We finished our 2 month travel journey exploring around Lisbon, Portugal staying at a great airbnb in Estoril which is located about 15 km from Lisbon. Our place was a quick 5 minute walk to Poco Beach, one of many swimmable beaches along the promenade extending to Cascais to our west. It was great to be in a nice clean and bright space for 4 consecutive days to conclude our travels before heading to Madrid. We explored Lisbon our first day by taking the train in and stopping at "Timeout Market." Yes, that is the name in English, likely geared to tourist like us, but we did enjoy a good Thai steak salad. Katherine was able to have Pad Thai and Andrew enjoyed his beefy hamburger, made "American-style" says Andrew. The place was a combination of Chelsea Market and Eataly in NYC with all sorts of cusines and lots of fresh meats, fish and veggies. Right next door was the real farmer's market that had not yet opened when we arrived but looked impressive. We hiked up to the commercial district and stopped along the way at a former palace converted into a restaurant that had a cafe in very elegrant setting. After checking out the commercial district, we took an Uber to the Oceanarium, Lisbon's aquarium. We then enjoyed a gondola ride from the Oceanarium up the Tagus River with views of the modern Lisbon. We then walked to a train station and headed to Alfama, the old town of Lisbon, and scaled the narrow cobblestone streets searching for a (smoke-free) restaurant. We finally settled at a nice outdoor restaurant which was part of a rustic looking inn. By now, it was getting dark, so we succombed to the kids' complaints about more walking and got in a cab. This experience was similar to the first amusement ride I went on in Spain; I held on for dear life and prayed that we would not hit the many pedestrians we narrowly passed speeding down winding ancient streets. Thankfully we made it safely to the train station and took a 30 minute ride back to Estoril.

Our second day in Estoril, we packed in the car to travel half an hour to Sintra and joined multitudes of other tourists to visit Quinta da Regaleira, a former palace with an extensive garden filled with underground tunnels, waterfalls and the castle. The kids really enjoyed this and I scored big points for recommending this as our first stop. It was fun to walk through dark tunnels and surface at a new section of the large park. We then walked into town and found a lunch spot in an old train station that was busy so we waited for a bit, but it was worth it. I had a great panini sandwich on a bolos- my favorite Portuguese bread from my chilldhood. We then joined the scores of tourists waiting to catch the shuttle bus to Pena Palace which is a Romanesque Revival castle located on top of another hill with amazing extensive grounds that you could spend days in. The tour was remarkable for the awesome bright yellow color of the castle's exterior and the tile work throughout the interior as well as parts of the exterior. At the bottom of the hill, there was a rose garden with hydrangeas and crepe myrtles that we stopped at, but wished we had the energy to explore more of the hugh grounds. The town of Sintra itself was very quaint, however, very overrun with tourists with no parking available. We walked the 1.5 km back to our car near Quinta da Regaleira and headed back to Estoril.

Our final day in Portugal, we enjoyed the airbnb and its location near the beaches. I went for a 4 mile run along the promenade to Cascais and enjoyed checking out each individual beach as I went along. I heard more English speaking voices here and lots of Spanish than northern Portugal. We headed to the beach and enjoyed the surf at Poco Beach which was pretty strong and walked west to Cascais to explore another beach and cafe. For our last night, we happened to find a very good sushi restaurant which was a 4 minute walk from our house tucked in the residential neighborhood. Kudos to TripAdvisor for recommending this place; still not sure how we could have survived this trip without the internet, especially TripAdvisor, googlemaps, RoutePerfect!