urban bicycle journeys

My brother Alex lives in a medium sized seaside town in the Alentejo region of Portugal, two to three hours drive south of Lisbon, about halfway down the coast. I started my bike trip there with him.

Alex, his wife Kristi Barlow, and their daughter Eleanor Claire had moved to this town a little over a year ago, just because they could. All are learning the Portuguese language, Eleanor Claire the quickest. (Their son Max goes to college in the USA.) I hung with them for a few days. They have an interesting group of friends. EU integration has created new cultural mixes. For example; one friend is a tall blond Dutch woman married to a Swiss-German guy. That couple has two young kids and moved to Portugal after being able to manage their software company remotely, or something like that. Of course they speak perfect English but like Alex and Kristi they send their children to the local Portuguese language public school.

The language thing for me would be a struggle. I do know Spanish which is similar, and I had spent a year at the business school Thunderbird in 1979 learning Brazilian Portuguese, which is slightly different from Portuguese Portuguese. That was a long time ago. I still have never been to Brazil.

Around my home of Chapel Hill NC many of the artsiest folks have lived in the woods five or ten miles out of town. In Alex’s Portuguese town he noted a similar vibe. One night Alex knew some people putting on a pay-to-enter small time barbecue and music festival, out of town on a dark farm with no streetlights. People parked their cars in the grass. Some of the 50-100 attendees were Portuguese, but many seemed expat German. I met a personable young couple who had driven down here all the way from Poland. Among the performers was a local a cappella class. These two videos are fifteen seconds each.

Later on Alex played acoustic guitar with backup vocals by the leader of that previous vocal group. They had them dancing in the aisles.

Both these acts were backup bands to a young Portuguese woman who played guitar and sang her own evocative songs. She was quite the professional. Sorry, I do not have a tape of that performance.

A day or two later my plan was to bicycle tour with Alex for two or three days, then I would go solo for four or five more days. This was the route I cycled over the next six days.

Two bikes would not fit in their car so it was decided I would cycle the first fifteen kilometers to the set-off point, the small town of São Luis. Kristi drove Alex and his bike. I cycled solo through their town, heading east into the mountains. People were out on the street on this Sunday morning.

Once beyond the city limits there was little traffic. There were several serious climbs.

My folding Bike Friday fits in a suitcase and I had brought it over from America. Alex has done bicycle touring in years past but not recently. A couple of years ago he also purchased a folding Bike Friday but he hasn’t used it much. It was made to order to his six foot seven inch dimensions. Alex looks a lot like me, only a whole lot taller.

Alex wanted to stay off even slightly busy paved highways and had plotted a route on mostly gravel roads. The cork industry here is ubiquitous. Cork trees are scattered about haphazardly on the landscape. Every nine years they strip the bark for wine corks, then paint the last digit of the year to remember how long it has been.

Alex guided us toward lunch at Pizza Domingo; in the middle of nowhere, run by expat Israelis and open only on Sundays. It was crowded; quite the scene and we were lucky to get a table. The outdoor restaurant is next door to a bar frequented by mostly male locals while the pizza crowd seemed mostly non-Portuguese Europeans. You walk a few feet over for your drinks. Europeans of all stripes seem to favor small individual pizzas, not the giant share-all that Americans practice. The pizza was delicious.

After lunch we continued cycling through the rural countryside.

I like to shock friends by saying that on these bike tours I really enjoy, not fear, the idea of not having planned where I am sleeping tonight. I prefer that charge of uncertainty. Nevertheless in recent years I have been mostly booking the night’s hotel a few hours ahead of time on my phone. Everything everywhere now is online. I was impressed that my younger brother brazenly and casually suggested we not look for a hotel until we had physically arrived at the day’s destination, the tiny town of Amoreiras-Gare, even though Google Maps showed no hotels there. There is a train station. Towns with train stations always have hotels, right? I was comforted that if we got into a mess Alex would have to deal with it.

About an hour before sunset we biked into Amoreiras-Gare and ordered beers at one of the two open establishments in town on this Sunday evening. Alex had heard there was a good restaurant in the back.

Of course there were no hotel rooms in town. There were none on the hotel websites, nothing on Airbnb. Since he created this situation Alex went to talk to our bartender and the likely owner, using his decent but far from fluent Portuguese. I then saw them walk down the street to chat with an older woman at a house two doors down.

Most restauranteurs take hospitality seriously. That bar owner had referred us to a woman who used to rent out rooms. She had a jovial forty-something daughter who showed us two rooms in the back of their house. Alex first accepted an offer of twenty euro for one room with two beds, then counter-offered, at my suggestion, forty euro total for both rooms. Alex handed her two bills. It was not The Ritz but it was homey. We shared the one bathroom. The walls did not come all the way to the top so you could hear everything.

Alex also did a great job schmoozing the bartender whose restaurant, we now found out, is closed on Sunday evenings, although the bar in the front remained open. Since we had nowhere else to eat the guy offered to cook us a substitute for the regular menu, “tosta mista” the Portuguese version of grilled cheese with ham.

This Alentejo region of Portugal takes eating seriously! For “just” a grilled cheese that same bartender laid out a proper paper tablecloth and a bottle of local red wine. He gave us a dish of the obligatory olives, with fresh oregano artfully sprinkled on top. There was a beautiful salad of tomatoes and onions, also sprinkled with oregano. You would add one’s own dressing with the accompanying olive oil and vinegar.

We finished it all off with dessert, then cups of expresso coffee. The guy poured us each a complimentary shot of the local clear powerful aperitif. Life was grand.

Rain was predicted all week. The next morning we walked back to “our” bar for a coffee and roll before settling in for the next four hours to wait out the rain. Alex, ever the gregarious guy, hung in the bar. I stayed in my room, both of us reading books on our Kindles.

At noon we had a delicious meal at the same bar-restaurant. After lunch the rain had stopped, at least for a while. A cat watched us load up our bicycles on a street of Amoreiras-Gare.

We cycled off into the countryside.

We passed more cork trees.

After cork is stripped from the trees it is stacked in piles.

We cycled on.

Alex did admit that his lodging ideas had been a little optimistic. By early afternoon we had already booked online for that evening the only hotel in a very small town called Santa Clara a Velha (“Saint Clara the Old”). The motel-like building was a difficult bike climb uphill to where it overlooked the town. We seemed to be the only guests. We later walked back down for dinner. There were only two bar/restaurants, and one was mostly just an add-on to the only grocery store. The other establishment was a very typical looking Portuguese bar with middle to older aged men hanging out in front, sipping beers, except it had signs for Thai food.

On this Monday night that bar had only one employee, cooking, waitressing, and bar tending all by herself. She disappeared while she prepared our delicious Thai meal.

Our plan for the next day was to cycle half a day to São Teotònio where Alex would end his bike trip by Kristi picking him up. I would continue cycling for several more days. We got an early start and cycled out of town before even having coffee.

Five or ten kilometers down the road we stopped for breakfast at the town of Sabòia. There was lots of activity around about the town’s only bar.

The coffee and roll was delicious. We bicycled out of town.

To reach our rendezvous point with Kristi and her car we had to cycle over a medium sized mountain. Alex wanted to avoid car traffic and we first took an unpaved secondary road; bumpy but peaceful.

We then routed back to the highway. A car or truck passed us only once every few minutes.

At about 1:00 PM we arrived at the designated town São Teotònio. By the time we finished lunch Kristi in the car had almost arrived.

I left Alex and cycled off by myself into the Portuguese landscape.

My plan was to head south and arrive in a couple of days to the touristy Algarve region on Portugal’s southern coast. Bicycling this day on dirt roads did seem to work. The scenery was lovely.

For about an hour I cycled through areas that clearly had experienced a forest fire, maybe a year or two earlier.

I spent the night in the touristy but authentic looking town of Odeceixe. Many visitors seemed to be hikers on the Ruta de Pescadores (Route of the Fishermen,)a multi-day trek along the rocky Atlantic coast.

The riverfront town is a couple of miles from an Atlantic cliffside beach. I biked over to the ocean to look around.

I splurged that night on what seemed the fanciest conventional hotel in town, the Odeceixe Verde. My room including a fancy breakfast was still only US$ 148.00. The proprietor was welcoming and showed me their patio stocked with wine, coffee, and beer, even potato chips. He invited me to partake of “anything I wanted.”

I had a wonderful meal that evening around the corner at Retiro de Adelino. Bacalhau a casa (codfish of the house) had been fried and covered with a tomato red pepper sauce and included salad and fries. I added a half size bottle of local white wine, olives, and bread.

Dessert and coffee, why not?

Walking home I passed other restaurants. Mine had been the best.

Breakfast the next morning at the “fancy” hotel paid attention the proper details. I appreciated the fresh fruit and yogurt.

On my trip to France last year, Lyman and I thought we were being cute by surreptitiously “stealing” bread, ham, and cheese from hotel breakfasts for picnic lunches on the road. Here at Odeceixe Verde, without asking, the proprietor handed each breakfast guest a plastic box and plastic bag, inviting us to take as much carryout as we liked!

I would be dodging rain but I headed out. Maybe I could cycle that day all the way to the southern seacoast city of Lagos.

I first cycled through misty rain in Odeceixe. Hikers were setting out.

My route roughly paralleled the Atlantic coast but stayed a few miles inland. I zig-zagged to stay off the main highway. There was an hour or two of clear weather before an unexpected fifteen minute downpour. Most of Portugal does not have fancy rural bus shelters but luckily I found the perfect spot to duck from the weather, bicycle included! I read my book on the Kindle.

The rain eventually stopped and I cycled away, looking back.

By lunchtime I had arrived at the medium sized town of Aljezur. I sat in a public square and ate my ham and cheese sandwich, born of the breakfast take-out back in Odeceixe. I was still not over the mountains that guard the Algarve south but already I was seeing newer Southern California-like development.

To my immediate south were the Monchique mountains. I would deviate around its highest peaks but still was expecting a climb. I had to decide between cycling on rougher back roads versus a paved highway with substantial car and truck traffic.

I become bored and frustrated learning new apps and software so I stuck with my usual Google Maps even though Google often fails to differentiate between roads that are paved and those that are not. For the thirty-something kilometers over those mountains to Lagos I did not realize how unpopulated this region really is.

The back road I chose was paved! It was great while it lasted.

That same road soon devolved into an unpaved road.

Bicycling was difficult on a rough path scattered with large rocks. My somewhat wide bicycle tires rumbled on but mine is not a mountain bike. The road became steeper. Should I turn around now? There was no one to ask. I pressed on, alone in my thoughts.

I ultimately had to push the bicycle up a steep rocky path, my shirt soaked in sweat even though it was barely seventy degrees Fahrenheit, my sixty-nine year old lungs gasping for breath. How long would it be before I at least reached the top? I confess for a few moments I was actually scared. What particularly bothered me was the uncertainty. I was an hour’s bike ride from civilization, had no guide, and barely knew where I was. No one else knew my location. My phone did have reception, intermittently.

It was a big relief to at least reach what appeared to be the top. At least now I would be going mostly downhill. I saw huge windmills off in the distance.

I could have had a shorter route staying on unpaved roads but wanted to rejoin civilization. I took a hard right turn. My phone indicated I was eight to ten kilometers from the main road.

Yes, this highway had a few trucks, but by now I was coasting mostly downhill, with a strong tailwind, and traffic was not really that intense. The last ten kilometers to Lagos paralleled a freeway, and the “old” two lane road then had almost no traffic at all.

Just before Lagos I re-entered civilization. There was a small town bar on the highway. I stopped for a beer and a chance to regroup. I booked sight unseen the only large hotel in central Lagos. Most other hotels were in suburban areas near the beach,

Lagos is a weird place. It is an at least two thousand year old city with modernist tourist high rises all over, even in its medieval old town.

The Tivioli Hotel was unlike anywhere I had been in a seven days in Portugal. It felt so non-Portuguese!

It had a drive-up entrance just like in America. The bellhop told me not to lean my bicycle against the wall. I felt uncomfortable.,

The lobby was jammed with guests checking in; they seemed British, German, and the first Americans I had seen in a week.

I was flummoxed by the crowds. Nevertheless, Restaurante O Alberto, a piece of real Portugal, was only a few blocks away. From my seat you could see the cook in action. I was later to learn that the whole establishment was run with just three people. There was a woman doing prep work in the back of the kitchen, a older guy doing the actual cooking, and an older woman greeting and serving. Maybe those two were husband and wife.

My main course was something I had been wanting to try, a specialty of both the Alentejo and Algarve regions of Portugal; pork with clams.

After dinner I walked back to the hotel in the dark.

Breakfast was included in my hotel rate and it was a mob scene.

It seemed mostly middle aged British men. Are they all here on golf vacations, package tours?

I packed up to bicycle to my next town. These British guys getting in a van, all in matching golf shirts.

This day I would head east. The coastal Algarve region felt like another planet from the Portugal I had seen in the previous week.

I cycled through miles of suburban development. Someone was giving a surf lesson on the beach.

The official language of the country is Portuguese, not English.

The next major town along the coast is Portimão. I expected a touristy scene in its historic center but a mile out of town I cycled past a restaurant too good to pass up, even though I was not ready for lunch. Like the French, the Portuguese seem ritualized about mealtimes. Restaurants here open at 12:00 PM but do not seem to fill up until 1:00 PM, and then close at 2:00 or 2:30. At this place at 12:05 locals were already eating. Twelve euro meal, fourteen with dessert, including drink (wine) and coffee.

I asked for a seat on the porch but they said all those seats were already taken, even at this early hour. They seated me inside and I chose “pernas de frango no forno” (chicken legs from the oven) with a half liter of house white. It is very Portuguese that they serve both French fries and white rice. Notice the bread and olives.

It was all delicious. I would have gone to bed somewhere afterwards but that was not an option. I resumed cycling along the coast. I passed areas of upscale likely second homes. At least this steep slope was downhill!

I had chosen as my day’s destination the sizable coastal city of Albufeira. Before that, Alporchinhos, a city the map did not indicate as being much of a city, looked quite like Miami Beach.

Within a mile of these high rises, shepherds were tending their flock in a scene centuries old.

Albufeira is an ancient city parked on steep slopes above the sea. Wikipedia says its permanent population of 29,000 expands to 300,000 during certain holiday breaks. Its old town is surrounded by modern high rises.

Albufeira is party central for British people. Who knew? Its center seemed crazier and tackier than New Orlean’s Bourbon Street, if that is possible.

My brother Alex lives much further north in the adjacent Alenjejo region. He has a British friend in his town who snobbily dismissed the entire Algarve region I was now visiting.

“Sun readers go to the Algarve.”

(The Sun is a racy British tabloid.)

I booked a room at a downtown hotel. It thoughtfully had double glazed windows and an air conditioner, to minimize the crowd noise.

Central old Albufeira seems deliberately non-Portuguese. I ate dinner at an Italian restaurant that adjoined my hotel. Italian? The dinner was fine, really, but it was the most expensive meal I had had on the trip, about $50.00 with wine. I took a seat at the bar, a feature most Portuguese restaurants do not have.

About 8:30 PM I walked around old Albufeira. It was a Wednesday night, off season, but even then a largely British crowd was raucous, singing to 70’s American music. This video is only seventeen seconds long.

I skipped the partying and walked back to the hotel. Trying to sleep in my room it was not as difficult as I had feared. The next morning rain was predicted all day, but at 8:30 AM the sun came out temporarily. I dashed out, cycling east, trying to beat the weather. For a very brief stretch there was an actual bike path leaving Albufeira, then I had to cycle on a shoulder.

Ultimately I was able to find a network of back roads.

It was about to rain, hard. I had not cycled very far but at least I was in another town with a different vibe than the party scene of Albufeira. I settled for Boliqueime, a few miles inland from the coast.

A common Portuguese treat for breakfast is their pastel de nata (custard tart.) It and coffee cost me two euro, or US$2.25. It was completely relaxing sitting there, reading my book.

It was pouring rain outside but I was tactically across the street from the town’s only hotel and about lunchtime I was able to check in. One of the town’s two or three restaurants looked promising and I walked down there in the drizzle. At 1:15 PM I had to wait for a table. All types of people seemed enjoying the eight euro lunch. Tables became available when a big road crew finished eating and lined up to pay at the register.

In addition to the regular kitchen there was a guy grilling.

I sat down and chose a lunch entree, roast pork in gravy with half a liter of red wine, plus olives and bread.

Life was good. I finished off lunch with a cafe americano, then walked in the rain back to my hotel and read my book all afternoon. I had been reading Kingmaker by British writer Sonia Purnell, about Pamela Harriman and her experiences in England during WWII. I so enjoyed this that I bought on Kindle another book by the same author; A Woman of no Importance, about a female American spy in the WWII French Resistance.

There was not much nightlife on the narrow Portuguese streets of Boliqueime that rainy evening. Liveliest seemed to be a pub called (in English) Bill’s Bar and Grill. There were several “English” people hanging at the bar when I walked in, until I realized they were speaking German! Most others did indeed seem to be British. The scene was cordial. There must be a community of retired expats here.

Rain was predicted all the next day. I had a flight back to the USA from Lisbon two days hence. Was there public transportation north and west back to Alex’s house? To accommodate a bicycle, the easiest route was an hour long train ride back to Lagos, then a two hour bus from there back to Alex’s.

The next morning the rain had stopped briefly and I cycled a couple of miles to the Boliqueime station. There was no one around but the crowded 11:00 AM train did show up. You have to reserve the bicycle spaces online, but on this commuter-like train along the Algarve coast I rolled the Bike Friday to a spot near the front.

The best part of my two to three hour layover in Lagos was lunch of grilled fish. Americans do not like fish that has not been filleted. Contrarily, the Portuguese seem to deliberately embrace fish with bones intact, maybe to guarantee its authenticity. Like the lunch spot back in Boliqueime, the Lagos place had a full time outdoor grill person.

Here, like around much of the world, the bus station was dirty and depressing. Once on the bus everything was fine.

By bus I rode directly over the mountains to Alex’s seaside town, and I was able to cycle the final kilometer or two to his and Kristi’s house. They took me out to a delicious seaside dinner that evening.

The next morning, the weather had finally cleared and by myself I departed their house at 7:00 AM to bicycle over that mountain up and back to São Luis, reprising the ride I had taken the first day. It was peaceful out here on a Sunday morning.

I arrived at the turnaround town of São Luis.

I sat alone in the back of the only open bar on a Sunday morning, drinking coffee and reading The New York Times on my phone. It was soul-nourishingly relaxing. The local men were out on its porch.

I biked the one hour ride back to Kristi and Alex’s. I generally had the road to myself.

Back at Alex’s house we stared at the view from their third floor window.

Alex had bought online a portable propane-powered pizza oven for his patio. He cooks delicious pizzas in less than two minutes at nine hundred degrees, artfully burning the edges of the crust. He prefaced that with an hor d’oeuvres of local clams in their broth. Delicious.

Right after lunch I hurried over to their bus station and took the three hour bus north to central Lisbon. I had a flight home to America the next morning.