Labor Day-Off

Both of us had off for Labor Day, so we thought we’d hit the town.  By town we mean Angra, the largest city on the island. 

For lunch we decided to go to a sandwich shop that we have not been to for a while.  It is called Sandoxa.

 

The sign is totally American fast food, but do not let it fool you, food is made fresh.  The fast food concept here often means the foods are cut up in the morning so they are ready to go.  It doesn’t always mean fast and it never means the food was made in advance and they just hand it to you…unless it’s a sub that you see in the case wrapped and ready to take on the go.  There is a kitchen in the back and there are some foods that may take some time to be prepared.  Otherwise, it is like a regular sandwich shop.

See, the foods are out to make it easy to prepare.  These are for salads.

These are for subs.  They even had some spreads resembling cream cheese.

Ryan had a sub.  The woman working there was so helpful that she suggested he get half with one spread and half with another.  I think he got an olive cream cheese spread and then tuna salad on the other half.

He topped it with some veggies and cheese.

They have great wedge fries here.

I ordered a veggie burger.

I love that it has an egg on it.

After lunch we walked around.  We stopped off in a beautiful church and looked inside because it was open and we rarely ever come by there when it is open.  Here is where things got strange.  A Portuguese woman started talking to us in Portuguese and we told her we don’t speak the language, but she kept trying to tell us something.  She took us to a hole in the ground with a ladder and tried to get us to go down.  It seemed very strange.  Then I heard her say what sounded like catacombs.  I stopped and repeated catacombs and she said yes.  I immediately knew she was indicating the catacombs below the church.  If you are not familiar with these, it is common in Europe to have catacombs which are like mass graves or tombs underground.  I have not the slightest clue how they ended up with catacombs here, but we could tell that there were definitely bones inside, at least that is what it looked like.

Totally strange, but very cool that we discovered this. 

Next we strolled along the street just above the beach.  There were a few people out there, and more than I would have expected.  

next stop was our favorite bakery for some sweets and coffee.

As we continued walking, I found this on a walkway, made from the stones on the side walk.

After some more walking, we stopped by another cafe so Ryan could see the Cornetto Soft.  I had this with my mom and Joe when we were in Spain, and I was telling Ryan about it, so we thought we would try it out.

They place a cup of ice cream in this machine, pull the handle and it smashes on the cup, which pushes out the ice cream to make it like soft serve.

It was very good and refreshing, and just the thing for Labor Day by the beach.

QUESTIONS:  Have you ever been in any catacombs?  What did you do for Labor Day?