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Hi everyone,
It's been a while since our last blog and in the week or so since, we have driven our Wicked van right down the west coast of Portugal. The towns & cities we've visited and the highlights include...
> Santiago de Compostela: our final stop in western Spain, we drove Consuela right into the heart of the city (much to the amusement of almost everyone who saw our colorful van) and visited the amazingly intricate cathedral and managed to fit in a quick gorging session on chocolat con churros.
> Tomar: we drove here especially to see what was once the headquarters of the Order of Christ (the order that was created after the dissolution of the Templar Knights). A very cool castle with a huge rotunda church from the 12th century and 'cells' where the templar knights lived when they attended the castle.
> Porto: we only spent a day in the second largest city in Portugal, but we still managed a very full day seeing all the sights. We were very impressed by the modernity and efficiency of the city, not to mention how widely spoken English was! We ended our day in Porto with a sample of some of the finer ports at the oldest port house in the city. Some delightful vintages were sampled as we testified to the alcoholic strength of fortified wine (where'd we park the car again??).
> Lisbon: one very full day was set aside for the biggest city in Portugal. We started with a ride on the hop on hop off buses which took us to some smelly gardens where Ant pulled his groin walking at about 2kms/hr. Next was the enormous Jeronimo cathedral in Belem right next to the best Portuguese tart bakery in the country! We vacuumed up a couple of tarts each (best we've ever had - perfect custard, bit of cinnamon on top the winning formula) and then headed to the highest point in the city via the tower of Belem to see the castle stronghold that was once a moorish citadel. The castle gave great views of the old town of Lisbon and the golden gate style bridge (creatively named "April 25th bridge" after the day Portugal gained independence) which stretches across the harbor of Lisbon. After a very long day we trudged back to our campsite where we had parked for 2 nights (the only place we didn't free camp) to enjoy our dinner leftovers of home made vegetable tikka masala (don't ask what happened to the chicken... bad things went down when we cut into it... whoa nelly!).
> Sintra: our final day in Portugal saw us drive ourselves into the shady mountain roads of Sintra for an enchanting day visiting two of the more beautiful sights of the hillside town; the Pena Palace, which was a very picturesque romantic style palace occupied by Portuguese royals for a hundred years, and the very cool moorish castle which gave amazing views out over Lisbon and beyond. Dinner time desperation prompted a low point in our cultural experiences; we ate at Portuguese Pizza Hut. We stuffed our faces with plenty of garlic bread, pizza and shame as we were reminded of our childhood family dinner traditions (turns out the Hammonds and the Blackledges both used to eat at Pizza Hut restaurants and smash the self serve ice cream machines!).
Along our way down the coast we stopped at some breathtaking locations for our camp spots, so check out our most recent photo album for pics of some of the sunsets and views we witnessed from our van as we sipped a corona and lime!
One other tidbit to mention is when it took 2 days in Portugal to realize that we hadn't turned our clocks back for the time zone change. Apparently we were tipped off by the fact that it was supposedly 11pm and still light, whoops!
If you've made it to the end of this essay, well done. A bit of catching up was in order, though may have gone a tad overboard!
Catch you all soon!
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