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Porto Covo is a pretty little town about 2 hours south of Lisbon along the coast. We discovered fairly rapidly apon arriving
that it is TINY and FULL of families with small children or couples madly in love. Not really any friends traveling together
who wanted to hang out with us. The main street leads directly to the cliffs, which are interspersed with little pockets of
damp sandy beaches with suntanning Portuguese families. By the time we arrived, Jon and I were starving so we situated ourselves
in a local restaurant along the main street, Rua Vasco de Gama. I saw a couple eating something that looked like a fishermans
stew topped with french fries (batatas fritas in Portuguese) and brought over the menu to ask what they were eating. Turns
out this dish is called 'bolinhas de pescador' and is the house specialty. After ordering it, what comes out is not at all
what I expected. It was these rather tough balls of some unrecognizable form of meat that I rather hoped was not rocky mountain
oysters in some sort of creamy custard and topped with the aforementioned fries. Although they tasted rather pleasant, I had
this nagging feeling that I was eating something I really didn't want to be eating. If anyone who reads this knows what I
actually ate, please email me and let me know now that I have finished them.
After lunch we found a place to stay right on the main street for only 25 euros a night and proceeded directly to walking
along the beautiful windswept cliffs in search of the beach. Along the way, Jon managed to trip over a rock and stub
his toe rather badly. It was bleeding unsettlingly much, so I walked over to a cafe and bought him some water to wash the
wound. As I was kneeling over and compressing the wound, a lifeguard pulled up to us in his big yellow truck and asked what
was wrong. We said that everything was okay, but instead of driving away like most lifeguards would do, he marched back to
his truck, whipped out the medical kit, and summoned his assistant. In a surgically meticulous manner, he donned gloves and
washed, sterilized, and wrapped up Jon's toe. Then he encased the whole thing in what looked like a condom, which was
actually just the tip of his glove, and pronounced Jon healed. It didn't hurt that he was tremendously good looking.
It appears that most Portuguese people enjoy eating, smoking, and talking. And only that. Even with all the families
there, there was little to do in the form of activities. We ate some great pastries at a popular self-service place called
Marques and had some sangria branca at a bar nearby. After a day of walking around and a night of sitting and eating (and
not smoking since neither of us do), we decided that it was time to go somewhere else and caught the bus the next morning.
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