Days 5 and 6 - Travel Day and Day 1 in Benagil

All the broads and a whole lot of luggage were loaded up into the transfer vans and we headed off for our 6+ hour trip to Benagil.  We managed to get the trip done with only a few stops, one of them was for lunch at a traditional Portuguese restaurant.

I am fairly certain the drivers brought us to that restaurant to provide lunch time entertainment to all of the patrons.  Nothing like throwing 9 loud American women into a very crowded restaurant and let them attempt to figure out what to order.  Just chalking this lunch up to an interesting experience.

The final stop before getting to the villa was to the grocery store.  We divided up the list of necessities, also known as wine, Prosecco, aperol, breakfast items, cheese and crackers, much quicker than I thought we would be able to do and were soon back in the vans for the last few minutes of our ride.

We arrived to the Benagil Boutique Guesthouse all safe and sound.  Absolutely beautiful villa.  We arm wrestled for room assignments. Not really, but wouldn't that have been a good story???  We settled in quickly and enjoyed the late afternoon out at the pool.

Several of the girls walked down to pick up a take out dinner of chicken and fries from Chicken George, a little local restaurant.  While at dinner we made another list of critical items that we needed from the store.   You know like more wine and Prosecco.  =)

Our first full day in Benagil was a bit of a lazy morning.  Most of the girls took a walk to Lagoa while Heidi and I headed over to the grocery store to pick up those very important items that we missed the day before.  As luck would have it, there was a wine testing at the store.

Lagoa is a cute little village with beautiful views, including the Benagil cave.

The last part of the day was spent on a boat tour of the Algarve region caves.  What a great way to see the caves and shoreline.  We all really enjoyed the tour, well except for the ride back which almost broke these old broads bodies.  The tour company had a sunset cruise to do after us and were in a hurry to get back.  Unfortunately we repeatedly hit hard between the swells and we all were feeling rather bruised and battered by the time we got back to the dock.

Does anyone else see Manny from Ice Age??

How about the cute baby elephant?

After surviving the boat tour, we were off for dinner.  This is where I determined we had all been together way too much.  All nine of us ordered the same entree, golden bream.  Dinner was good, we listened to some traditional Fado music and then had the best tour van drivers ever, drive us around to find gelato before heading back to the villa to basically pass out.

Cheers to another great day!