Relaxing Portugal

Portugal was very similar to Spain with a subtle change in the landscape as we crossed over the border . The most obvious difference for us was the amount of neatly tended olive groves and more whitewashed buildings with beautifully tiled streetsigns and busmaps on walls. Portugese drivers are even more ruthless and reckless than the Spanish ones, often pulling in after overtaking and leaving little room for error. On multi lane highways they often checker-board their way through traffic at speed, leaving us shaking our heads in awe.

Numerous tolls exist to use all the major motorways we have travelled on in Europe and so to avoid these we will often choose the slightly longer scenic way to reach our next destinition.  These deviations have rewarded us with many sights and experiences that the average tourist would miss. It is strange to drive through one village and see no-one, and the next to have bars/ coffee shops packed. Portugese is a totally different sounding language than Spanish although extremely similar apparently. 'S' sounds are said 'sh', so 'Adios' would be said 'Adiosh.' Suzi upset one of the multi lingual locals when she said it sounded Russian, however we have been asked if we are Irish, English, Scottish and American, so we guess that makes up for it. Very few pick we are Aussies.

We decided we needed to see the Portugese capital Lisbon, called Lisboa by the locals. We travelled through the city, the highlight that we saw being the Golden Gate style bridge on the outskirt with another massive Jesus scultpture who looms over the city and harbour. We visited the village of Sintra just outside the city which was packed with tourist buses filled with loud tourists from around the world. The road through this area was narrow and winding with sidewalks filled with sculptures and works of art and bordered by street stalls and vendors. Lovely botanical gardens filled with yet more artworks were adjacent to this area and a Royal Palace nearby. 

We were given directions in broken English to a van park in a nearby coastal village bordering the ocean, and after missing one of the early turns, we then had to traverse the narrow road bordering the palace winding down the mountain. This cobbled road built for horse drawn wagons and not cars was 2 way, and so everytime we encountered another car, one would have to pull over and hug the wall with mirrors retracted while the other squeezed past. This is a common occurence in ancient village centres we have travelled through where we have squeezed the Peugeot through some ridiculously tight spaces.

The park was not opened for the season yet, so we did the 'Wockies thing' and blundered blindly along the coast until we stumbled onto a park in Guincho where we stayed for the night before driving through Lisboa again and on to Quarteria on the Mediteranian where we parked ourselves for a week in a cabin and let the boys loose on the parks waterslide. Hours of fun were had!!  The boys made friends with 2 English families which made the fun and games (and a little slide rules breaking) all the more enjoyable.

Eventually we  packed up and moved on to Spain, which will be covered in the next blog!

Until then,

The Wockies