Day 1 – Saturday – 08/08/2020

After we get the Ferryboat from Setubal to Troia and we travel around the Troia Peninsula, we arrived at our hotel in Luz Beach around 3pm. We chose this place to be our base to get to know the Vicentine Coast in the Algarve – region in yellow below -, as I told in the post complete of the trip.

In this post, we visited the following places:

Our hotel

THE Luz Beach It is between Burgau and Lagos, more or less where the red star is above, and there we stayed at LuzMar Villas (rated 8.8 when I booked). We booked with the right to free cancellation up to a week before the trip – essential in a pandemic, right? – and fortunately we didn't have to cancel.

We did the check-in following all the safety rules (mask, distancing, alcohol) – in short, tense – and then we went to the room to rest and leave our things. I found the room to be quite spacious, without any luxuries and with a very pleasant view from the balcony to the pool, look:

Luz Beach

We then went out by car – you can walk there, but it was too far for Paddy – to explore the village and we were pleasantly surprised by the white houses and tree-lined streets full of flowers. A very picturesque village!

We parked the car in a free parking lot in front of the Church of Our Lady of Light in Lagos and we walked to the beach, because we were dying to go for a swim. I was enchanted by the beach, the boardwalk, the rocks in the background…

Lunch

We spent a few hours enjoying the beach – which, to our surprise, wasn’t freezing cold – and when we started feeling hungry, we looked for restaurants on TripAdvisor and chose this one. Fortress of Light for dinner. To tell the truth, lunch and dinner, since we didn't stop on the road to eat and just snacked the whole day (lol). On the way, we stopped at a really cool viewpoint, check it out:

We entered the restaurant and I thought everything was beautiful: the entrance, the garden, the place where the tables are, the view of the beach, the awnings... Isn't that right?

Since there was still 30 minutes left before dinner started, we just had our drinks, enjoyed the view and mentally decided what we were going to order. We absolutely nailed it with the shrimp starter and the monkfish cataplana, which tasted a bit like crayfish – both were delicious! I recommend it <3

We returned to the hotel very satisfied and rested as much as we were entitled to after that first long day of travel…

Day 2 – Sunday – 08/09/2020

We woke up with our beloved human alarm clock, had a very complete breakfast, and headed out to explore Sagres, Cape St. Vincent and the surrounding beaches. These places are so special that I will tell you about them in the next post, OK? 😉

Burgau and Burgau Beach

After that tour above, we decided to end the day in a village known as the Santorini Portuguese. Have you heard of her? Well, I only found out about her this year, because from this article posted on Facebook and I was on high alert to include it in our itinerary. Burgau It's another Portuguese village with white houses with colorful details and turquoise blue sea, which reminds me of some Greek cities – I still haven't been to Greece, but I've seen thousands of photos, of course.

We got lost in the alleys looking for a parking space and even went all the way to the beach with the car, since there is a huge ramp there for people to park their boats directly from their cars. Finally we found a safe and free place and off we went to enjoy the beach! 🙂

We are right in front of the Beach Bar, hoping to have dinner with a sea view, but when we started getting hungry and went there, the kitchen was already closing. It was a total lack of planning on our part, of course, because now that we're getting into the website you can see that they close at 8pm...lol.

We went looking for restaurants in town for dinner, but they all seemed small, with no open space and were still closed for dinner, so we ended up going back to Praia da Luz. We went to dinner at an Indian restaurant with great reviews, Sangam, which had a very large and empty balcony, perfect for social distancing. We got our food recommendations from the waiter – I can’t remember the names now – and we loved everything. Straight to bed afterwards!

Day 3 – Monday – 08/10/2020

Another day of a super complete breakfast without having to cook/prepare anything or wash the dishes afterwards. That's what joy is, people! I LOVE hotel breakfasts. 🙂

(For those interested in traveling during the pandemic, our hotel required the use of masks and disposable gloves at the hotel. buffet of the coffee and had even organized the tables and the line for buffet for people to stay away.

We continue to the Lagos Zoo, to break up the whole week of beaches, and it was a delightful outing. We all enjoyed it and I told you all the details in this post.

Salema Beach

On the way back from the zoo, we stopped to end the day at a very popular and pretty beach, Salema Beach. We arrived there around 4pm and only found spaces in a parking lot at the top of the beach, which looking at the map now, seems to be in front of the Salema Primary School.

We stopped the car and when we were getting ready to leave, I see a very strong gust of wind which caused our car door to hit the car next to us badly. We left a note for the car owner to call us and left there feeling a bit disappointed. 🙁

On the way back to our hotel, we passed by the parking lot in front of Praia da Salema and saw a super good space, so we quickly changed our minds and parked the car to enjoy the rest of the sun.

The beach is beautiful too, but it was incredibly windy and maybe that's why it was emptier than the others we visited. The fact is that we arrived later than the others too, so I don't know if that's really the reason, but we were able to play in the sand and sunbathe without worrying about social distancing.

We went back to the hotel, got ready to go out for dinner and went looking for a nice restaurant on the Praia da Luz boardwalk, a very popular place at night. We passed by several places that looked great and had good reviews on TripAdvisor, but almost all of them had a waiting list, so we decided to go to the only one that wasn't very popular but had good reviews, Royal Pizza.

The place is quite small and not impressive at all, the service was in English (!), but the pizzas were delicious. It was worth it to end the night!

The next day we set off to explore the region. Amado and Bordeira Beaches, but I told everything in this post so this one doesn't get huge. 😉

This post is part of a 9-day trip through the Algarve and Alentejo. Read about the entire trip in links below:

• 9 days driving along the Costa Vicentina (Algarve and Alentejo)
• Setubal Ferryboat until Troy
• Troia, Comporta and the Carrasqueira Stilt Wharf
• Beaches of Luz, Burgau and Salema (Algarve)
• Sagres, Cape St. Vincent and Martinhal (Algarve)
• A day at Lagos Zoo
• 1 day exploring the beaches of Amado and Bordeira (Algarve)
• 5 days on the Alentejo Coast (Vila Nova de Milfontes, Zambujeira do Mar, etc.)