Day 17 (Friday, October 15, 2021)
Costs of the Day are in the Table below:
Woke up at 7:30 and ran to the Calisthenics Park for a quick morning workout.
Here is what I did: Ran 1.29 Miles (0.6Miles there and back), 3 sets of 10 pullups, 100 pushups (40/20/20/20), hanging leg raises 2 sets of 8 and 5 on each side, 1 minute Planks – Left/Right/Regular – with straight arms and dips for last 15 seconds, 40 inverted rows, hanging obliques – 15 second hold.
Once back at the apartment, I wrote for a while and had coffee and then Bi made a delicious breakfast of toast, avocado, tomato and yogurt with granola and raspberries!
After breakfast, an Irish gentleman dropped off 2 used mountain bikes that we purchased from him for 90 EUR total. The bikes were in decent condition but had some rust and could probably use a tune up. He also bought us a coffee since we starting chatting a bit about the area and potentially buying or renting his car from him.
Here are the bikes:
Later in the morning, we went on a Historic Walking Tour of Lagos (Free). The tour was fairly interesting and explained the timeline of the various occupants of the Lagos area starting with the Conis in 700 BC, the Romans in 194 BC, Visigoths in 476 AD, Moors in 712 AD, the Portuguese in 1143 AD, the Slave Trade in the 1600’s, 1755 Earthquake, 1833 Civil War, and the Abolition of Slavery in 1867. He spoke in detail about the changes along the river walk/ harbor area.
Then we went to the Slave Market or Mercado de Escravos – Núcleo Museológico Rota da Escravaturawhich we are told was not actually where the Slaves were traded but it does house the museum about the slave trade in which Lagos was a central hub between 1443 and 1512 AD. The first auction of 235 individuals occurred on August 8, 1443 and was attended by Prince Henry and described by his chronicler who was notably affected by the scene. The slaves were brought to Portugal via shipping routes that connected Lagos to ports on the West Coast of Africa. The Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary was a society that was formed in 1555. It was open to all social classes and black men, slaves, as well as freemen. The Brotherhood helped support black men and fight slavery and it was based in the Church of Sao Sebastiao. Slavery was finally abolished in Portugal in 1869.
The museum is Free for residents which we are now so we did not have to pay any fee to enter. The museum was very professional and informative.
Note: The Free Walking Tour (which was not at all related to the museum) was interesting but we felt it was misrepresented as Free of Charge. We asked to end it early as we wanted to go to the museum. The guide entered the museum with us but we said we were fine to just read the information ourselves so we gave him a donation of 30 EUR (15 EUR per couple) thinking that was a nice donation (Average Salary in Portugal is 860 EUR/Month which is about 5.38 EUR/Hour). We thought that he would be happy to cut the free tour short and to accept the donation. However, the guide said he expected 15 EUR per person and pushed very hard for this. This would have been 60 EUR total for about 1 hour tour. We apologized and said the tour was presented as free and the 30 EUR donation was what we were prepared to offer and that we were sorry if he expected more. We said he should have made this clear at the beginning instead of saying the tour was free. Tip: I would suggest that any others taking a “free” tour should make very clear what they are willing to offer to pay. There is a technique that many salesmen and fundraisers use called “reciprocity” where they give someone a gift or something for free in order to influence the other person into giving them something they want. They are using the societal norm of reciprocation to extract something from the target. This technique was written about by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence: Science and Practice.
After the museum, we came back to the apartment and relaxed for a while. In the evening we headed to the Ponta de Piedade for some sunset photos.
