The Portugal Stories : A Slow Train to Lagos

Three days back I woke up at 3AM. Eight hours and a delayed flight later, we finally boarded a slow train in Faro - at first glance, a grungy grey metal entrapment - as surprisingly clean inside as it was grey and grimy on the outside.  

Yet, I was excited because I love trains and train journeys - rarely do any other means of transport reveal a country like trains. As the train started, I realised that my view of rural Algarve was destined to be through a grey screen of congealed dust, but a little while later, as I considered that window-frame again, I thought this view was picturesque and telling in its own way.

At that moment, I decided to do a little experiment with my photography.

Welcome to my journey then, as seen through the grimy windows of a slow train in Portugal, along the southwestern most coast in Europe: the journey from Faro to Lagos. Who said travel pictures need to be postcard-perfect?

Around this point, I fell into a deep slumber and woke up some time later to the Significant Other gleefully clicking pictures of me ungracefully slumped in my seat, mouth open, still holding the camera in position. Hrrmph. I started chronicling the journey again, only to realise quite a while later that I had switched from portrait to landscape in my half-embarrassed indignation. Oh well.

 

The rural panorama was suddenly encroached upon by a whitewashed monolith of seaside resorts and I stuck my neck out from the ventilator opening to realise we were pulling into Lagos. 

I thought my dusty frame was a better view than the monstrous concrete reality of Lagos. Thankfully though, we were moving on to stay in Sagres, a quiet picturesque village atop a hill at the southwestern-most tip of Europe, overlooking the Atlantic ocean. Of course, that meant another taxi from Lagos. And if you think that all this means that there are more pictures coming from Portugal, oh, you're so right. And if you think that I'm back in London now, oh you're so wrong - I'm in Lisbon as I write this. And this holiday is far from over. Ah.