Fun in the Portuguese sun -

Tired from the night before but keen to see the city of lisbon we set off for a walk around the city. 10 minutes in we stopped for our first beer at a cafe overlooking the city and the water. We were astounded by how cheap a beer was! We could have 5 beers here for the price of one at home. Over the next week we continued to search for the cheapest beer we could find. We wandered the narrow, steep streets of lisbon, got ripped off at lunch… Our own fault for not learning any Portuguese, and explored the walls of a castle with an awesome view over the city. We also sampled the first of MANY Portuguese tarts to come. And like typical tourists took a ride on the tram!

We had heard lisbon was truely the city that didn’t sleep. With clubs opening only at 2 am while people in bars in Bairro Alto spilled out on to crowded streets to drink on the street rather than indoors at the bar. We were keen to head out that night to experience it, but after the long night before and a few hours of walking the streets in the hot sun we were all exhausted and crashed early. I guess the lisbon night life will have to be for our next visit.

The following day we jumped on a 4 hour bus ride to Lagos, a popular tourist town on the South Coast of Portugal. We spent a week exploring the grottos on foot and by kayak. Lying by the beaches and drinking sangria. We had one big night out that didn’t end well for 3 out of 4 of us and left us feeling worse for wear and in bed for a whole day.

The beaches and grottos were incredible, Clear blue water and orange cliffs forming caves and cliffs to explore. Unfortunately the weather was not in our favour for most of the week to enjoy swimming amongst the grottos but the views were no less incredible. A lot of people do boat tours through the grottos, but hiring kayaks independently for 2 hours was an awesome way to explore the area. Allowing us to go into caves that the boats couldn’t reach and jump off into the clear water for a swim whenever we felt like it.

After a week in Lagos we bid goodbye to Ross and Jacinta, they headed to lisbon to fly to Spain and brett and I jumped on a train to Sintra.

A spot of beach tennis on the west coast of portugal

View from above in Lagos

Sintra

Sintra was an hours train ride from lisbon. A stunning, quaint town filled with castles and lush green parks and old Victorian style buildings. We fell in love with sintra, despite being a very popular tourist spot! We checked into a small, homely hostel, just the type of place we felt like staying.

Sintra is full of castles, most people needing a long day or two to see them all, although the bus tourist bus system is set up really well to make it cheap and easy to travel between the castles. Not feeling like being squished on a bus and also not having the budget to visit every castle or palace, we decided to pick the main palace to enter and settle with seeing the rest from the outside, we also decided to take the free bikes on offer from the hostel rather than the bus. After a very long uphill ride we arrived at Pena Palace. A beautiful coulorful palace perched on the hill over looking Sintra. We spent a couple hours exploring the ins and outs of the palace before taking the easy downhill ride back to town, stopping outside other castles and palaces on the way down. We visited a port cellar, witnessed a 12 thousand euro bottle of Port and Brett decided he should collect Port from now on instead of whiskey! Unfortunately backpacking doesn’t allow for room to squeeze in a bottle of Port so he had to miss out on that one.

Ericeira

After a few lovely days in the serenity of Sintra, we ventured to a surf town called Ericeira. Great surf but expensive boards meant Brett couldn’t get his surf fix. We spent our days lying in the sun, drinking sangria and wandering the pebbled streets. Ericeira is a beautiful seaside town, we got lucky booking our accommodation for 3 nights, the website made an error and we got the hostel for half the price, it just meant that if we wanted to stay longer we would have had to pay full price and being the beautiful seaside town that it was meant accommodation was above our budget. So we moved on to Porto.

Porto

Ahh the land of Port wine, a mix of old and new. Ancient castles on the left and new buildings on the right, narrow streets filled with bars, but of course no one drinks in the bar, the party spills out on to the streets. We were lucky enough to be in Porto for the week of festival Sao Jao. The main square was full of thousand of people every night listening to the range of bands that played over the course of the week. Unfortunately we had to leave the day of the main festival 23 June. We had heard it was a night to remember, with everyone from Porto gathering in the main square, drinking beer and wine and donning big plastic hammers used to whack people on the head. We thought it sounded a bit strange to but we desperately wanted to stay, unfortunately we couldn’t change our flight out of Lisbon so when everyone was catching buses to Porto we had to catch one back to Lisbon.

The time we did have in Porto though was some of our favourite. We loved the the feel of Porto, it wasn’t so big that you were lost everywhere you walked but wasn’t so small that you were bored and looking for ways to fill the time.