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Adeus, Portugal

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

We arrived in Porto in the pouring rain, prepared to spend our last few days in Portugal walking the hills of the city.  Instead, we found refuge from the downpour in one of the port wine lodges across the Douro River. 

The lodges are clustered in the Vila Nova de Gaia area and most offer tours and tasting.  The tours are interesting, but after the second one, we realized that they all tell you the same information.  At least now we know the difference between a tawny and ruby. 

Here’s the famous Pont D. Luis bridge on our final, and less rainy day. Next stop:  Spain (again)

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Time Warp

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

I don’t know what happened to the last week.  It flew by and I can’t believe we’re heading north already. We left the warmth of Albufeira and headed to Evora for two nights. There are historical sights in this area that range from a six thousand year old stone circle to a Roman era temple to the relatively “modern” 15th century Chapel of the Bones. (The last one is a church whose walls are decorated with thousands of bones from the monks who once served there. Creepy.) We took it all in, as well as some excellent dinners of the local cuisine – monkfish and rice, black pork.

From Evora we continued north stopping along the way to see a castle in the middle of a river at Almourol, the huge Convento de Cristo at Tomar, and finally the massive plaza and church at Fatima where the pilgrims flock to commemorate the visions seen there. We arrived in Leiria exhausted, but energized by the fascinating places we’ve visited.

This picture is from Tomar, where the former headquarters of the Knights Templar are located.

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Found: The Sun – Lost: Motivation

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

I don’t have much to report in this post.  Thanks to a generous friend, we are spending the week near Albufeira, a beach town along the south coast of Portugal.  The weather has been sunny and warm, and we’ve been enjoying the ocean views and downtime.  We did take a day off from relaxing to see some of the sights.  Here’s the lighthouse at Cabo de Sao Vicente, the most southwestern point in Europe.

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Moor or Less

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

We’ve been chasing the sun and trying to stay enough ahead of a storm system to find a little warm weather.  I think we finally achieved it when we arrive in Portugal.  We spent three days in the capital, Lisbon wandering the streets and taking a side trip to Sintra.  

Sintra has quite a few museums and historical buildings.  We opted to visit the Moorish Castle, which is more like a huge fort on top of a hill which provides it with amazing views of the surrounding areas.  It was built in the 1000s and it‘s very interesting to imagine it through the periods of the crusades and takeovers.    The other site we visited was the Palacio de Pena, a former summer palace of the ex-royal family.  The architecture combines influences from across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia to create a pretty unusual, but beautiful setting – see the photo below.  Sintra was definitely a highlight for this part of the trip.

 

Next stop:  The Algarve.

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