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Published: October 20th 2010
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Lisbon sunset
Tower of Belem and Jeronimos monastry Lisbon greets us by putting on a thunderstorm with driving rain. Tessa's Portuguese friend Jose is at the airport and its great to meet him. They haven't seen each other for 20 years. He is very generous and helps us with a car and a guide to Portugal and a friend's place to stay. It makes such a difference to have a local friend to help us.
Its exciting following Jose's car with Tessa at the wheel of ours. She's sitting on the wrong side of the car, she's driving on the wrong side of the road and its rush hour in Lisbon in the pouring rain. No worries!
We stop at Belem and are treated to an impressive display of drumming, marvel at the beautiful old Jeronimos Monastry and try scrumptious famous Belem pastries. And as the sun sets we stroll the waterfront past a huge monument to Portugal's golden age. We love Portugal already!
We're staying with Carlota and go out for a traditional Portuguese dinner with three types of fish and nice local wine. We're lucky to have Portuguese friends to order for us as our basic Latin-American Spanish is of little use here. The
Watchout Keith!
The wave before spoken Portuguese language sounds very different. We pour over a map of Portugal with our friends and lots of tips flow for places to visit and special foods to taste.
The next day we walk from Estoril to Cascais along the waterfront path past little beaches and small bars and restaurants. Tourist season is over but its still warm for us. A big swell has been building over the last few days and peaks at 7 metres today. Great for the World Championship surfing which is happening just up the coast.
By the time we turn to walk back the tide is in and we're regularly avoiding the splash and wash of waves on the path. Its quite exciting to experience, and then one gets us good. We run for high ground but there's little protection. Keith takes the brunt of it, dripping wet as we make a last dash in a lull between waves. Luckily the camera narrowly escapes a drowning - the blog will go on. We celebrate our survival at Santini, a famous local icecream shop.
Carlota takes us South of Lisbon to beautiful beaches, lagoons, castles and dramatic landscapes. A particular highlight is
a headland with huge dinosaur footprints spread over massive rock faces. One set of prints even has three distinct toes. We're so blown away we're lost for adjectives. Awesome? We like them lots.
In a quaint wee village we have local specialty tortas, washed down with a little drop of moscatel liquor. To top off the day we follow the coast around to the port town of Setubal and gobble octopus salad and 'choco frito' (fried cuttlefish), with the chef's own home made liquer, 'gratis'. Perfeito!
Since the swell is pumping, we decide to check out the coast North of Lisbon. Oh and of course there is the World Surfing Champs (Portugal leg) being held at Peniche. Along the way we stop at lots of beautiful beaches and check out the waves. Continental Europe's most westerly point is here, Cabo da Roca, and we jostle with the other tourists for photo positions.
Peniche is packed for the surfing competition and although we don't see the big guns on the waves, there's some great free surfing action and plenty of eye candy for all. Keith is super excited about heading South for surf at some slightly quieter beaches!
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