Conimbriga: The guide book said that the finest Roman ruins in the Iberian Peninsula were to be found at Conimbriga. After having seen a few sites touted as the best or the finest in both Spain and Portugal, we took this statement with a grain of salt. Tarragona in Spain is pretty good, Italica near Seville has a great amphitheatre and a few good mosaic floors, and various places in Portugal boast Roman bits and pieces. But Conimbriga really was terrifi...

Tomar: Tomar is a Knights Templar town. Its crowning glory is its Convento de Cristo...yes another Convento. It is perched high on the hill overlooking the town. Quite complete (though heavily restored) 12th century walls enclose the monastery which was founded in 1160. This was a far more impressive site than the monastery we had visited in Batalha. The building rambles over a huge area within the walls amongst the monastery gardens. Here we could wan...

Peniche to Óbidos to Alcobaça to Batalha: Peniche is on a windy peninsula sticking out into the Atlantic. It had little to recommend it to us though surfers flock here for the good waves and surfing championships are held from time to time. The waves were still rough and quite big from the storms that had passed through earlier in the week. Despite it being a weekday, the car-parks at the beaches were full of surfers changing into or out of wet-suits wh...

To Sintra: Getting to Sintra which is just to the west of Lisbon was harder than it should have been. Our GPS is set to avoid toll roads as we don't have the mandatory device for the automatic toll booths in our van. So it was a long and complicated journey around Lisbon which took hours and hours longer than it should have. Eventually we arrived in Sintra along with, it seems, everyone who owns a car. The place was packed and there was nowhere to park...

Lisbon: Lisbon sits on the Tajo River right near its mouth where it is wide and still quite swiftly flowing. Our campsite was on the coast a little south of the city on the other side of the river. The best way to get to town is a bus then a ferry to the Belém area then a bus or tram or train to the centre. The bus was a little late arriving at our stop and so arrived just as the ferry was pulling out. No worries we thought - we'll get the next one in h...