Day Trip to Portugal and Huelva Coastline

Ayamonte Plaza

Beach at Isla Cristina called Playa de Santana

I've been wanting to do more travelling this year, day trips mostly, as have Ryan and Angela, so we hatched a plan to get out of the city or do something different on a weekday. Weekdays chosen because we avoid the weekend crowds in the places we decide to go. Thanks to the kind generosity of Pepe and use of his car when he is unavailable. This week Pepe drove us to Isla Cristina, Monte Gordo in Portugal, and Ayamonte. It was "la de da" again, we went to Portugal for lunch!
The day was sunny and warm and we felt like we'd landed in summer = wonderful! and immediate shedding layers of clothing. Beachcombing was a treat with the plethora of shells. Isla Cristina is a fishing town so there were scads of different kinds of shells to look at.


The coastline was set up for bathers with boardwalk stretching kilometres above the beach, looking at the blue Atlantic ocean.

We had intended to go to the food market there but missed it and after spending quite a bit of time on the beach we were all getting peckish. Stopped at Usisa, a fish processing plant for Pepe to pick up some smoked tuna at www.usisa.com



Access from Spain to Portugal or visa versa is a very long bridge built in 1992 for the world's fair. It crosses the river Guadiana and replaces the ferry that still runs but infrequently.

One of the favourite meals in the Algarve of Portugal is piri piri chicken so Ryan looked on the web for a restaurant that served it. The one he chose did not serve meals on the patio so we drove into Monte Gordo and ended up at the Blue Parrot which advertised piri piri but we found out only for dinner, disappointed!!! The meals we had were good, the waiter was amusing and had only been working there for two weeks and eagerly answered all our questions.

This is a true expat community with, from our eavesdropping, people from Great Britain and Germany, possibly Holland. There was a volleyball game happening on the beach and restaurants stretched along the boardwalk mostly offering drinks and, of course, ice cream. We turtled at a cafe for a while in the shade and people watched.





Now it's getting to be late afternoon (not by Spanish standards though) so we headed back to Spain to Ayamonte another fishing port with a large expat community.



We head to the main square of the town and have another coffee. This square doubles as a great skateboarding park or for kids on any type of wheels. It is surrounded by tiles made in the factory that used to be in Triana.















Thank you Ryan for all the pictures! It was a great, warm, sunshine filled beach day!

In the meantime, my building has been under construction to spruce up and fix the interior atrium.




From my floor looking into the atrium, not a great picture, not a great sight.



Next week they will start with the exterior of the building... oh joy. The only good aspect of this project for me is that I am living on the top floor of the building and did not have to live with the scaffolding outside my doors and windows for the two months this has been happening, just with the dust and noise.

Cheers, Bev and Lexi Cat who is closed up in the bedroom while the workers have the door open upstairs.