Into the Algarve

Last night at a swell pizzeria on the waterfront, next to the USS Bataan (from which bean-shaved young men, shirttails out, disembarked for a night in Lisbon), Eva, the waitress, persuaded me to try the mousse for dessert, expertly taking advantage of my new-found habit of taking chocolate with my red wine. “Chocolate mousse,” she said. “Yes,” I said.

Today I’m heading out of town with Eva, the bus line, not the waitress. That’s me in seat 6. The driver, on this fancy bus with a cabin crew of 1, sits somewhere out of sight down in front. Once we get down to the coast in the A2, Eva will take me across the fabled Algarve, vacation getaway for much of western Europe. She’s bound for Sevilla, flamenco territory, as I am, after a four-day stop in the seaside town of Tavira, just this side of the Spanish border.

This morning I read that flamenco guitar master Paco de Lucia died of a heart attack while on vacation in Playa del Carmen, down the beach from my Mexican haunts of last month.

Eva’s running a movie and serving cokes and sandwiches and playing Portuguese pop. Some of the sunscreens are down and the blinds pulled.

Eva’s heading south to the sun. I’m following Eva.