Meeting in Old Town and future plans - 2014

View out our window :-)

Saturday - a beautiful sunny day though cooler than I would like.

Remember, for a larger version of any photo, click on it.

Slept in today and missed the sunrise so, for variety, I decided to walk the beach to "old town" this morning around 7:30 am. I'm not sure how far it is  to town, but over a Km, and only a few people  on the beach and interestingly quiet in town as well. 

Old pier 

Old pier again

When you reach the old town you pass the old pier and walk onto a large open space that used to be the beach area where the fisherman hauled their boats out of the water after a day or night of fishing. It is now covered over with large paving blocks, like the ones in this photo below, and there are no longer any boats to be seen.

This area is very hilly and this part of the old town is in a low area so to get to our apartment hotel on roads we used to have to walk up quite a steep hill to get to the adjacent high ground. Three or four years ago, the town, wishing to spare tourists the exercise of walking down to and up from the old town, decided to put in an outdoor escalator - actually two escalators, which you can see in the photo which looks across the plaza. 

They definitely make the trip up and down much easier. But I can't imagine the maintenance, what with rain and beach sand, especially in the summer when this relatively sleepy town of 25,000 or so, swells to 100,000 or more! Or so "they" say.

So, I took the escalator up out of "old town" on my way back to the apartment for breakfast.

Then some reading, photo processing, blog writing and before I knew it it was lunch time. In the photo below we are looking back from the top of the first level escalator to the lower level of old town.

As Ruth was having a bit of discomfort in her hip we decided on a shorter walk with no hills. So, we went to the "strip" - an ugly tourist trap area with shop after shop of junk - but Ruth wanted some sunglasses, hence the purpose of our visit to this depressing place.

After dinner I went to the beach to make a few photos and while doing so got careless and was caught by a surprisingly vigorous wave which submerged both legs to mid calf! That ended my beach outing.

A bit about our meeting with the J.M. Vacations rep a couple of days ago when we discussed 3 trips we hope to take - first is our short bus ride next weekend to the town of Loulé for the Carnaval parade, Portugal's version of Mardi Gras. Second is a trip to Portimão, a nearby town reputed to be of some interest, which we plan to visit in early March.

When we were in the Toronto airport waiting for flight departure a fellow passenger noticed Ruth using her iPad. Apparently he had bought an iPad a week ago and, as he was still at the beginning of the learning curve and having difficulty, he was delighted to find someone who seemed to know what she was doing. They had a short lesson about iPad use about which he seemed very grateful. In turn he mentioned a place in Portugal that he had visited and enjoyed and thought we might like - a place near Lisboa called Setúbal (apparently pronounced "schtoobal". We checked it out on line and with our JM rep who, it turns out, was born there! She highly recommends it and will explore transportation and a place for us to stay. Our current plan is to visit Setúbal for 3 days in late March.

More than enough for now.

17,490 steps Saturday.