We were a bit slow to get going this morning. After showers, breakfast, lunch and shopping we didn't set out on the bikes till 2.30pm.
There was quite an amusing little incident in the supermarket this morning. The English woman in front of us was trying to use up all her Euro coinage, but handed over a foreign coin which the cashier rejected. After studying the coin (which I could tell was a £2 coin from a distance of about 2 metres), she announced she didn't know what it was or how it had got in her purse.
The cashier then politely turned it over, pointed at the Queen and said "English - look see, Elizabeth!". Needless to say, the customer made a fairly sharp and embarrassed exit.
We went the only way we knew to Taviras, which was along the main roads. After about 5 minutes, I was wishing we had hired a motorbike instead and Claire looked like she wanted to kill me. It was absolutely boiling and we were both sweating buckets.
The route was not very direct and involved too many hills for our liking, but after what seemed like hours (but was probably about 30 minutes), we arrived in the town centre of Tavira, abandoned the bikes, and collapsed on a bench in the shade and downed our bottles of water.
We had a wander round the town and came across a Camera Obscura in an old water tower. This is a thing that's been around since the dawn of time (well, about 500 years at least), and it projects an image of the outside of the room onto a surface inside. From what I can gather, they are usually built in buildings in high up places by strange old men who like to use them to spy on people. Our strange old man was an English chap who'd built the camera 8 years ago and had been giving the same 15 minute guided tour of it ever since. Despite (or maybe because of) his strangeness, it was actually quite interesting.
We then spent quite some time trying to find somewhere to eat. And standing on the bridge and waving at the strange man in case he was spying on us at that moment in time.
Even though Tavira is much bigger than Cabanas, we couldn't seem to find anywhere to eat that sold anything other than curry or toasted sandwiches. It was a bit early, but even so... After consulting the guide book we we chose somewhere that sounded great - it was a converted girls school on the river bank adjoining an Irish pub. I'm not quite sure the restaurant deserved to feature in the guidebook, but it was OK, and Claire said her chips were surprisingly nice considering they were served mixed in with her sauce in a dish.
There was an elderly couple on the table next to us who were some of the most grumpy people I've seen in a long time. I'm not sure if it was him who was grumpy and mean to her, or the other way round, but the only time I saw either of them smile was when the waiter brought the wine out. They were arrogant enough to order everything very rapidly in English, without the customary pointing at the menu that we always use as a back up. And then they had the audacity to sit there bitching about just about everything. I was secretly quite pleased when their starter didn't turn up, which I firmly believe was a result of arrogant ordering.
By the time we'd finished eating, we were both getting bit agitated as it was nearly dark and we wanted to ride the bikes back via a cycle route alongside the salt pans in the nature reserve that the lady in the tourist information centre had told us about. The route also had the added benefit of being a short cut.
More by luck than judgement (as it was too dark to see the map the lady had given us, or for that matter, the road ahead), we found the cycle route and made it back to Cabanas unscathed and much quicker than on the way. There were a couple of scary moments when there were unexpected corners, dogs, birds and cobwebs, and I honestly think Claire thought we were going to have to sleep rough, but on the whole it was a much more pleasant journey and we're looking forward to doing it again tomorrow in the daylight.
Tomorrow we're making an early start (no, really, we are!), and hope to be in Taviras before it gets too hot. Then we'd like to go on a boat trip and try out one of the numerous restaurants we spotted on our ride out of town this evening. And hopefully ride back before the sun goes down.
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Location:Cabanas and Tavira
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