Who thought it would be this stressful to find a beach?!

So we survived the night in the car! Amazingly we didn't get eaten by any scary spirits...it could have happened though! We decided to head back to the mall to use their washrooms to get freshened up and to get some food. We got there a tad on the early side around 8am and the mall was still closed and didn't open until 10am. So then we decided to go back to the park because they had washrooms there. Those washrooms weren't open either! We took a quick stroll on the beach and then we just set up camp on the side walk and ate some breakfast. We had some fun with the seaguls...tempted them with food and then when they got close scared them away, haha we are so mean.

We got back to the mall for 10 and headed to the food court. Funniest thing happened on the way.

..the mall is where the train station is as well and we drove around to the front of the station. However we did not know if we could actually drive around to the front of the station but did it anyways. We got quite a few funny looks from some of the cabbies standing around so we now think that you can't drive infront of the station. Oh well it was pretty funny.

Lauro finally got his McDonald's and I got a coffee. Sat outside for a bit on the patio and then hit the road! So were driving down the highway...warning for anyone planning to drive in Portugal: there is tolls! A LOT of them! This was just the beginning and we didn't quite realise how the system worked. When you enter onto the highway you take a ticket and then when you exit you pay by how far you went.

One gate was open and we just thought fuck it, we'll drive right though! I still have that ticket that we never paid...were just waiting for the car company to charge Pablo for the fine so we can pay him back lol.

We wanted to stop at a beach to go swimming so after driving for a while we decided to stop at Ovar. Ovar is just a little bit south of Porto and it's right on the water. Well, what an ordeal that was! First we took about a million wrong exits somewhere around Porto and then finally got back onto the correct highway to Ovar. And then when we did find the exit for Ovar there was roadworks so there was a "diversion." I'm pretty sure we took every single wrong exit off the roundabout and at one point Ben was just driving round the roundabout while everyone was yelling at him and it was quite hilarious.

I have never laughed so hard in my life.

Eventually we took the last exit off the roundabout and then pulled over to ask for directions from a nice man walking along. We showed him the map and tried to show him our best where we were trying to get in Lauro's broken Portugese. This man then motioned for us to hold on and then he took off down the street running, RUNNING, to his car. He got in the car and then drove to us and motioned for us to follow him. How nice is that?! He took us all the way to where we need to go and then pulled over and pointed us in the right direction. Honestly one of the nicest things ever! Well...I was on the lookout, he could have taken us somewhere secluded to kill us! HAHA

So now that we were headed in the right direction we just followed the little signs with the person swimming in the water with the beach umbrella to signify beach, thata way! We parked and got changed into our bathing suits and then walked the little way to the beach.

The beach was pretty nice...really big and sandy. Quite windy though! The sand wasn't very fine so it hurt your feet a bit if they were wet and you were walking along it for a long time.

We all ran down to the water to go in but it was pretty freezing cold and the waves were HUGE from the wind. So we scrapped the idea of going in the water and went back to our little tent and towels and started to work on our tan. After a while of baking in the sun I went on a walk with Ben and Lauro along the beach and then onto all the rocks. All during this time Alex and Ruby were sleeping in the sun. Ruby went from brown to black and Alex went from white to red. Ouch...

After a bit we packed up our stuff and got some ice cream to head back to the car. We stopped along at an internet cafe along the way to check out places in the Algarve cause we actually didn't know where we were going next!