Things start to click

On our second morning in Lagos, over a leisurely breakfast at the hotel and still riding the high of the prior day’s success at the Repsol station, we revisited the topic of what it would be like to live in Portugal. This time neither of us had an immediate conceptual freakout that tabled the conversation. We each rattled off the things that we thought were important to get more data on. My list included mostly practical food/water/shelter things like confirming that we could find a serviceable grocery store to supplement the local fresh markets and that we could find a place to live that was both walkable and to city center and dog-friendly. Jill’s list was more thoughtful than mine, with her top priorities being ensuring that we could find “our people” and thinking about how we would spend our days after the newness wears off. Jill and I tend to approach most major decisions from opposite directions. The practical value of that dynamic is that between the two of us we tend to uncover any showstoppers pretty early in the deliberation process. And, where grand adventures are concerned, the longer we go without finding showstoppers the more we are biased toward embarking on said adventure.

We wrapped up breakfast and started the activities of the day with a sense of curiosity to see what we could learn about the move-related questions we’d surfaced. First up was a walk along the coastline to the lighthouse west of Lagos (Farol da Ponta da Piedade Lagos). It was a blustery day with showers so we set off with sweatshirts and rain jackets and good attitudes. It’s hard to overstate how beautiful Portugal’s rugged coastline is.

One of our favorite things that we discovered on our first trip to Portugal is that at every significant point of interest along the coast there is some sort of family-run canteen or snack bar where you can sit down and enjoy the view. Some of our favorite moments of the trip occurred at these little cafes. We enjoyed a cappuccino and a hot pastry at the lighthouse canteen before we started the trek back to Lagos.

We took a more inland route back to town just to see more sights and we ended up entering Lagos from a gate in the Roman wall surrounding the old city. At this point it was lunchtime so we kept an eye out for likely dining establishments. On a whim we popped into Belo Cantinho (literally “Nice Corner”) a cute little bakery and sandwich shop.

We were a little late for lunch so there were only a couple of other tables occupied at Belo Canthinho. There was one couple paying out at an intimidating-looking automated cashier machine as we ordered the daily special and two sparkling waters at the counter.

Process note: I’m not sure if the implementation of automated payment kiosks was Covid prompted because we don’t have a pre-Covid frame of reference, but many of the cafes that we’ve been to in Portugal have self service payment kiosks. But it’s not fully self-service. There’s a business-facing interface and an interface for the customer. When you are ready to pay you get the attention of the person who was taking care of you and they meet you at the payment kiosk and they select your table from their point-of-sale system, which presents the amount owed on the customer interface. The customer then puts in bills and coins to settle the bill. And typically there’s a little tip bucket on the top where people tend to drop their change from the transaction. This is probably a good place to talk about tipping in Portugal. Tipping is not the norm in Portugal, but what we’ve come to understand is that it’s very common for patrons to round the bill up to the next whole € on small tabs (for example on a €3,20 tab for coffee and a pastry leaving €4 is the norm) and to the next €5 on larger tabs (dinner, etc.). Best I can tell this form of modest tipping is not expected, but is genuinely appreciated when it occurs.

The payment kiosk at Belo Cantinho plays into our story because the couple (obviously tourists) that was paying when we walked in was struggling with what to do. A gentleman from one of the two occupied tables got up and walked over and patiently showed the struggling couple how to use the machine. And the three of them were all smiles and laughs as he returned to his dining companion. Jill and I had seen lots of truly helpful behaviors and attitudes in Portugal up to that point, but it hadn’t sunk in until that moment that whenever you don’t know what to do in Portugal there is usually someone nearby who is happy to show you the ropes in a non-judgmental way.

Having successfully placed our order we sat at one of the tables waiting for our food. It became apparent from overhearing their conversations that both of the other couples were originally from the UK. One thing led to another and soon the six of us were chatting away. It was good to get their perspectives because one couple was in their mid-30s and the other couple was in their 60s. The man from younger couple was working in Portugal for a multi-national company. The older couple had spent half the year in Lagos for the last 30 years. All involved couldn’t say enough good things about living in Portugal and we could easily have been friends with any of them – which played favorably into Jill’s earlier question of “Would we be able to find our people?” once in Portugal (of course we would also like to have Portuguese friends, but finding some English speakers will be necessary until our Portugues is up to scratch). The best bit of information came from the older couple, who said that they LOVED Lagos, but if they were younger and just getting started on their Portugal adventure they would take a hard look at the town of Carvoiero about 20 miles east of Lagos. We filed that away, as we were going to be heading that direction when we left Lagos for our next stop, Tavira.

All of that is to say that in the span of 4 hours since our breakfast discussion about moving to Portugal we’d quickly ticked a couple of VERY important boxes for Jill:

• What would we do with our time? Exploring Portugal on foot was looking pretty promising. There is no shortage of walking trails all over the country and we currently walk at least 5 miles with the dogs everyday in Austin.
• Could we find friends? Our helpful new acquaintances at the cafe made that seem much less daunting

We celebrated our progress later that afternoon with another happy hour at the Three Monkeys pub and a delicious pizza in the main square of Lagos.