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Published: February 27th 2010
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My brother, Derek, came to vist me over my February break from school and we decided to take a roadtrip around Spain and Portugal.
We flew into Madrid on RyanAir and immediately went to Europcar to rent our car for the next five days. Once getting the car (we got a little Spanish Ibiza) and briefly scanning over the map to see how to get out of the city, we drove off towards Salamanca, which was our first stop for the night.
We got to Salamanca in good time and only stopped once at a rest stop along the highway to get a few snacks. This is where I found the greatest Spanish souvenir ever - it was a bottle of sangria in a bottle shaped like a bull and it had castanets tied to its body. Quite possibly the best 12 Euros I've ever spent!!! When we arrived in Salamanca our plan was to find the hotel, check in, and then wander around the city for a few hours. Unfortunately for us, we weren't very prepared and didn't have a map of the city, so it took us a good two hours to find our hotel! In our defense
though, Google maps did not indicate that the hotel was situated on a pedestrian street and that's where our confusion came from. Once we finally found our hotel, we dropped off our things and went to explore the city. We visited Salamanca's Plaza Mayor and walked up and down the Calle del Torro, which was a pedestrian shopping street. We then headed to a trendy Tapas place for dinner and got drinks at this really cool bar that had once been an old theatre.
The next morning we woke up quite early and began our drive to Porto, Portugal. We had planned that it would take about 3 hours to get there and we wanted to have the afternoon to explore the city. On our way across Spain we stopped in this tiny town called Sancti Spiritus and it was just a little farming town that probably had a population of 100! We saw their main square and the cemetery and on the way out of the town as we were driving on the highway, we passed by what looked like a bull park, so we stopped to take some pictures. The bull park must have had at least
Day 1 - On the way to Salamanca
It's so warm (well...not really) 50 bulls in it and they were eating and sleeping in this beautiful stretch of land. Derek and I were careful when taking our pictures because when you made a sound, the bulls would stop what they were doing and stare at you! Needless to say, we left the keys in the ignition and our doors open when we were taking pictures, just in case!
In order to drive from Salamanca to Porto, you need to go through the mountains that are in central Portugal. We saw some beautiful scenery on our way across the country, but we also ran into some terrible weather (it was blizzarding!) and had a bit of bad luck navigating our way to Porto. We came to this town called Momenta da Beira and the map showed that we were just supposed to pass through the town and continue in the direction of Porto. Well...this town was so confusing and did I mention that the signage in Portugal was little to none, so out of a possible 4 directions that we could take, we came through the town 3 different times and chose the 3 wrong directions, none of which brought us closer to Porto!!!!
And on top of that, one direction that we chose had such bad snow that they had closed the road and our car almost slide off the street! We quickly began losing our patience, but after almost 3 hours, we managed to find a side road that took us to the main highway, where we were able to get back on our route to Porto. The only good thing about our little detour was that we were able to see some beautiful Portuguese countryside.
So, on a trip that was supposed to take 3 hours, we had a 5 hour delay and arrived in Porto around 6pm!!! But, Derek and I made the most of it and explored the city at night and saw some of the beautiful architecture, the tile decoration on the buildings, the Porto Cathedral, stumbled across this gorgeous bookshop called The Lello Bookstore, and drove across the Duoro River. We didn't spend the night in Porto, instead we drove to the next town down the Portuguese coast, Aviero, and spent the night there so that in the morning we would be a bit closer to Lisbon, which was our next destination.
By day 3, our
navigation was much better and our drive to Lisbon was right on schedule. On our way to Lisbon, we decided to stop in Nazaré, which is a small town on the coast of Portugal, to spend an hour on the beach. It started to rain when we reached Nazaré, but we still enjoyed walking along the beach and seeing the beautiful coast of Portugal.
We arrived in Lisbon in the early afternoon and after we checked into the hotel, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening walking around the city. It wasn't a very nice day in Lisbon - it was raining the whole afternoon and we were completely drenched by the end of the day - but we wanted to make the most of our time there and we managed to see quite a bit of the city. We walked over to the Praca do Marques de Pombal, which is a large and important roundabout in Lisbon, and in the middle of it is a statue of the Portugese prime minister, Sebastiao José de Carvalho e Melo. From there, we walked down the Avendia da Liberdade seeing the beautiful garden in the centre of it, and went
to the Praca dos Restaurados, which is a public square dedicated to the restoration of the independence of Portugal in 1640, after 60 years of Spanish domination. In the centre of the square there is the obelisk and it carries the names and dates of battles fought during the Portuguese Restoration War in 1640. We also walked down to Praca de D. Pedro IV and saw the Rossio Fountain. After our sightseeing, we found a small and quiet restaurant on one of the side streets and enjoyed a delicious Portuguese meal (did I mention how incredibly cheap it is to dine in Portugal? A complete meal for two including wine, water, and bread, is not more than 30 Euros!).
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