Welcome to Portimão, Portugal

Our home for the next 3 weeks

After an almost 24 hour travel day, including a frustratingly unorganized passport queue at the Faro airport, we made it to Portimão. It was after 11:00 PM when we got here, but our lovely hosts, Anita and Antonio, were waiting curbside (with their sweet dog, Chaos!) to show us the apartment.

They were incredibly thoughtful, stocking us up with some fridge and pantry goodies, knowing we wouldn’t have a chance to do any grocery shopping that first night.

Even though it was late, and we were exhausted, we sat on the balcony and had some wine and snacks while enjoying the ocean breeze.

We could hear the waves, but couldn’t see the beach since it was so dark. We we were in for a treat the next morning!

We typically get up around 5:00 AM, and thought we would go for our normal morning walk on the beach our first full day here, but after that travel day our bodies had other plans. When we finally rolled out of bed, this was the stunning view that awaited us for our (very late) morning coffee:

We just sat there taking it in and smiling, and asking ourselves “why are we only staying 3 weeks?” (the apartment was only available for 3 weeks when we booked)

Here’s a preview of our cute, 4th floor home away from home:

Living Room (this is a photo from the booking page, Shawn didn’t want me to include the one I took that included him setting up the Fire Stick)

Real life - I did laundry today, and in true European fashion there is no dryer. Good thing we have the ocean breeze!

Kitchen & Dining Area

The bathroom is snug, but very nice.

We went out to check out the neighborhood and make a grocery store run. The produce is so nice; tomatoes that smell and taste like tomatoes - what a concept! And the wine is incredibly good and inexpensive. We already made friends with the wine guy, who recommended us a bottle of “green wine”, Vinho Verde. Its a young wine made in the northwestern region here, meant to be consumed shortly after harvest.

Another happy discovery: the fresh squeezed orange juice machines they have in Spain are here too! You load oranges in the top, press the lever down, and the machine smooshes up the oranges and fills your bottle. Magically delicious!

After our grocery run we walked to the lookout point across the street from our building. Here’s the view in both directions:

We’re taking it easy the rest of today so that we can go out for a late dinner, Portugal style. In the meantime, this is not a bad place to set up my “office”. (Did I mention how good the wine is?)

Saúde! (that’s cheers in Portuguese) & stay tuned for our next update!