread.

After lunch, we made our way to the Marina where we hopped on a boat with... guess who?  A whole bunch of Germans!  The boat skirted along the Lagos coast until we came to the cliffs.  We got onto a smaller boat with a hot Portuguese guy with a very very nice accent, and we boated around in some caves.  It was impressive.  I would have pictures, but I didn't want my phone too close to the water.

We went back to the boat and promptly jumped right off of it.  I'd been expecting cold, but not that cold.  Brrrr.

Then we walked back and checked into the rooms.  I tried to figure out the wifi so I could write tonight and went down to the pool with a book and a bottle of sunscreen.  Then it was time to hop on the bus again.

Portugal is on the west coast of the peninsula, so the sun sets over the water.  This would be the first time I've ever seen that, and I'm sad to say it was a rather unpleasant experience.

Portugal is very very cold.  And the coast is very very windy late in the day because of sea-breezes/land-breezes and such.

I am still frozen, a good two hours after standing at the top of the cliff.  Yes, we were at the top of a cliff, looking over icy cold water that I'd felt first-hand earlier today.

But the sunset was pretty.  It would have been better if the wind hadn't whipped up so much moisture.

Tomorrow, I go surfing.  I will flipping freeze to death... in Portugal.