Adeus Sesimbra - Olá Lagos

janetlynch
Dec 18, 2022
2 min read

28 Nov through 15-Dec

The weather was not at it's best for our last couple of weeks in Sesimbra , but no complaints as the rain is helping to put a dent in Portugal's 5 year drought. We took advantage whenever there was a break in the weather to spend as much time outdoors and to explore a bit more.

We took a couple of trips to Setúbal (pronounced Stewball), which is a larger commercial, industrial port town to the east of Sesimbra. Another day, we took a ferry over to Tróia, (an almost completely deserted beach town) then drove down to Sines, stopping and checking out the various beach towns along the way. One evening we went into Lisbon for a Christmas market, but it was not quite what we had expected. Turns out Portugal is just starting to copy the Northern European concept of Christmas markets. We did enjoy ourselves and it was quite festive so we were glad we made the effort.

Our last night in Sesimbra, we went to a local's favorite, family-style restaurant where you choose your fish from the glass cased fridge and they cook it on the outside grill. Served with an awesome salad and super yummy boiled potatoes, after a starter of razor clams, it was all just divine.

Our drive down to Lagos was very easy, we met the very nice and helpful owners of our new place, Danielle and Marcel, a dutch couple who are now Portuguese residents. We are enjoying this place very much, it has a little back yard for Lola and the beach is right across the road. The view is not quite as nice as the one we had in Sesimbra and it takes about 20 minutes to walk into town, but there are no hills involved.

Lagos is bigger than Sesimbra, but not too big. It's much more of a touristy town and there is a huge expat community here, so English is spoken pretty much everywhere. We jumped right into exploring the town and the immediate scenic areas. We also went to a international social club meetup where we met some very nice people from a variety of different places. Although we both feel it isn't a place we could be long-term, we do like it here very much and it might make for a great winter time residence.