A trip to Silves, Portugal and another visitor
05.10.2025
We packed up the crew (Quinn, Coco and I) and we cruised off to Portugal for a little 3-day weekend adventure. We have been hearing about Silves for quite a while now because our friends named their son after the town and we were eager to explore it. We stopped at our favorite roadside Portuguese lunch spot on the way out there. Yes, we have a favorite roadside lunch spot in Portugal. Everyone who lives in Rota and travels to Portugal has their favorites.
We happened to visit during their orange festival and it was fun to see all of the decorations and stroll through the stands in the indoor market set up for the event.
This town has historical sites, a beautiful river walk, gorgeous hill top views and hiking trails, and also many, many delicious restaurants. It makes for a perfect little weekend adventure and the price was right for a winter trip. Our little apartment had a rooftop garden and with the help of some wool sweaters and a little blanket we were able to enjoy the rooftop until after sundown.
The Algarve is known for its cork. It is common to see many trees that have been harvested. It is also common to see storks. We had one particular stork that was looking down at us, and our friend used AI to capture the feeling that the picture doesn’t quite convey.
Coco is really fast for his relatively minuscule size. We got to see him speeding along the hiking trails. He really came out of his shell on this trip.
He was also quite the traveler, he slept the whole way there and back. He cruised along the city streets and he demanded to sit behind me in all of my chairs while we ate dinner. So all in all a successful little trip.
Then when we got back, we had a visit from our friend David! We know him from our time in Italy and he is one of Quinn's cycling buddies. Quinn and him turned right around and they went on a trip back to Portugal to see the Tour de Algarve. I stayed home because it was going to be a mostly bike filled weekend and I have had my fill of bike races for a while. I will let Quinn add some commentary here.
Quinn’s inputs:
I have been to a number of major cycling events, quite a few of them with this same travel partner. He is quite easy to get along with and always happy if he is riding or watching others ride bikes, and this particular weekend we left the bikes behind. The Tour of the Algarve is a smaller, early season race. All of the major pro teams are represented, and there are some big named riders here. That said, it is one of the most low-key races I have seen, and it was really easy to get right up on the team buses, and there wasn’t any competition to get a good position at the start or finish. We caught the start of a time trial stage, which was great, because we watched rider after rider rip around the first couple of corners while descending at high speed. I threw in a pic of one of the follow cars cutting the corner tight. It’s hard to get a sense of the speed they are hitting these corners. I also saw one of my favorites, Wout Van Aert getting warmed up and he pulled up to greet his family right behind me. Bonus: check out that cameraman on the platform of 4 tables zip tied together.
