The Tranquility of Low Season Travel

a restorative hike in Portugal's Algarve

Happy Tuesday Wednesday, friends! (Better late than never, right?)

I had to take a sick day yesterday. I got back from a three-week trip to California, Virginia, and Portugal late Monday night, and almost immediately after walking in my door, I started feeling achey and feverish. Yup, I have the flu! Globetrotting is taking much more of a toll on my body now that I’m in my 30s, and it’s compounded by the fact that post-covid crew shortages have made air travel significantly worse than it was pre-pandemic. (I took seven flights over the last three weeks, and exactly one of them managed to land on time.) So my ingenious plan of coming back from this trip rested and ready to take on the new year is working out brilliantly. :)

Still, Portugal was a bright spot in an otherwise tough holiday season. It’s where Nick and I had planned to honeymoon before covid derailed our wedding, so it felt like an accomplishment to finally make the trip. And I was lucky to get some excellent eating and sightseeing recommendations from Kiki of

Come como Kiki

—thank you so much, Kiki!

I’m going to keep it short today so I can get back to resting and come back next week with a longer essay. But for now, here are some reflections on visiting the Algarve in the low season, plus my favorite photos from the town of Lagos.

Have a wonderful rest of your week,
Sam

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The Algarve is a summer destination, and I felt like an interloper visiting in January. Lisbon had been full of tourists, but the little town of Lagos, which sits on the Atlantic not far from Portugal's southwestern tip, was quiet when Nick and I arrived. Storefronts displayed notes hand written by the proprietors, announcing they’d return later in the month and wishing passersby boas festas. It was as though we were houseguests who had rudely shown up early and whose hosts were unprepared to entertain.

Our journey from the city had been prolonged by a train strike, and we arrived in the late afternoon to a deserted hotel. Few restaurants in town were open, so we ate dinner downstairs in a candlelit room with a small handful of other guests who, like us, had the strange notion to come to a beach colony in winter. The mood was subdued, but I didn’t mind it; we had come to hike along the sea cliffs, not to socialize or to see the town.

The next morning, after an unhurried breakfast, Nick and I walked through narrow, hilly streets to Lagos’ medieval city walls. From there, a broken trail led us over the cliffs and down to enclosed beaches, where the air smelled of salt and rotting seaweed. The sand was abandoned save for a few other people who sat on towels with books or walked their dogs alongside the waves. A crisp wind refreshed us while the sun warmed our skin. 

The trail then led back up to a boardwalk on the grassy clifftops. There was hardly any sound, and in the silence, we talked about everything: our jobs, our passions, the past, the future. We talked about how we would never stop adventuring, and about maybe retiring to a town like this one day. By the time we reached the end of our walk at the Ponte da Piedade, I felt more hopeful than I had in months.

For the rest of the weekend we wandered aimlessly, searching futilely for places to eat and drifting in and out of shops, listlessly fingering fabrics, picking up knick knacks and putting them back down just to have something to do with our hands. For a moment, I felt of a pang of desire for the dynamism of a full tourist town—the sounds of children’s laughter, the sugary smell of cones wafting from gelato shops, the sight of couples holding hands. But I treasure that quiet hike, which swarms of fellow travelers would have made impossible. And anyway, we’ll have plenty of that someday, when we retire to a beach town just like this.

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Elsewhere

• Thieves are targeting Portugal’s famous azulejos—the painted ceramic tiles that cover the facades of so many of its buildings—and stopping them is an uphill battle. [Bloomberg]

• Travel has a way of subverting our expectations. Friend and fellow Substacker Trilety Wade writes about a trip to Mardi Gras that was more wholesome family fun than debauchery. [I won’t keep you]

• This essay about how terrible air travel has become sled into my inbox smack in the middle of my own travel fiasco…at least we’re all in this together, I guess? [Maybe Baby]

• Siwa, a remote oasis of white sands and salt lakes, is on my bucket list of places to visit before I leave Egypt. [Prior]

Photo of the Week: Tallinn, 2019