Trip to Portugal - Part 1

Jennifer and I spent the last 10 days in Portugal with one of those days spent in the border cities of Spain (No pictures of Spain, because our camera batteries died as soon as we crossed the border). We had an absolute blast. We spent the first 5 days traveling though the southern region (Algarve region) of Portugal and enjoying vacation time. After that it was back to Lisbon and back to work as Jennifer had to attend the HIV Pharmacology/Pharmacokinetic Workshop meeting. She was one of the big speakers at the meeting, and she did a great job presenting her research, so it was a great career booster for her.

After we finally got the rental car situation figured out, we stopped at the town of Alcacer de sal on the way down for lunch. This was a rural town on the interior of Portugal and gave us a great chance to try speaking Portuguese, since no one there could speak English. We spent several minutes just trying to figure out what foods were on the menu....Luckily we both ended up ordering something edible.
We continued our trip south and stayed at the Tivoli Marinotel in the town of Vilamoura. This was a 5 star European hotel. We were in the honeymoon suite...which for this hotel meant you got a queen size bed instead of two single beds. We did have a nice deck overlooking the ocean and they gave us a free bottle of champagne which we quickly drank.
From Vilamoura we traveled to the Portugal towns of Faro, Tivira, Portomao, Lagoa, Lagos, Sagres, and Monchique, as well as some other small towns. These towns were great examples of the new Portugal that has developed since the big Tsunami and Earthquake that demolished most of the coastal of Portugal in 1755. While visiting we were able to take advantage of several excellent portugal wines, which are very reasonably priced at about 4 Euro per bottle. They have very sweet wines in both red and white varieties. The wineries themselves were much less mainstream when compared to wineries of Napa or Sonoma valley. Most of the wine tasting/selling areas were located in old run down buildings.....I guess I should be glad that they spend more of their money and time making good wine rather than trying to impress visitors with elaborate tourist traps. Anyway, that should give you a little idea of what we did in the southern region of Portugal. Look at my next post of our visit to Lisbon.....