We arrived in Portugal yesterday afternoon, in the southern Algarve city of Faro, on the Atlantic Ocean. We have two glorious, port-drenched weeks in Portugal, so we shall now commence with the 20th wedding anniversary celebrations!!

Faro is about as far south as you can go in mainland Portugal before you start bumping into the Atlantic, and then Africa . Our plan is to head north over the next ten days, then fly southwest to Portugal's island of Madeira. So for our first night here, we picked up our rental car, and drove an hour west to the beach town of Lagos. Normally, this town would be swamped with beachgoers and partyers, but seeing as it's February, the town was quiet. We even got a free parking space in Old Town. What we DIDN'T expect was our guesthouse to be closed. At 6pm. We weren't entirely sure if they were out of business completely, as the lights were off, the doors were locked, and the number to phone on the door had neither a human on the other end nor voicemail. A very nice waiter at a next-door cafe whispered the door lock code to me, so we sneaked upstairs and neary scared the shit out of a handyman, who then called the owner to give us our room keys. (sure, THAT guy had the right number) The guesthouse was interesting- a former bank, right in the center of Old Town, with a gorgeous rooftop terrace and a swingin' 60s vibe . However, though it bills itself as bed and breakfast, it appears to only get 50% of that idea correct, as we were told there's no food. So as we say in the hospitality industry, someone's not getting a nice review on TripAdvisor. Grrr.

We had planned to stroll Lagos before sunset, but the drama just to get to our room took so long that it was already dark. But what a moonrise- huge and full over the Atlantic Ocean, on a warm evening (I have forgotten what it is like to be warm outdoors). But while we expected this town to be quiet in the offseason, we didn't expect it to be "28 Days Later" quiet.. We had to hunt for a restaurant that was open, and not some crappy tourist-bus nightmare. We finally found O Joa, a tiny place run for thirty years by a quadrilingual Portuguese man who spoke in English with us about Boeing, another table about cheese (in French), and bitched at his wife in the kitchen in Portuguese (he also speaks Spanish). I was excited to try to the fish, as the oceanside Algarve region is known for seafood . We both ordered the seafood stew, and while it was good, it wasn't great- the Portuguese apparently mean "bowl with fish thrown in it without much soup" when they say "stew." But what we did love was the half-liter of local wine for just three euro. Oh my goodness Portuguese wine is delicious. And we sampled our first local ports- I did not know they came in red and white. White is amazing and my new fave. And given that I was the kind of kid who liked to play at tea parties, I dig the teeny cute glassware port is served in. So double favorite!

This morning we departed Lagos, and drove three hours north to Evora, a 15-century town in the center of Portugal. People come here for mainly one reason: Evora has the best-preserved Roman and monolithic ruins in Portugal, and one of the best-preserved Old Towns. It's a cute town too- windy cobblestone streets and many gorgeous churches tucked into alleys...but what really surprised me was how familiar it all felt. I realized it looks exactly like the Old Towns in Ecuador...which makes sense, since the Portuguese built those Ecuadorian towns to feel like home. I must say they succeeded.

The weirdness of Evora is this: You come around a windy corner, with typical Portuguese architecture, and bang, there are suddenly twelve Roman columns looming in the middle of the street. These 1,800-year-old columns are almost perfectly preserved because the Portuguese built a structure around them in the Middle Ages and used it as a slaughterhouse. Weird, but score one for historical preservation, I suppose. But it's bizarre, and if you're like some of us, and still working off a bit too much port at lunch, a sobering shock as well.

(Oh yeah- there are monoliths outside town, too. We're from London. We've seen Stonehenge. We didn't bother moseying over to see their little rocks. :))

We had hoped for more sunshine, but it poured rain today, and frankly I think we've wrung all the fun from Evora...so tomorrow we head to Portugal's capital, Lisbon!