Our 11-week trip is ending in Porto, a very different city than we´ve visited before. It is huge: 1.2 million in the Greater Porto area. It is built on loads of small (unless you´re trying to walk up them) hills so that getting geographically oriented is tough. We were warned not to attempt driving in the city, so we left our rental car at the airport and took a taxi in. Our first day we bought a 10 euro ticket on the city tour bus. It was a great investment. They have three different routes and you can get off and [View Full Entry]

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Our trip north over the last several days has seen the topography change, populations grown denser, the weather colder, and the coffee stronger. Portuguese histroy seems to be older as you go north, as well. We thought we had a nodding acquaintence with it´s history in all the time we´ve spent in the south, but we didn´t. Our fist stop was at the walled town of Obidos. The wall is intact, the houses are all painted white, and there are wonderful little shops scattered along the narrow streets. The town was traditionally given by Poruguese kings to their wives! At the [View Full Entry]

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Picking up a car at the aiport in Lisbon, we drove west along what is known as the Estoril Coast. Development along the coast started the same way it did in the Algarve: tiny fishing villages around coves where fishing boats could safely be anchored. Those fishing villages along the Estoril Coast have by now grown to the point that it is just one long town! The neat thing about it is that trains run every fifteen minutes in and out of Lisbon, stopping at every town along the way. The first three nights of our stay in the area was [View Full Entry]

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Forgive my not having blogged for nearly two weeks. My adventures will have to be condensed until I get back on track. I´ll pick up in Madrid, our first stop on our five-day sojourn back into Spain. I was not prepared for Madrid´s charm. It is a beautiful city with a vibrant street life and exceptional culture (what little we were able to see of it). Fortunately, our hotel turned out to be very well situated for reaching what we wanted to see in the three days we were there. We were able to walk everywhere, allowing us to enjoy the [View Full Entry]

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We´re leaving our beloved village in two days. The month has gone by so very quickly. We´ve discovered so much more about this area than we understood last year on our first visit. Our favorite discovery is the beach/cliff walks that paralell the sea. The sea has changed greatly on this visit. We´ve had a series of easterly winds and storms. So, we´ve seen our quiet wave action turn into pounding surf. We now know why the rocks are so eroded--and beatiful. We´ve spent less time visiting sites mentioned in guidebooks and more time at places local people have told us [View Full Entry]

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We´ve just completed our second three-day tour and this one wore us out. The first day the bus traveled for a total of eleven hours before we reached our destination in Granada, Spain. Other than half-hour coffee and restroom breaks, we only had one stop in Mijas in the hills above the Costa del Sol. That is Spain´s sunshine coast, but we arrived in the midst of a fierce rain storm. Mijas was shrouded in mists, leaving little to see. Instead of a two-hour break there, all the tour passengers lobbied for just a one-hour stop. After visiting a few shops, [View Full Entry]

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We´ve just returned from a three-day bus tour that was great fun. The first day we drove to Seville, Spain for a few hours. What we saw of the city was beautiful: the Plaza of Spain, a beautiful building built for a 1929 Exposition; the old Jewish Quarters and St. Mary´s Cathedral. The latter is two-thirds of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that also includes a royal palace. We´ll be going back to Seville for a couple of days at the end of the month, so I can write more about it then. After Seville, the bus took us down to [View Full Entry]

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We made two trips to Loule last week. The town is the largest in the interior of the Algarve (between the sea and the mountains) and is known as a great market town. Our first trip, however, was to go to their Carnaval! They have the largest carnival celebration in Portugal with a parade of 17 floats. The parade was around and around the same four long blocks in town where the street is separated by a wide plaza. All the floats had sound systems that were blaring Brazilian music and there was one Portuguese band that was playing as loudly [View Full Entry]

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We´re finally bestrirring ourselves to get out on the road somewhat. Two of the places we´ve recently visited are Sagres and Monchique. Sagres is where Henry the Navigator set up his famous School of Navigation in the 16th century. He´d gathered the best minds in Europe to study navigation, which started Portugal's ability to explore so much of the world. They believe his school was out on a promitory of land on the southwestern corner of Portugal (and Europe), called Ponta de Sagres. We visited the site last year and found nothing left of the school itself. This year I learned, [View Full Entry]

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My sincerest apologies for not writing sooner. There is something about this place that just mesmerizes us. Whereas in Funchal there was a definite beat to the city and I wanted a routine; here, there is no schedule, routine, or desire to make plans. We are just so happy to BE here. A word about where we are: The Algarve is the southern coast of Portugal, Western Algarve is the least developed area where cliffs dominate the coastline, but you can find lovely, unspoiled beaches; and Luz is the village we´re staying in that has a lovely beach. The landscape is [View Full Entry]

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