LAGOS PORTUGAL CITY GUIDE

Lagos, Portugal was the third stop on our babymoon and it was absolutely stunning.  The cliffs and views were reminiscent of Santorini, but the city wasn’t a mountainous.  Our goal for Lagos was to take a few days to chill out on the beach in between so much sightseeing, so we didn’t do a whole lot, but I am going to share the few things we did and liked below:

Where to Eat:  We didn’t get a lot of recommendations for Lagos because a lot of our friends have never been there, so the first night we were flying solo in terms of choosing a restaurant.  We ended up heading into town and settled on a little Italian spot in the main square for pizza, which was pretty good.  The second night however we got an amazing recommendation from my sister for a traditional Portuguese restaurant, which is featured in the video, called Casinha do Petisco and it was literally my favorite meal of the trip!  Seafood is obviously really fresh in Lagos and so a lot of restaurants mainly serve seafood.  We ordered the house prawn specialty in an amazing sauce with rice and the prawn pasta and loved them both – I highly recommend.  The one thing I should mention is they don’t take reservations and always have an insanely long wait, but it was worth it.  Grab an app and drink down the street while you wait!  We also found a little Mexican food spot called Green Room (leave it to me to crave Mexican while in Portugal) and it was prettty good – my husband loved the Sangria there. Some other recs we got while there was NahnahBah for burgers and The Garden.

Where to Stay:  Lodging in Lagos was hard to navigate.  I wanted to be on the beach, but most of the nice resorts are on cliffs overlooking the beach and a 15 minute walk to the beach.  We stayed at the Cascade Wellness Retreat and it was decent, but it would have been much better if we had a room in the actual hotel and not an apartment like I discovered I booked upon arrival (it was a 10 minute walk to the hotel lobby/pool/restaurants/cab station, which was not amazing.)  The views and pools and rooms were really nice though as were the restaurants on the property.  They offer a gym and spa too, which look beautiful.  It is not close to town though so you do have to take a taxi ride in for dinners, etc.  I heard great things about Belmar Resort, but it is also a taxi to town everyday.

What to See:  You have to do a boat tour or something on the water while you are there because the views from the water are stunning and since so many of the beaches are remote and hard to get to, you get to see a lot of what you would never see.  Our guide was fantastic in telling us about the grottos, beaches and more – we chose Bom Dia for the tour.  We also would have done a kayak tour had we stayed longer.  Otherwise, almost every beach we saw was beautiful so you can’t go wrong spending a day (or 5!) lounging by the ocean – and my favorite part is there a lot of restaurants at the beaches to serve you on the sand in your chair!  Porto do Mos Beach was closest to our hotel and we loved it.  Also, Ponte de Piedade is a lookout point and gorgeous!