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Published: June 14th 2011
Cascais ' Le Faro
They have an obsession with the sea and with lighthouses in these parts...Hey Everyone! Portugal is HOT! I am enjoying fantastic amounts of heat in an air conditioned bus for travel, excellent! The trip here was quite a long one, we were up at 5am and arrived at 10pm. Begona and I are making this trip together and learning lots about personality traits and differences. Smiles.
So, the food is excellent here in Portugal. We are staying at a 3*** hotel and great food, all meals served there or a picnic lunch. Sunday was a full day of travelling, yesterday we dia alot starting at 830am and ending at 830 pm. Wow. Quite a bit of walking and seeing the sites of Cascais, Sintra, Estoril and a couple places I am unsure of the names...I have it in my diary that is at the hotel. Cascais was a seaside spot, beautiful town with plenty to check out. Sintra was an older town, full of tourists and plenty of english speakers, nice views of palaces and mansions of the rich. Estoril has a massive Casino, the biggest in Europe or second largest. Anyways, it was neat to check out but no photographs allowed inside. Anyways, we are getting loads of sun and the
Statute of Christ - LIsboa area
This is sort of a smaller replica of the one in Brazil, it overlooks the city by the main bridge. tours are quite good. We had the day off today so enjoying the city we are staying in - setubal, Portugal. We have walked a lot and got lost many times but doing okay, some of the people speak English and otherwise Begona gets to sort of translate the portugese and spanish. The entire tour has been in Spanish so i am catching up on my understanding of the language but unfortunately not all that good at speaking it and I miss a lot of the meanings. LOST IN TRANSLATION makes a lot of sense to me.
So, Portugal has chicken symbols everywhere, it seems the thing that sets the country apart from others. The food is tasty and they offer plenty. There are buns, butter, wine and water set out to start the meals, then you get soup, then the main course and dessert at dinner is fruit, dessert at lunch is usually a cake or whatever (not really into their desserts and so full from the meal)! The main course includes either fries or rice - or both. We had chicken the first night with fries and last night we had a seafood salad and fish sticks
Cascais
This is in the central area of Cascais, quite neat! Big celebration yesterday, Saint Antonio day...I was start of the early show - just kidding, liked the red carpet though! with rice. You never leave the table hungry!
I have done ok with shopping, did some browsing on our tours and then today we had time around the town, finally figured out the best way to get to town, etc. It was a bit tricky and we were lost several times, apparently nobody knows where the tourism office is..yikes! Tomorrow is another full day of travelling around the city of Lisboa, it seems huge so we might take another bus in on our day off (thursday) to visit some more of the sites. Some people speak English but it is rare so I am sticking pretty close to Begona. Let;s see, so a tour tomorrow, a private trip on Thursday, Friday another day tour somewhere here in Portugal and then Saturday we head back by bus trip (maybe 8 - 10 hrs) to Vallodid, Spain where we catch a 3 hour train ride back to Santander where Begona lives. I fly to Geneva, Switzerland on Monday so if I get the chance, will update my blog before that time.
The buildings are awesome, interesting architecture. I wish I had more time to tell you stories but I must
Penguins - this was in Spain
Did not get this picture on my last blog so here it goes!!! run for now. Big hugs, thanks for keeping up with me. Will update whenever possible. I feel quite a disconnect with no internet, alarm clocks, cell phone « a total break! Bye for now.
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MARIA KOCH
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A MUST SEE
THANKS, GREAT PICTURES, FOOD SCIENERY, ART ETC ENJOY LOVE MARIA