Where Is Joey Today?

(Photos to come within the next day or so right now I am having some technical problems)

Faro and away

Our second trip to Sevilla was 7 days of soaking up the town. Yup lucky number 7. We missed the bus to Lagos on Monday for the sake of 50 euro cents off a chicken sandwich meal at the BK Lounge.

Bonus night in Sevilla was kind of meh. Something I sort of knew but didn't have drilled home until recently. Your hostel experience is part the hostel itself and more so the people you meet around the common room. The place was dead come Monday. All of the great people we met were either in Lagos, Malaga, or Granada. All the music, communal cooking and joking around was replaced by silence.

The next morning I woke up arond 7a and checked my mail. The rest of the guys had made it to Lagos and were telling us the bus left at 7:30 not 8:30. I double checked the bus schedule and saw that 7:30 was the departure time from Lagos to Sevilla. With that reassuring tidbit, we took our time getting to the station. 10 minutes before we were scheduled to leave, we learned our friends were right and the website was wrong. At tourist information the typical Spanish mentality of customer service as an after thought prevailed again. The lady said she can get us on a bus to Ayamonte. Great, then how to we get to Lagos from there? Yo no se. What? She told us to ask someone at the station when we get there. You have to be kidding me. Okay fine. We get to Ayamonte and there is no station just a closed kiosk on the side of the road.

We talked to a cab driver who said that for 14 Euros he could get us to Portugal. To a town that has a train to Lagos. It was better than the alternative of waiting 8 hours in Spain so we went for it. Plus, he gave us a crash course in Portugese on the way there.

Two and a half hours via a stop in Faro and we were in Lagos.

When in doubt, follow the bleeding guy

With tourist season in a lull, the owners of pensions, hostels, and homes are hawking their accomodations. Nao obrigado, we have our accomodation...at the...Rising Cock hostel. It is rooster themed. It may also be a double entendre ;)

One of the guys pushing his house told us he would walk us there...he also had a bleeding lip. Not in the little blood crusts sense from a shaving mishap, but like a juicy, bright red bleeding corner. Not sure if he realized this or not but when you are trying to convince someone to stay in your house, the fewer open wounds the better. Anyway, the hostel was literally 10 minutes from the train station and 5 from the beaches.

Lagos is a Portuguese beachtown that reminds me a bit of Amity. It gets heavily touristed during the summer but it is a different kind of tourism than you see on the costa del sol. Right now, the shops along the sun beaten streets are catching their breath in anticipation of the endless lazy summer days to follow.

Our hostel, the Rising Cock, is an interesting place. It is essentially study abroad kids on break, the usual cadre of young Aussies, Kiwis, Brits, Canadians and Americans relaxing and longtermers that have no idea how to find an appropriate encore. Anyone with any flexibility at all in their schedule overstays. In part due to its common room (with a huge couch sectional) and also due to the lack of sites to see (you come here for the beach and the beach only) makes it the best social hostel I have ever been to. After a night of hitting up the local bars the hostel mom Maria, makes you lemon tea and a mountain of crepes to cure your hangover. Quite an easy life to become accustomed to.

Cliff Cravin'

The beaches are beautiful here. Coarse yellow brown sand, blue green waters, and rock formations reminscent of American west loom invitingly. Em and I being beach and water snobs are finding the testicle destroying 17 degree water horrificly hypothermic and nearly unswimmable but when you get out it feels like jumping into a hot shower on a cold morning. Good times.

To relaxing days, long nights and suggestive accomodation. Cheers :)

--Joey