Exploring Portugal – Part 3

We had spent the night boondocking at the fort in Sagres, and spent the morning visiting the lighthouse before making our way to Turiscampo, our home for the next four weeks. I love arriving in new places and I was particularly looking forward to this one!

Steven got us checked in and we made our way to our site. One of the fun things about coming to a full-service “luxury” resort is checking out all the services and Turiscampo did not disappoint. Our site was located in a little cul-de-sac, so there was about a dozen spaces there. Some folks were here for the entire season, others for a week or so. Mostly you can tell because those who are here for a while build elaborate add-on tent rooms to their rigs. I don’t think I can be bothered with one of those things, but they are very popular over here. 

We were mere steps away from the “sanitary block” which houses the fantastic showers and toilets and there were separate facilities for men and women. There were also multiple dishwashing sinks, laundry facilities and chemical toilet dump. It was all nicely arranged and well-appointed, so we were very happy with our spot. 

Just down the street was the indoor swimming pool, the spa, sauna, gym and outdoor pool. Most sunny days were only in the 60s, but when the sun was shining, folks were laying out working on their tans. Across the street was the little grocery store, which was one of those that seemed to have everything in spite of it’s small size. Behind the pool was the bar and restaurant. Best of all, there was a spa and hair salon! How convenient is that? 

The first four or five days we mostly stayed at home. Not only did we not want to do much of anything, but I also came down with a cold, so I slept and rested. Steven did replace our old mattress with the new one we bought at IKEA, but that was the extent of projects in week one. We love our new mattress!

Once I was feeling more energetic we took a couple of bike rides to get the lay of the land. The closest village to us that was on the water was Luz, and we loved it there. A few more kilometers away was the larger town of Lagos, where we rode and also did our grocery shopping. 

The store in Lagos we liked the most was the Intermarche, it looked just like a Safeway. It was the most expensive store we’ve been to in Portugal, but it had everything we needed to make our Thanksgiving dinner. 

Through one of my cooking groups on Facebook I found out another member was staying with her husband just down the road from us in Lagos, so we made plans to get together. We may have met through a cooking group, but it turns out that for years we didn’t live far from Nancy and Chris in the Seattle area! Chris is a retired ophthalmologist who is on a mission to circumnavigate the globe in his 42′ sailboat “Spill The Wine”, while Nancy meets up with him as his “girl in every port”. She’s on the boat for short hops, but sailing doesn’t really agree with her, especially during long crossings. We loved hanging out with these laid back, like-minded adventurers and look forward to meeting up again, perhaps somewhere in the Mediterranean next year!

In our last days at Turiscampo we spent some time preparing Bijou for our upcoming travels. We bought some storage bins and finally began utilizing our storage areas inside under the sofas. Those areas are hard to get to sometimes, but we were getting cramped with stuff, so we got rid of some stuff and properly stored other stuff. It feels so good inside now, so roomy! 🙂

And then it was time to go. How did that happen, we just got here!! We made our way north of Lisbon where we loaded our bikes inside Bijou and left them for a well-deserved rest at a little campsite before embarking on our most ambitious travel year yet! Steven and I hopped a train into Lisbon where we are spending two days seeing the holiday lights and doing all the things we missed on our first visit here, such a riding Tram 28 and making a visit to the Fado museum. We really, really love Lisbon!

At 4:30 a.m. our favorite taxi driver will ferry us to the airport where we will begin our 22-hour trip back to the ranch in Texas where we are looking foward to seeing family and friends. We will only have three weeks before we return to Portugal to begin our new year of travel in Europe and beyond!

And finally, a quick note about this blog. Steven has been working hard to migrate The Chouters & Bijou from Blogger to WordPress and this post will be his first on the new platform. We *think* all of our subscribers will transport as will past posts with comments. It looks like we might lose a few comments from the last couple of blogs, but otherwise, it should all be seemless. Still, if you don’t want to miss a post, please sign up for notifications! Also, if you see something not right, let us know. And please bear with us if it all goes sideways. 🙂

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

NEXT UP:  What’s happening in 2020?

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