Thursday and Friday were days for the local areas - Sintras and Cascais. Sintras is the mountain area outside of Lisbon where the rich and famous went, especially in the summer. So there is the palace and large state houses with very large estates.The castle looks quite something from the outside with its tall columns of coloured walls set amongst the bush. We took an hour in the bus to drive around it through the large park to give some idea of size of teh lan...

After meeting the girls in san Santiago de Compostella, we drove off to Porto to begin this leg of the trip. Porto is all about the Douro river. Life along the north side includes all the commercial and government buildings, beautiful squares with great gardens (spring would be very pretty here), and of the course, the cathedral and the churches. There are many churches - one per religous order it seems. Life along the south side is all about the port - the bottl...