Blogs from Portugal, Europe - page 147

Castelos dos Mouros is the remnants of the castle we explored today built by the Moors around the 9th century. It is part of the UNESCO world heritage site of Sintra on a mountaintop near Lisbon. Sintra also hosts Portugal's royal palace and other cultural and historic siites. The first hour of the hike up from the train stop at Sintra is steep narrow cobblestone switchbacks through the upper part of the town with lovely rooves, turrets and tiled walls - Women with spiky pumps navigating the steep cobblestones was simply bizzarre. Then it becomes a series of steep paths up to the Castle ruins. Simply unimagineably doing this in battle gear or carrying anything wiithout horses... Kim and the kids walked high above the ruins and stratospheres above Lisbon on the remaining ramparts. I battled ... read more

Marika picked the Lisbon Aquarium and the surrounding Parques de Nacoes as her activity of choice for us to do today. Lisbon hosted the World Exposition in '98 and the hub of the Exposition was the Parques de Nacoes. At the time it was the most countries ever to participate in a World Fair - Will saw the flags of the visitng countries flying and pointed out flags from the tiny Oceana countries of Kiribati, Tuvalu and Palau. Lots of really interesting architecture although they fit together like pieces scavenged from different puzzles. Marika and Will dodged exploding fountain volcanoes, got wet getting as close as they dared to a wall of water, crawled through loooooong claustrophobic tunnels and strolled with us through garden paths sporting flora from various regions of the world. The Aquarium was ... read more

If all goes well, we should be crossing into Espanha (Spain) tomorrow. So, before I tell you about today, I thought I’d share my overall impressions of Portugal with you. The People: It always amazes that people everywhere share so many commonalities. We all laugh when we are amused and frown when we are sad. We all carry our babies in a similar manner and admonish our young children to watch as they cross the street. Teens tend to travel in packs and old people sit on benches bemoaning the state of the world. Having said that though, I will note that the Portuguese are a bit aloof; few wave spontaneously, but they try to be helpful when asked for directions. Most of the young people speak English passably well; many of the old do ... read more

Saturday June 4th, 2011 Atlantic Ocean off the NW point of the Iberian Peninsula Latitude 43 degrees 42 minutes’ north- Longitude 9 degrees 21 minutes’ west We just finished making two port calls in Portugal and I would have to say we were very pleasantly surprised by what we saw in Portimao and Lisbon. We did not really expect Portugal to have such wonderful beaches with nice clean sand and lots of room to walk and enjoy the ocean. Portimao is truly a resort town with plenty of Hotels and Condos for the many seasonal visitors. This is considered the shoulder season with the bulk of the tourists coming between 15 June and September 15th each year. For our visit it was not overly crowded and quite easy to get around. We took a tour all ... read more

Friday, June 3 Tomar to Gaviao about 60 kilometers Well, the first 6 kilometers today were flat And I think there were a few more flat kilometers somewhere around the middle of the day, but the rest was more of the typical Portuguese hills -- somewhere between a half kilometer to over a kilometer in length and about a 5-8% grade. Just enough to get our heart rates up in this heat and just enough to tire our elderly legs, but not so much that we feel we can’t do it. Fortunately, the roads were only lightly trafficked as they meandered through teeny, tiny towns. We crossed the Tagus River near Abrantes after cycling through more eucalyptus forests, which smell quite nice though I usually don’t care for that odor. Stopped in a small town and ... read more