Today we learned something very interesting. None of the roads or streets have names. Not only that, bus stops are not named or easily identified, either. Therefore, as we made our way into Albuferia, we had absolutely no idea where to catch the bus. So we walked in the general direction of the city for about 3 kilometers and, it was getting so warm, we decided to catch a cab. Again, we had to get 2 cabs because no one would take 5 passengers. The remainder of the trip was less 2 kilometers , we were that close - go figure. Our first stop in the old city was the information centre. We loaded up with maps that turned out to be useless because none of the streets have names. We also looked for a wi-fi ... read more

Today started out quite early as we had to finish packing and clean up the villa. Breakfast was an assortment of leftovers. Malcolm, our host, arrived promptly at 9:00 a.m. to take our luggage and some of us (he had a very small car) into Alfeizerao where we caught our bus to go South to Albuferio in the Algarve. Cath, Renita and I walked in one last time. We had time for one last cafe grande at our favourite cafe (right across the street from the bus stop). Our bus arrived exactly at 9:45 and we were on our way. We were shown an example of Portugese patience when an old lady stepped out in front of the bus to cross the street in a small village we passed through. The bus driver braked hard to ... read more

Today turned out to be a hurry up and wait kind of day. It poured during the night so we decided to take a chance on the weather for our trip to Alcobaca. Unbeknownst to us, we had a week day bus schedule and the buses run on greatly reduced schedules on the week end. We hustled into Alfeizereo only to find we had to wait an hour for the bus. The bus only travelled to Nazare where we had to wait another 1 ½ hour for the bus to Alcobaca. By the time we got to Alcobaca we only had an hour to sightsee before we had to head back to Nazare. From Nazare, on the week end, there is no bus going back to Afeizereo so after a couple of hours there, we had ... read more

Today we travelled north east to the coastal beach town of Nazare. Nazare began as a fishing village but, somewhere along the line, it became very popular as a summer resort as it has several miles of clean wide beach. It’s a sleepy little town during the off season but during the summer, people flock to Nazare in droves. The local accommodation can’t house everyone so people set up tents on the beach in neat rows. Nazare get its name, according to legend, from a statue of Virgin Mary brought to the town by a monk from Nazareth in the 4th century. The whole town is awash with tourist and handicraft shops. After poking around some of the shops for awhile we caught the funicular (cable car) that runs up an incredibly steep hill to Sitio, ... read more

I thought that last night would be a quiet evening given the excitement we had with not being able to hook up with our hosts. However, leave it to the Racicot siblings to throw us a curve ball. Sometime after dinner, while it was still quite light, Catht and I decided to walk down to Casaal da Ponte to do some exploring. Unbeknownst to us, the Racicot’s were doing a fine job finishing off the wine in our absence. So Peter & Jo decided to walk back into Alfeizerao to buy some more wine. Remember now, we’re some 2 or 3 kilometers from Alfeizerao and we very quickly learned that night fall comes real quick in this part of the world. They were long gone by the time Cath & I got back but while walking ... read more