Today is a full travel day, and it could be challenging given the continuing presence of The Cold, now named Godzilla. The three of us (Hilary, me and Godzilla) leave the apartment at 6.45 am to walk the 500 m to the bus station, where there are people gathering at our assigned bay but no bus. The bus doesn’t actually arrive until after the scheduled departure time of 7.30 am, and a scramble ensues as people try to put their luggage in the hold and to find seats. Hilary finds seats for us while Godzilla and I do the luggage.
The bus finally gets under way, 10 minutes late. It’s hot and cramped, but eventually we reach Faro after 4 hours. In Faro we have a 3-hour wait for the train at 1.41 pm Portugal time (an hour behind Spanish time), so we find a street-side café and spend the time having coffee and lunch – also walking to the water’s edge on the Algarve coast.
Coast of the Algarve at Faro
I take a double dose of over-the-counter cold and flu tablets to help me and Godzilla to get along – on all this medication I get quite high and expansive.
We board the train to Lisbon. It chugs quite slowly though the Algarve and the savannah of southern Portugal – interesting that this is a savannah landscape! Eventually we reach Lisbon around 5 pm. We find our way to our AirBnB apartment, near the old city and the castle.
Coastlines 