Santa Luzia

Thursday 17/01/19

A lovely sunrise out of our back door

We planned on cycling to Tavira today as it is only about 4 km from where we are staying.  We hadn't slept well at all; although the road is quite quiet at night it felt like we woke up every time a car passed.  After an initial panic in the morning when we couldn't find the keys to unlock the bikes from Bokkie's rack we got ourselves together and set off.

Tavira is a centuries-old, charming village with a lovely relaxed feel about it.  The buildings are very decorative, either whitewashed or tiled in the most amazing colours, our photos don't really do it justice.  The remains of the 11th century castle allow access onto the walls with wonderful views over the city and it has a lovely garden inside.

Igreja da Misericórdia

Igreja de Santa Maria do Castelo

Views over the city from the castle walls

We spent much of the day wandering around but came unstuck when we tried to get something to eat.  We tend to be quite careful due to my allergies and also try to find restaurants that cater for non-gluten meals.  We ended up walking out of three cafe's who either were so busy they didn't serve anyone or one that advertised reasonable prices at the door but slipped you a more expensive menu once you were seated so we ended up buying some groceries, cycling back to Bokkie and eating our own food. The Portuguese Lidl didn't seem to carry much of the Sin Gluten range that we found in Spain so we will have to hunt around a bit more for some of the food we want.

We did manage to have some wonderful Portuguese Espresso in the dinkiest cups

Roman bridge over the Gilão river

All the same, Tavira was lovely.