A Portugal Road Trip
Faro, 07/07 - 07/10
We took a bus from Seville to one of the major beach cities in Southern Portugal, Faro. When we got off the bus, Carolyn noticed that SHE LEFT HER PHONE ON THE BUS. We had a mental breakdown and filed a lost and found request through the bus company and then checked into our hostel, Hostellicious. We immediately got drunk to deal with this phone situation lol. We were literally just tracking the phone as it traveled across Portugal lol. That same night, the bus driver called us off the phone!! (he only spoke Portuguese lol.) He was driving back to Faro the next morning YEEE!!!
Okay, so we really really wanted to rent a car and do a Portugal road trip along the coast, so Anna and I headed to the airport the next morning to see if we can rent a car while Carolyn stayed at the bus station to wait for her phone. Portugal was one of the few countries in the EU that didn’t have a minimum age requirement or an international drivers permit requirement to rent a car. So we skirted to the airport and was able to rent a little Fiat :) We named her “The ChumpDump.” We picked Carolyn up who got her phone back and then headed down the Algarve Coast!! Anna was the only one who knew how to drive stick, so she was literally the only one can drive. Carolyn was snack mom and sat in the backseat. We picked up some snacks and then went to a couple beaches. LITERALLY so pretty.
Okay, so if you go to Southern Portugal, you need to visit the Benagil Caves. Super touristy, but it’s literally a must. The only way to get to them was to either rent kayaks or swim in these dangerous and rocky waters. We parked the car, pregamed, and then headed down to the beach to rent kayaks. For the entire trip, there was always a bag of wine in the trunk lol. There was literally a 3 hour wait to rent them, so we figured we would get up early the next morning and just do them then. Instead, we visited one of the prettiest areas in Portugal, Lagos. It was so picturesque. All of the small caves and hidden beaches were literally out of a dream. We rock-climbed down to a nude beach and found no one was at it. We literally had our own private beach where we stripped down and just enjoyed the rest of the day.
We checked out of our hostel and headed back to the Benagil Caves. We were finally able to rent kayaks :) Kayaking in the ocean is literally a completely different game. There’s fricken waves plowing you over, boats zooming by. We brought our phones too, so we literally could not flip over lol. It was only a 10 minute kayak ride to the caves. By far the prettiest place ever.
Afterwards, we got DRUNK and hiked along the seven Hanging Trail which was voted “Europe’s Best Hike.” We chilled at a beach and swam out into a cave. The water was literally ice, but so clear. It was so cold RIP. We literally got so cut up from climbing the rocks in the cave that our legs and arms were bloody. Anna’s glasses flew off her head and sunk to the bottom, but luckily she brought an extra. Thank G she had another pair because we wouldn’t have been able to drive anywhere lol. Our next stop was to a tent Airbnb in a national park just outside of Lisbon called Sintra Cascais National Park. We took a highway up the middle of the country where it was completely desolate. There were so many tolls, it was ridiculous. The gas was sorta expensive too. The Airbnb was so cool. It was in our host’s backyard, but it was like a camping hostel. There had to be at least 15 other tents that people were using. We were able to use a kitchen and toilet too!!! The village was so small. We walked down the street and found a local restaurant where we randomly picked foods off the menu, solely because everything was in Portuguese lol and not English. Anna got WILD HOG, Carolyn had some sort of fish, and I had steak :) IT WAS SOOO GOOD.
Sintra & Cascais Natural Park, 07/10 - 07/13
The next day we drove to the town of Sintra where there was so much history and old castles. We drove up this highly trafficked and windy road up to a famous castle called Palácio National da Pena. We walked around for a bit, and then headed back to the coast :) The beaches here were a lot rockier than the southern ones, but still insanely gorgeous. We hot boxed a cave lol and spent the evening cave hunting and watching the sunset. We figured we would do the city of Lisbon during our 8 hour layover flying back to the States, so the next day we headed to one of the other major cities of Portugal called Porto.
Porto, 07/13 - 07/15
We didn’t want to take any toll roads, so the drive ended up being 6 hours instead of 2 lolol. We stopped at a couple towns (they were kinda boring, so that kinda sucked) and had breakfast at a food truck that was selling baked goods off the side of the road. The hostel we stayed in was so cute. It was so cozy and tiny.
Porto was filled with so much color and small alleyways. Super cute cafes and restaurants were littered across the city, along with colored tile work. It was a type of architecture I haven’t seen before, so cool!!
We had to to get to Copenhagen because our flight back to the States departed from there and then had a layover in Lisbon, Portugal. Yeah, that’s right. We literally had to fly to Denmark and then come back to Portugal in order to go back to America. The airline would have refused our boarding pass if we skipped the first leg of the trip, so we had to find our way to Copenhagen. The cheapest option was to fly to Berlin, and then take another flight to Copenhagen. So Anna and Carolyn dropped me off at the airport, and I headed to Berlin to stay with my friend Ellie who I met in Spain when I volunteered at a dog shelter.
Lisbon, 07/23
We landed in Lisbon around 8am and had to be back at the airport around 3pm, so we had around 6 hours to walk around Lisbon lol. We had breakfast , did some shopping, and walked around the tiny alleys of the city.
