This was the town where I wound up shouting at some old British man to just leave me alone!

* If you’re landing here for the first time, this is the 7th of several posts describing my first visit to Portugal to decide whether I’d want to move here.
If you want to read this section in order, start here: Chegada a Lisboa para explorar
And here’s the beginning of the whole story: Onde esta história começou

I’m very glad that I spent these 8 weeks traveling by train around Portugal, because it prepared me for life here. It turned out that rail workers were on strike on every other one of my travel days – including this journey. By this point, it was just normal.

Comboios de Portugal (CP) generally runs a certain minimal level of service. So I had to plan ahead better than I would otherwise need to, and the trains were maybe a little more crowded than usual, but I could get to where I needed to go.

I feel like being able to just roll with disruptions like this is an absolutely essential part of living here. The immigration process is messy, and has been since I started paying attention. And that has driven some people who moved here to decide to move elsewhere. But I’m sure I’ll come back around to that when I get to that point of my story…

The trouble with traveling by train was that the station is right near the central touristy part of town in these smaller towns. I don’t know whether that was by design – if they decided to put the station as close as possible to the popular destination – or if that area became touristy because of people looking for lodging and restaurants near the train station.

Either way, this was another sensory overload, with a side of too many encounters with super-entitled vacationers.

We rolled into town a little later than I hoped, because it was either that or way too early. The trains I had hoped to take were canceled by the strike. But I arrived in time to find my airbnb, get all checked in, and then make it down to the beach. There was a super moon that night. My basic iphone camera isn’t all that great for such photos, but it was cool to see in person.

But, then I walked back toward where I was staying, and stopped at one of the restaurants along the way for dinner. Of course it was in the touristy area. And of course I had Mocha along with me.

As I was sitting at a dining table in front of a restaurant, OBVIOUSLY there for dinner, some horrible person thought it would be cool to let her dog come get in Mocha’s space.

Mo was laying calmly right next to me, and this awful, entitled, inconsiderate woman thought it would be cool to interrupt my dinner for her dog’s entertainment.

And that was really the vibe in Lagos.

When I got out of the city center, it wasn’t so bad. But there were a lot of people on vacation who seemed to act like everyone else is just an NPC there to entertain them.

The beaches were absolutely gorgeous, which is of course a big part of what attracts crowds.

I arrived on 6 Apr, which is still the off-season, so they weren’t completely packed… Tho they weren’t entirely empty, either.

And it was pretty cool to walk around the old city walls. There’s also a castle in the city center that I walked through but didn’t take photos of.

The restaurants in the city center were fine, but I didn’t see anything to write home about. But I did find a couple of spots outside the city walls where the food was worth taking photos of!

The best day I had in Lagos was one when I didn’t have any meetings or anything (I was actually working remotely, not just on vacation!), and was able to just take off for a walk way south of the city. Looking at a map now, I don’t remember how far I made it. But the views were absolutely gorgeous.

We kept going after the boardwalk ended, blissfully walking along a trail through the scrub brush, mostly letting Mocha have fun running off leash because nobody was around.

And then, near the access point where I was planning to leave that area anyway to start heading back, I saw this sign:

Pine processionary caterpillars develop urticating hairs that cause allergies on the skin, in the eyes and in the respiratory tract of human beings, and can cause the same symptoms in animals.

The greatest risk of allergies occurs between January and April, when the caterpillars come down from the trees until they bury themselves in the ground.

😬

Thankfully, we got lucky! Because of that, I’m kind of glad I didn’t know about these until the very end of this adventure – I might not have had as much fun if I had known the risk!

There were some good parts of this stay, but it very much did not feel like the sort of place where I could stand to live.

I’m incredibly glad that I was able to bring Mocha with me on this trip. She does actually serve as a service dog – all that training wasn’t just so that I bring her in the cabin on the plane.

But she’s gorgeous, and it’s absolutely fucking exhausting to have that many random strangers coming up every day wanting to pet her.

At this point, it’s probably relevant that I’m autistic. I was formally diagnosed in my early 40s. I can mask well enough to have gotten by undetected until then, but I have a limited capacity for interactions with random strangers.

On my last morning in town, I finally reached my breaking point. I had checked out of the airbnb, walked down most of the way to the train station, and had a little time to kill.

So I stopped to order something at one of the restaurants near the train station.

I was completely over being in this town, and just wanted to be left alone until I could get out of there.

But of course, some old British man decided he wanted to pet my dog.

And I tried to politely tell him no, she is a service dog and is working right now.

Did he respect that? Nope! In hind sight, he was old, maybe he genuinely didn’t hear me, and I needed to raise my voice. Maybe he just didn’t take me seriously, and I needed to make a scene.

Either way, I wound up shouting at him loudly enough to make a scene to just leave us alone!

Like, the waiter came over afterwards to make sure I was ok because it was a scene.

But my gods, how many times am I supposed to put up with random strangers bothering us every gods damned day?

I didn’t get this dog because I want random strangers approaching me all the time. I got this dog because I wanted a dog who doesn’t shed all over my house. My last dog was a collie / german shepherd mix who created dust puppies all over the house if I didn’t vacuum at least once a week. So I got a standard poodle because she’s smart and doesn’t shed.

But so many random strangers don’t give a fuck about me and think they’re entitled to interact with my dog.

Get your own damned dog!

Grumble grouch grumble!

I don’t hate every interaction with someone who wants to pet my dog. Some people are actually respectful, particularly in regular neighborhoods, not tourist traps.

But the number of those interactions in Lagos was just completely fucking overwhelming, and I was so fucking glad to get out of there.