My summer trip to Portugal wouldn’t be complete without visiting at least one beach. I knew I had wanted to visit Algarve region on the south of Portugal. Of all the beautiful seaside resorts in the region I chose Lagos as my destination mainly because of all the beautiful pictures of cliffs I had seen on internet. I bought the train tickets online at home through this site, I don’t remember the exact price I paid but it wasn’t extremely expensive. The train goes from Entrecampos station in Lisbon to Tunes and there you have to change for the local train to Lagos, the whole journey was up to 4 hours. Since I didn’t find any couchsurfer in Lagos (I remember there weren’t many people on there so it’s possible I didn’t even try to write them :D) I booked White Sun Hostel for 5 days. I liked the hostel and its location in the city centre and not that far away from the train station.

Since I took an afternoon train to Lagos I didn’t do anything significant on my first day there. The following day I took a stroll around the coast and passed along Castelo de Lagos (Lagos Castle) and Fortaleza de Lagos (Lagos Fortress) on my way to beaches. The first one I visited was Praia da Batata (Batata Beach). If you know me well you know I’m not a big fan of beach holidays. Before this trip I had only been to two other beach holidays as a kid. This time I was excited because it was the first time for me to try swimming in the Atlantic Ocean (I mentioned before how oceans fascinate me). The water was extremely cold as expected so I stayed there for few minutes, went back to the shore and after some time again to the water for few more minutes 😀

After that I went to explore nearby beaches as there was one behind every cliff. I didn’t take a swim at all of them, I was just enjoying the views. I ended up at a small hidden nudist beach. There were very few people at the beach probably because it was quite difficult to get there. The path to the beach was steep and not well maintained. After some research I found out it’s called Praia dos Pinheiros and it’s not an official nudist beach but nudity is tolerated there. Swimming naked in the ocean is very freeing and liberating feeling , something I never knew I needed in my life and I would love to try it again in the future.

On my third day in Lagos I was mostly staying at the hostel and exploring the centre of town. I fully enjoyed a day of relaxation, something I’m not very used to on holidays but it’s extremely refreshing and rewarding. The next day I went to 4 km long Meia Praia beach, the longest beach in Lagos. I took a swim well actually not really a swim because waves were too big. I was just walking by and letting my feet to be hit by water when a huge wave hit me and knocked me down on my knees, then another wave came (you know that feeling when you get hit by a wave and you can’t breathe :/) and I was praying to stay alive. I’ve got a huge respect (yes, I’m really scared of them) for waves that’s why I was only up to my knees in the water but I guess it was too much anyway. My knee was bleeding a little bit (good that I always take plasters everywhere with me :)) so I spent the rest of my beach trip on the shore relaxing.

I enjoyed Algarve part of my trip even more than I was expecting. It was nice to spend few days by the beach and properly relax on holidays. I definitely want to come back and explore more of the region in the future.