This trip has been unusual for the difficulties we have faced on it. These haven’t been anything serious, but these trips typically go pretty smoothly. Meredith was sick for about twelve days leading up to our leaving. Happily, she got well right before we left. Unhappily, I caught her bug on Thursday, and we left Saturday.

I’ve been able to hang in there and keep touring. I cough some and get tired, but we’ve still kept the tourism plans running on track. Last night was rough, though. My ears hurt, I had trouble regulating my temperature, and someone outside our window kept recycling buckets of glass bottles on and off through the night. As such, I didn’t sleep well, and that may have caught up with me today, as I felt as bad as I have all vacation. Mer assures me she went through the same thing just before feeling better, so I’m hoping to have improvement in health tomorrow or Thursday.

The other odd occurrence was with our rental car showing low oil levels. There was a rental office only a mile from where we parked, which was great, but it took forever to find it because it turns out the rental office is attached to the back of a car dealership and their sign advertising the rental office was slightly bigger than a standard postcard. The helpful agent told me that for some reason, the make of my car (something I’ve never heard of) slowly burns oil even when it’s working correctly. He topped it off, and away we went in the hope that the car will behave itself until the weekend. The oil pitstop cost us an hour to finish, so that was sadly lost touring time for today.

We headed off for the south, to the town of Tavira, on the eastern portion of the south coast. It took us about three and a half hours to get here, with our arriving at our hotel a little after 1:00. The room wouldn’t be ready until 3:00, so we dropped our luggage and walked along the river to the main square, where the TI was located. Mer wanted to ask the TI agent some questions, but he was behind Covid-era glass, and so with the language barrier combined with the sound issues of an actual barrier, Mer gave up on asking him about things.

We went back toward the hotel to buy tickets for a ferry to go to Tavira Island, a giant 6.5-mile-long sandbar at the mouth of the river. It’s a giant beach, and in the summer is probably swarming with sun seekers. Not so much today. We rode a lightly populated ferry twenty minutes to the island, where we disembarked. We had about an hour and twenty minutes to explore before the last ferry of the day left. We struck off on a path that led away from the main paved path of the small village, and we walked along the river to the beach facing the Atlantic.

The beach was sunny, and the winds were light enough not to be cold in the sun. There were almost no people around, although judging by the number of permanent sun umbrella frames on the beach, we were guessing that this place could be swamped with people. We walked along the ocean for a little over thirty minutes, enjoying the sun and quiet. We then retraced our steps back to the landing, where we had enough time left to walk into the village to the edge of the beach again.

The ferry ride back home was chilly – the sun was going down, and the wind picked up. We got back to town and checked in to the hotel, where I promptly dove under the bed covers for fifteen minutes to get warm again. That worked. I then put on a flannel shirt over my tee shirt, a jacket over my flannel, and a windbreaker over my jacket. That proved enough to fend off the evening cold as we went back out.

Mer took us on a Rick Steves guidebook walk of the town, which was a great way to see the town, but all of the things Rick pointed out were closed. We did see the outside of three churches, castle ruins, and the main shopping street getting decorated for Christmas (although the lights weren’t on yet). We also saw about fifteen cats in the streets. The city center is a great place to be a cat since there is low (and slow) traffic, and multiple people seem to leave food out. A couple of kitties even let us pet them, though most were wary.

After the walk, we crossed the “Roman bridge,” which isn’t really Roman and now isn’t even old, since the original mostly washed away in a flood in the late 1980s. The far side of the river is quieter than the tourist town, and Mer took us to an Irish pub to get supper. That hit the spot and helped revive my lagging spirits somewhat, and then we called it a night in the hopes that we can get a good sleep tonight and I can feel better.

I hope I do – I’m in charge for the rest of the vacation, so I can’t phone this in. We head west along the coast tomorrow.