portiMEOW, portugal

hola todos! so like i said in my last post i'm traveling every weekend until second weekend in november. this is only problematic for me cause i have a feeling i'm gonna get really lazy with these posts. hopefully not but we'll see. SO! this weekend we went to portimao, portugal. this was an optional trip through our program so we paid for it but for what it was we really did not pay that much at all. It was also fun because it was all of us traveling together, and now that we've all started traveling its gonna be rarer to be spending our weekends together. on friday we left by bus for a 7 hour ride before dawn. i slept almost the entire way waking up every few hours to find myself drooling all over my travel pillow. it was a pretty easy bus ride there until they started playing the dubbed version of sideways in spanish at full blast. we also picked up two strangers off the road and claimed they were our tour guides for the weekend. Pretty sure they were hitch hikers but thats fine. one was a fat old spanish man named pepe who had a knack for making really unfunny comments about drinking and girls etc. and one was ricu who was this young dude from finland that chain smoked the whole time and came out and partied with us.

at around 1 we arrived in Faro, Portugal which is the capital of the Algarve province. we got a nice little tour from an adorable portuguese woman i think pepe tried to hit on. we saw some old cathedrals with some big crazy organs, but we also saw these creepy chapels that were covered in human bones. no joke real human skulls and bones lining every inch of the walls. pretty cool looking. we took some pictures on the bell tower, saw the marina, and went on our way. we ate lunch at this super swanky restaurant that already had everything set up for us. this trip was filled with the finest dining i will have on my entire trip i think. we had a 3 course meal (casual) including some yummy apps, delicious pork, salad, rice, fries, and then ice cream and coffee. ugh so good. after that we were on our last leg of the bus ride to get to portimao to check into our hotel.

those are all skulls and bones, how edgy and creepy and cool

our hotel was also unnecessarily nice and spoiled me on all trips to come. ella and i had a waterfront room with a nice little balcony overlooking the beautiful praia de rocha beach in portugal. we put our stuff down and immediately headed down to the beach. the water looked atlantic to me, but i guess it was somewhere between atlantic and mediterranean but was so amazing. my next idea was obviously to purchase a soccer ball and organize a game of world cup. as always, beach world cup is a blood bath. my baby toe may have been broken in the process and my team did not win, but we fought hard. greatest beach game alive. we then went and hung in the pool a little bit before dinner (sidenote to all you cape codders we played trivia and i pulled out my hardest nlb trivia question: which president was the only one to serve two non consecutive terms? winner gets a prize i stumped everyone in portugal). dinner was a buffet, ugh no self control. ate my way into a mild food coma and invited everyone over to our room to pregame before going out. ella and i thought we were the shit cause we had a waterfront room, then annie and erin were like if you guys wanna come over to our place we have a big patio. they were not joking. their balcony/patio was bigger than our room and i'm embarrassed we even invited anyone. but nonetheless it was so fun having everyone together. we all hit the clubs together like some linebockaahs. killed it on the dance floor as usual god any ounce of alcohol makes me think i'm miss new booty or something but whatever.

tulane ladies (and brandon) pre club

so we continued to bar hop a little. our hotel was on a strip with a ton of bars and clubs so everything was walking and so convenient. we were over the clubbing and decided the next logical step with the night would be to go skinny dipping in the mediterranean sea, cause por que no? if you've never gone skinny dipping in your adult life i pity you because it has to be the most liberating experience in the world. the water was unbelievably clear and warm and ideal skinny dipping conditions. passerbys probably would have thought all of us were wearing bathing suits by the extreme tanlines but lucky for us there was no one on the beach to judge. trekked back to the hotel in our now soaking wet clothes and took the best showers of our lives and invited everyone over to cuddle with us. it was glorious.

next morning we woke up for breakfast and out boat/grotto tour. it might have been cause i was slightly hungover but the seasickness that ensued from the boat ride out to the caves was no bueno. came pretty close to tossing my cookies but once we anchored and were able to jump in the water and be stable i felt like 100 dollars as ella would say. we went swimming off the boat and then got tours of the caves and grottos in lagos in mini motor boats. there we some amazing views and it was unbelievably tropical. definitely the highlight of this vacation (i can't really call it a trip cause everything was planned for us and it was the most tropical place i've ever been it was unreal) they served us lunch before we took off but once again the rocking made me quite motion sick and got rid of my appetite for the most part. we got back to portimao around 5 or so and went to shower and get ready for more sight seeing.

cave that looks like an elephant.... woah

this was real life.. how? idk but i saw it glow like this

boatz n hoez

we took the bus to a couple sights including a fortress in sagres, and cabo sao vicente which was what the europeans thought the end of the world was when they thought it was flat (stupid idiots). they had really great ice cream at the end of the world and some really scary cliffs you could walk along that made for some nice scenic photos. we then made our way to lagos to get a little walking tour. we saw the slave market and the center of town and the marina and headed to dinner. another huge meal with a huge group that was delicious. after a few hours we headed back to portimao for our last night of our vacation.

cool artsy panoramic iphone shot with sam chillin on the cliffs in cabo sao vicente

hey look its me at the end of the world! selfies are just the greatest

we went out again not as crazy as the first night but i did step foot into my first casino. it wreaked of cigarettes and all of our friends lost a lot of money so i still just dont really get it but maybe i will some day. the next morning ella and i woke up at the crack of dawn, ate breakfast before anyone else, and went to the beach. we got in a few hours before we had to say goodbye to portimao and our vacationland.

so portugal wasn't exactly the most culturally rich place but it was unbelievably beautiful scenically and just the beach vacation i needed. it was my last beach weekend of this abroad trip and we certainly went out with a bang so i couldn't have asked for anything better. the bus ride home was filled with would you rathers and deep conversations to the tune of the most depressing movie to ever revolutionary road dubbed in spanish. a lovely trip with some lovely people. this weekend, madrid! more tulane shenanigans!