My family visits and we tour the Algarve, Coimbra, Lisbon, and more!

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Two weeks ago, my parents, my brother, and my Grandpa and his wife Loretta came to visit. We covered a lot of ground in Portugal during their week here. Lindsay and I picked everyone up at the airport in a big “Transporter” 9-person Volkswagen Van, so we had plenty of room for the 7 of us plus luggage and lots of car snacks. We were happy everyone made it to Portugal on time despite all of the storms and short flight connections they had in the States.

We took the 2.5 hour drive down to Lagos, in the Algarve, and stayed at the Vila Branca apartments. We found ice cream, walked around town and the beach in Lagos, and had dinner at a nice steak restaurant. The next day (Sunday), we had pastries and coffee for breakfast at Lindsay’s and my favorite colorful beach in the Algarve, Salema, and we did some beachcombing there. We visited the fort and lighthouse in Sagres and then headed back to Lagos with a short stop at the Sagres marina to check out the boats.

We drove back up to Coimbra the next day and made stops along the way in Alvor, for breakfast, a nice craft store, and a pretty beach and Óbidos for a walk around our favorite idyllic Portuguese walled city.

The next day we all headed straight to Porto for Port tasting, hill climbing, elevator riding (a good thing because Porto is so hilly), and a bit of umbrella using. We had a nice hearty lunch and some of us had Francesinha sandwiches, a traditional sandwich in Porto with several different kinds of meat and wrapped with cheese on the outside.

On Wednesday we visited a city that I hadn’t been to before, Viseu, which had some nice traffic-free streets for walking, a cathedral, and the “most beautiful parking garage I’ve ever seen, nicer than my own garage”, roughly quoted from my dad. We headed back to Coimbra to see the historic library at the University and tour of the streets of Coimbra and see all of Lindsay’s and my favorite hangout spots.

Thursday was our last morning in Coimbra, and we all packed up and stuff and headed to Conímbriga to see the Roman ruins. In the afternoon, we made our way down to Lisbon, and along the way, we stopped at the Batalha Monastery (Abbey of the Battle) for a walk around the cathedral and the cloisters. Once we arrived in Lisbon, we dropped off the Transporter and talked our way out of getting overcharged by the taxi drivers on the way to our hotel from the airport (more often than not, Lindsay and I have problems with the taxi drivers at the airport asking for 30 - 50% more than the meter says.)

We stayed at the Residencial Florescente Hotel, which ended up being a pretty decent place to stay once we figured out that Wes’s bed was in fact, not on the ceiling as the man at the front desk exclaimed (they had put it in the wrong room.) In Lisbon, we toured the Castelo de São Jorge for views and castle wall scrambling, the old Sé cathedral, Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, the Tower of Belém, with a yummy snack break for Belém pastries (Pastéis de Belém.)

Other than the fact that 3 out of 5 of our guests had pretty bad colds during the trip (sorry guys!), I think everything went well. All of the logistics went smoothly, the weather was sunny or partly cloudy most of the time, and I think everyone enjoyed trying out all of the Portuguese food, beer, and wines. Thanks again guys for coming all the way out to Portugal to see us!

- Jason

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