Portugal!

Hard to believe but it's our last day in Portugal! Hard to bring ourselves to actually leaving this beautiful country... The language is somewhat similar to Spanish, yet so different! I understand that the Portuguese can understand the Spanish, but the Spanish cannot understand the Portuguese to the same extent. Regardo (thank you) goes a long way!

I arrived at the airport in Porto where I met up with Maja, my friend from TrojanOne. After sleeping overnight in the airport (any way to save a few euros! We didn't arrive until late that night anyways, so it really just made sense!)

Portugal was playing Brazil our first day, so we headed out to the town plaza where we watched the game being blasted from huge screen tvs in the middle of the street. Grabbed a beer from a stand, and joined in with the screaming and vuvuzules - what passion! Porto was filled with hours of wandering the old quarter, peering into every house along the tiny narrow streets. Many of the houses were surprisingly abandoned. We went on a port wine tasting tour (I'm clearly not refined enough yet, not a huge fan!), traveled to Aviero, "Portugal's Venice" among other things.

It is surprisingly inexpensive here. 10 euros for an amazing hostel (6-10 beds per room), 2-5 euros for a filling meal (great seafood!), 1-3 euros for a good bottle of wine, 20 euros for a 4 hour train ride (probably the most expensive part). Actually, we cooked a meal for ourselves the other night, and for only 8 euros we got spaghetti, sauce, tons of veggies, breakfast for the morning, fresh fruit, gourmet nuts AND a bottle of wine! Unbelievable!

Next we traveled 3 hours down to Lisbon by train. What a fabulous city! The nightlife there was something else in a certain district. Tiny bars inside, big enough to fit maybe 8 people to order a drink, and then everyone just stands outside on the streets! We met such friendly Portuguese people. We traveled 15 minutes out of the city to Belem, where we had the best. tarts. ever. It was the original bakery where they had been created, and it still stands today. We saw many castles, one in Lisbon from the 8th century, and others in Sintra, a village about 45 minutes from Lisbon (the transportation system is incredible). It was about 10-15 degrees cooler in Sintra, even though it was so close. Weather was about 30 in Lisbon, not a cloud in the sky, while foggy, and COLD in Sintra. Lisbon has a bridge that looks almost identical SF's Goldon Gate Bridge. Apparently it was build first...

We have met so many great people so far, even making plans to meet up again at a later point when our travel dates/locations look like them might coincide. We have had to book a lot of the hostels in advance, at least to get better ones, which was so different from our SE Asia trip, so it's a little easier to make plans in advance.

From Lisbon we spent a night in Cascais, a beach town not too far from the city (was really way too touristy and overcrowded for a mediocre beach). So we headed straight down to Lagos, in the Algarve, 4 hours by train. This is where we are now. And it was highly recommended, and reasonably so, it's beautiful! Yes, it is mainly filled with Australian, English, German and Canadian tourists among others, but the grottos (cliffs) are out of this world. There are beaches everywhere, some crowded, some empty (probably because they can only be accessed by boat!) The contrast of orange/red rock to the bright blue sea could make you cry. We took a little boat tour today, with a very passionate Portuguese man and his 2 Portuguese water dogs (like Obama's apparently!) We couldn't have gotten a better guide, he pointed out every rock and their formations (elephants, camels, skulls etc.), and even "banana beach" which, with two men on it, let's just say that there was no fruit there...

The food here is some of the best. Have been eating lots of fish. One traditional meal we had was called "Francesihna" - heart attack on a plate: layer of bread, then steak, sausage and hotdog, then another layer of bread, then a fried egg, then smothered in cheese and a spicy tomatoey sauce! Surprisingly good!!

We are biking the cliffs in a neighboring town tomorrow. Then it's off to Seville, Spain by bus in the afternoon! From Seville we are booking it over to Morocco, then coming back to Spain for the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, and then spending more time traveling up the coast of Spain, and into France...

I'll try to post some photos soon!

Pippa xx