Ribeira da Vaga

Kids were up before 8:00am again - what is up with this?? We dragged ourselves out of bed and headed down the hill for breakfast. It was surprisingly good for such a small place! The hotel has a really nice kids' playroom near the breakfast room so the children played there for a bit while we finished eating in peace. It was sunny out so we walked back up to the playground for a bit. Hannah had fun jumping as far as she could off the swing! After that we packed up a snack and our bathing suits and headed in the car for beach day at Bordeira Beach, about 15 minutes away. We got to the parking lot and walked through to find a huge natural lagoon like thing that we needed to cross to get over to the beach. The kids were nervous to cross it so Rin and Kyle put them on their shoulders and we all waded across. It was super windy out, but the location completely made up for it. The sand was perfect and we huddled behind a dune and the kids played in the calm river/lagoon thing. Of course they didn't mind at all that it was so windy. The actual ocean was about a 400 meter walk away and was quite rough so we were glad for the lagoon/river! The beach, though, was phenomenal and massive! Just a huge expanse of gorgeous, uncrowded beach surrounded by cliffs, reminding me a bit of the Northern California coastline. The kids played for a good long while - running up and down the dunes and building sandcastles. When we lay down behind the dunes it was "almost" warm enough to sunbathe :) After a few hours we waded back to the car (the kids did it themselves this time!) and drove back along the cliffs to view the unreal coastline. This part of the Algarve is on a national park so there is no building on it and most of the beaches you have to hike down to. One day we need to come back and explore it all. On the way back up to the hotel we stopped in Carrapateria to pick up groceries for the night. It was 3:00 in the afternoon but the store still wasn't open - ha! We stopped by a cafe with a ton of bicyclists in spandex for an ice cream before Rin and I walked over to the shop to scrounge up what we could for dinner - which wasn't much to be honest. The kids took a five minute dip in the pool before declaring it "too cold" and went back up to the room for a little rest time. I took a mountain bike out and went on a short ride of the property. I wish I could have gone longer! I came back and started dinner - Marcela Hazan tomato sauce and roasted zucchini and Kyle made chicken. We fed the kids even though the played the whole "we are starving" and then ate nothing game. We had a hard time putting them to bed and they ended up coming back out to play a game of cards before finally going to bed. The grownups ate a very civilized dinner and then played some cards (hearts - Kyle won and Rin was not pleased) before going to bed!Read more