Tuesday, July 29th - When life gives you wildfires, you find the beach

Today we were supposed to head to Sintra for a tour of the palaces, gardens and town, but unfortunately fires in the area closed the attractions and our tour was cancelled. After a lazy morning, we headed out to Costa da Caparica and another beach. Costa da Caparica is on the other side of the river and after some transportation issues, we took an Uber there. It turns out that there is not much the except for miles and miles of beach! We could not believe the difference in temperature once you got near the water. This was a welcome relief and made the day bearable. We finally treated ourselves to the beach donut we have seen at every beach and it was amazing. We walked along the water and noticed how much smoke was actually in the air. We ubered back to Lisbon and ended up on the Rodeo Drive of Lisbon. We found a yummy Mexican place and then walked home. The fires did make for a nice sunset.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to My Blog

 Welcome to my blog. This is simply a way for me to start recording where I travel and what I do. After creating a photo book for my Greece Trip, I realized how many of the details I forgot and couldn't remember what some of the pictures showed. So for this trip I started to keep a journal. Then I realized that I couldn't connect the pictures to words and figured this was how to do it. I am in no way a professional writer or picture taker, and this is mostly for me, but it will also give those who want to follow my journeys a way to see my travel. Enjoy! disclaimer: it’s been hard to catch up so there has been a lot of just photo dumps.
Read more

July 21st - Guided Tour of Peneda-Gerês National Park

Image
                              Today we woke up early and headed out to meet our tour guide Ines.  Eight of us packed into a old land rover and drone an hour and 45 minutes to  Peneda-Gerês National Park.  It was beautiful!  We started the trip with a short hike down to a lagoon.  Ines was an amazing guide, pointing out frogs and so knowledgeable about the area.  At the bottom of the lagoon we explored and got into the chilly water.  Being early and a bit cloudy, I definitely was hesitant, but got in and enjoyed.        After hiking back up, we drove to the town of Fafiao, which means wolf trap.  Ines Guided us through the city showing us the wolf trap and explaining how they used it to trap and kill the wolves due to over population and the wolves killing the livestock they needed to eat.  Unfortunately they did not think about the repercu...
Read more

July 3rd - Barcelona and Kate's Birthday

Image
We took advantage of our Hop On Hop Off ticket and spent the morning and early afternoon exploring the outer parts of Barcelona. We drove past the big penis, Segunda Família, the Plaça Kennedy and got off at the Reial Monestir de Santa Maria de Pedralbes monastery. It was actually a great little find! We took the self-guided tour and realized it was a cloister first before being taken over by men. There was a cat door and a place called the “cloister of cats.” It turned out to be the washing area.  We also hopped off at the FC Barcelona Stadium which is being rebuilt. It will seat more than the 105,000. It reminded me of the construction of the new Bills stadium but seemed so much smaller. Then we hurried back to the AirBnB to meet Joyce who beat us home. We headed to the beach to have dinner and celebrate Kate’s birthday!
Read more