The trip has come to an end. I know, I know .... we've been a little tardy with some of our daily blog entries. But never fear - we did not get arrested for speeding nor did we end up in a ditch with our rental car. There are a few diary entries that we will be entering when we get home to catch up to today's flight home. Its been a couple of hectic days and we were didn't have the time to get the blog updated. Unfortunately, Courtney got an infection from the blisters on his feet and had [View Full Entry]

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Next stop on our farewell to Europe tour was a nice, relaxing holiday on the Algarve. Being half-Portuguese and having my dad there certainly helped us discover all the local gems. We basically spent the week being fattened up. The food was amazing, especially the sardines! I managed to eat 18 large sardines in one sitting, much to the delight of the owners/chefs. Sy (my dad) was the perfect host: arranging for us to have a great 1-bedroom apartment in the Praia da Rocha then stocking up the fridge with lots of Portuguese cuisine to eat, despite keeping us so busy [View Full Entry]

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Mais umas fotinhas de Faro-Portugal!!! More photos from Faro-Portugal!! Enjoy... [View Full Entry]

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Well, I did have to consume some of the local product. As they same, when in Rome..... Anyway, Porto rocks! Again, the architecture was beautiful and Porto had the extra advantage of being on the river Douro and therefore was even more picturesque than either Lisbon or Sintra. I had a short cruise along the river, called the 5 bridges tour for obvious reasons, and later tasted some good and not so good ports at 3 cellar doors. For some reason they seem to be big fans of chilled white port. Sweet or dry, neither is to my liking. The tawny [View Full Entry]

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All of it!! Sights of Portugal [View Full Entry]

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Well, I loved Sintra . It is a great little town about 28 km from Lisbon. After arriving in Lisbon in the early morning of May 13, I immediately took a train to Sintra and, thanks to the train conductor, I found some great accommodation adjacent to the train station . In the end, I stayed four nights so will happily act as Australia’s ambassador for Sintra having seen all of it! I walked through the hills up to the Moorish Castle and then to a bizarre eclectic castle known as Pena Palace. So many diff [View Full Entry]

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Day 5 Silves via Portimao G: Today we finally got out of bed a little tired and ready for our trip to see Silves and explore more of Portimao. First we walked around the old section of Portimao and let me tell you, it is in rough shape. Not in a Ghetto sort of way but in old, ruins, and damaged sort of way. It is weird to see a very nice house, fixed up and stuck to an abandon house with no roof and chains across the doors. Found out later the reason some of the owners do not fix [View Full Entry]

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G: Today was another georgeous day in Portugal. Man you can not ask for better weather then what we are having, sunny, clear days temperature around 30 degrees and there is a nice cooling wind blowing to keep you fresh…. How is everyone’s weather back home? Anyway, today we took the public transit system to head into Portimao to check the shopping and town. We arrived around 1130ish and took a look around all the car dealerships. They have many different types of vehicles that are neat to look at. Cannot wait till I rent one in a couple of days. [View Full Entry]

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J: Well folks Day 2 proved to me yet again that there is absolutely no reason for me to use Tan Accelerator. Being the ever-so-anxious-for-results person that I am, I just had to get a fast tan and use the accelerator on both me and white-as-a-mozzarella-cheese Guy. Not such a good idea on your first day of tanning. You would think that I would have learned my lesson in Florida, when Nat and I turned the front side of good friend Mark into a Lobster, putting him out of commission for a couple of days…. Oh well… Guy will learn eventually [View Full Entry]

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J: This morning Guy and I woke up leisurely and waited for the other folks to arrive… and waited…and waited and … finally around noonish we got a call that they had finally landed and would shortly be at the apartments. So we packed our bags and checked out. But before leaving I took advantage of the internet café offered at the hotel to check the comments to our blog site. Up to this point, we haven’t been able to access these comments as the free wireless network service provider we were using would bar access to the comment’s site. Sidebar: [View Full Entry]

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