BILL, STAN, WALTER, KATHY, DON, CANDY AND GEORGIA'S
EXCELLENT ADVENTURES IN PORTUGAL

April 21-May 8, 2011

(CLICK THE THUMBNAIL PHOTOS FOR A LARGER IMAGE)

April 21, 2011 Thursday

The seven of us met at San Diego airport for our  10AM departure for 2 weeks of hiking and sightseeing in Portugal.  Don and Kathy did a great job of making all the arrangements using a London company, World Walks http://www.worldwalks.com , for the self-guided hikes.  Kathy and Don planned our general sightseeing on their own.

April 22, 2011 Friday

We arrived Lisbon at about 1230PM local time after stops and plane changes in Chicago and Dublin.  (There appear to be no direct flights from the USA to Lisbon.)  After a bus ride from the airport we were soon squared away for the night at the Tryp Oriente hotel and exploring this "Oriente" area of north eastern Lisbon. Here there are very modern shopping centers, an aquarium and assorted impressive buildings along the Tagus River (Tejo in Portuguese) waterfront.  Important for tomorrow's trip was the proximity to the train and bus stations.  We soon had some challenges with the language when buying our tickets for tomorrow's bus.  We had difficulty understanding that the ticket agent wanted to give us a senior citizen discount and we finally caught on when she wrote out "65 anhos".   We were pleased to learn that the Portuguese are very kind and generous to us seniors

April 23, 2011 Saturday

At 830AM we were on our way for our bus trip to the town of Bragança which is at the far northeastern end of Portugal very near the Spanish border. We headed from Lisbon along the west side of Rio Tejo, a rest stop at the town of Pombal, through the city of Coimbra (location of Portugal's prestigious and oldest -since 1537- university), past the Douro River valley (more about this later), lunch stop at Vila Real (noted for Mateus wine), a short stop at Mirandela and, finally, arriving Bragança at about 4PM.  This bus trip cost us 17 euros each.

Our taxis, arranged by World Walks, were waiting to take us for the final 20 minute leg of the journey from Bragança to the little village of Montesinho which is in the Montesinho Natural Park.  The park is located in Portugal's "state" Tras os Montes (behind the mountains). 

Our lodging at Montesinho was "A Lagosta Perdida" or the "the lost lobster" which is run by Robert van der Vliet and his wife, Sally Godward.  We very much enjoyed the hospitality and meals in this quaint inn.

April 24, 2011 Sunday

On this Easter morning we started our first hike directly from the front door of A Lagosta Perdida.  For this hike we were accompanied initially by Sally and son Sean who attends school across the border in Spain and speaks many languages-English, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Dutch. Wow!!  Sally is an experienced hiker and she wrote the trail (track) descriptions that we were supposed to follow.

Today's hike was a point to point, 9 mile hike from Montesinho to the village of Baçal.    We rambled through many chestnut groves, vineyards, some grazing sheep with shepherd and dogs and heard our first of many cuckoo birds (we never saw any of them and they don't seem to keep very accurate time).  We had a morning snack at the village of Portelo, continued high above França, down to the river and village of Aveleda and finally arriving at Baçal after a rather difficult and wet stream crossing.  In Baçal we enjoyed a well deserved beer break (Sagres and Super Bock are the Portuguese standard brews) while we waited for a taxi to take us back to Montesinho. In these villages there are few English speakers but most of the locals can understand Spanish ( un poco) and since I can understand (un poco, poco, poco) we managed somehow.

At dinner that night we had our first of many opportunities to experience one of Portugal's signature dishes-salted cod in a stew or casserole with potatoes (bacalhau).

April 25, 2011 Monday  

Today was a national holiday celebrating the anniversary of the 1974 "carnation" revolution which overthrew the  Salazar dictatorship and installing a democratic government.  We celebrated the day with an 8 mile circular walk from Montesinho to Lama Grande and back again.

On this hike we were accompanied all day by Sally and her dog as we experienced the very wet meadows, beautiful open fields of purple heather and views of the modern windmills just across the Spanish border.  We had lunch at an abandoned boy scout "motel" under chilly, cloudy and drizzly conditions.

This evening we were the inn's only guest as we enjoyed our dinner of venison, salad, peppers/anchovies, potatoes, cabbage and red wine.

April 26, 2011 Tuesday

This was our last hiking day at Montesinho and we were on our own to find our way using the very detailed notes and a small map. This was another circular walk from Montesinho to the Spanish town of Calabor and back again.  The distance was about 10 miles in around 6 hours total time. 

We did some off trail walking as we ascended to and across the Spanish border (marked by little concrete monuments) and under the huge and very impressive electric power windmills and then a steep descent to Calabor.  We ate our picnic lunch and bought drinks at a little cafe and then headed back to Portugal and our inn.  We encountered a number of the local senior citizens near Calabor who were all working in their vegetable gardens.  They found us quite interesting and, naturally, wanted to know where we were going and to tell us how to get there.  We listened politely, not understanding much, and then, ignoring their directions,  proceeded  by our written notes.

We had an exhausting and rainy climb back up to Montesinho passing through an abandoned tungsten mining company town.  Portugal was neutral during World War II and the tungsten was in great demand by both British and Nazi armaments industries.

 April 27, 2011 Wednesday      

We said goodbye to our new friends at the inn and traveled by taxi back to Bragança where we visited the Citadel and a military museum with lots of swords, suits of armor and such things.  The Citadel is a very well preserved 12th century castle with views of the areas where we had just hiked and people were actually living inside the walls of the castle.

 A short walk across town brought us to the bus station where Robert would deliver our luggage from the inn. We were soon off to the coastal city of Porto via a 4 hour, 11 euro bus ride.  We had a fine trek through downtown Porto dragging our suitcases along cobble-stone sidewalks and eventually found our hotel, da Bolsa.

April 28, 2011 Thursday

This morning we had an early start for our Douro River cruise (59 euros each).  We took a train up the river to the town of Regua, a tram down to the river and then boarded at noon for the 7 hour cruise back to Porto.  The Douro River valley is known as the center of Portugal's port wine industry with most of the vineyards located upstream of Regua. There was almost no other river traffic until after we descended through two big locks and approached the city. The river level views of the city of Porto and its sister city, Gaia, on the south side of the Douro are quite impressive.  The old steel bridge that connects the cities was inspired by Mr. Eiffel of the Paris tower fame.

April 29, 2011 Friday

 On this day we invested in tickets for the hop on-hop off tourist buses.  Of course, we had to time our hopping off in order to watch the royal wedding on TV in the hotel bar.  There did not seem to be a lot of interest from the local folks. We explored by foot some of the old town parts of Gaia by the river where we also did some port wine tasting at Taylors.

Finally, we stopped at the San Bento train station to purchase our tickets for tomorrow's journey for our next hiking phase.  This train station has an impressive example of Portugal's famous decorative tiles (azulejos).  Don and I had already discovered that we can get a 50% senior discount on tickets for the Porto to Lisbon to Setúbal trip. Of course, it took the ticket agent a long time to figure out where we wanted to go because of our poor attempts to pronounce the name, Setúbal. The agent pronounced it something like "stewball".

At Porto we said so long to Georgia since her plans were to fly from Porto to Faro in southern Portugal then take a train to Seville for a week.
April 30, 2011  Saturday
We were up early for our premium class (26 euro), high speed train trip to Stewball via the Lisbon Oriente station finally arriving at our Solaris hotel at 3PM.  Walter and I enjoyed a great halibut and noodle stew while the others went to Pizza Hut for dinner.  Seafood is the featured food in these parts and all the restaurants have displays of fresh fish and outdoor charcoal grills to cook them. 

May 1, 2011  Sunday

This morning we were off for our first of three hiking days in the Natural Park of Arrábida.  Unlike Montesinho, we could not hike from the hotel but, instead, taxis would pick us up at the hotel and drop us off at designated trail heads in the park. We soon found out from our taxi drivers and the hotel staff that those people up in Porto do not speak good Portuguese at all! This town is not Stewball-it is "say TOO ball" just like it is spelled.

The taxis dropped us off at a bus station in the village of Palmela where we proceeded up a hill towards a ridge lined with some of Portugal's signature windmills.  The windmills were once used for milling of grains and some have now been converted to become parts of homes.  This trail was along a limestone ridge with some nice fossil shell displays and lots of mountain bike traffic.

This was a circular hike descending from the ridge to the valley below then back up and to the "Quinta do Anjo" and a visit to some neolithic tombs (OK, actually holes in the ground) . Upon departing the tombs we were adopted by a cute little dog who we named Fado (after the Portuguese music style).  Fado followed us all the way back to Palmela.  Since we had lots of time before the bus back to Setúbal we decided to hike up to the castle in pouring rain.  On our return to the bus stop we spotted Fado, who had wisely decided not to make the climb in the rain, forlornly waiting to adopt his next family.  We were soon back to our hotel and, for me, a dinner of fried cuttle fish (very popular there) and satisfaction for a good 10 miles of adventure in the park.

May 2, 2011  Monday

At breakfast this morning we learned from the TV that Osama bin Laden had been killed by US special forces. To my surprise, I did not hear any comments from any of the local people regarding that subject.

Today's hike started with the  taxi ride to the village of Azeitão. From the village we hiked down a series of dirt roads and paths by countless impressive country villas (quintas), vineyards and lots of cork trees.  We found an unused church yard for lunch and then a walk down a narrow road said to date from Roman times. We returned to Azeitão at about 230PM and were disappointed that the local winery was not offering any English language tours and tastings until later in the afternoon.  We took the bus back to Hotel Solaris.

On this and all the hikes we heard, but did not see, the cuckoo birds and Walter managed to take millions of close up photos of flowers and bugs copulating.  Our timing for seeing wild flowers (and some bugs) was excellent throughout the whole trip.

May 3, 2011 Tuesday
The taxis dropped us off right on the shoulder of a busy highway to start our last Portugal hike.  Following our written directions we soon departed the highway and ascended a very steep, muddy trail under warm and humid conditions. 

On this trek we had difficulty following the written directions but we made our own way using the map. Eventually we got back on the track and were soon back at the starting point.  We waited for our taxis at a little roadside, truck stop cafe where they were, of course, cooking cuttle fish and serving Sagres and Super Bock beers.  This was a relatively short day and we were back at the hotel by about 230PM.

  May 4, 2011 Wednesday    

We departed Setúbal early with a quick walk, dragging our suitcases, to the bus station and then a 4 euro ride back to the Lisbon Oriente station.  From there we had a stimulating taxi ride to our final hotel, Miraparque, which is located next to a metro station and within walking range of the river (Tagus/Tejo).

In the afternoon we took the metro and headed to a suburb called Oeiras to meet Lars and Sandra and their two young children.  Lars and Sandra now live in Lisbon but a few years ago were San Diego residents and used to do some hiking with our group.  Lars heads a small research group at the Guldbenkian Science Institute and he showed us around the facility and the adjoining grounds which include an old mansion that was once a home of the Marques de Pombal, one of Portugal's rulers back during the 1700s.

Although the Lisbon metro system was fast and clean we were not impressed with the automated ticketing system.  It was not very first-time-user friendly but Lars said they have recently made changes and it is still working out the bugs.

May 5, 2011 Thursday 

At breakfast we had a discussion and decided not to go to a fado dinner and music show for the evening because it starts too late and we would rather get up early to do some more outdoor stuff.  We took the metro again and met Lars and Sandra down by the river at the Commercial Plaza.  This is a huge open plaza and was once the spot where Portuguese sailing vessels would return from their voyages to India and China with their cargoes of spices and exotic stuff. The plaza was also the spot where in 1908 the king Carlos and his son were assassinated bringing an end to the monarchy. 

For 18 euros we each purchased a tram ticket and rode up the steep hills eventually to admire the views from the Saint George Castle (Castelo de São Jorge).  We came back down and rode up the Elevador de Santa Justa, another of the Eiffel inspired structures. 

Next we were off on another bus ride out to Belém on the river front.  Here the Padrão dos Descobrimentos celebrates Portugal's glorious days of discovery and empire with statues of heroes including Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama.  We wrapped up the day with some famous pastries at the Pasteis de Belem-yummy.

We did have a couple of bogus adventures on this day.  Don, Stan and I were all targets of pickpockets on and near the trams but we did not lose anything and their daily income was reduced.  Also, after Lars had departed we attempted to get back on the metro from the Commercial Plaza to our hotel. However, we were distracted by some political activities (elections are coming in June) and we went to the boat terminal instead of the metro station.  We could not understand why our tickets did not work and several of our group mistakenly bought a bunch of boat tickets! We finally straightened it out with the help of a guard and made it back home OK.

May 6, 2011 Friday

 In the afternoon we returned to Commercial Plaza to catch a whirlwind bus tour (32 euros ) of the areas just west of Lisbon.  Lars and Sandra met us at the Pena Palace in the town of Sintra.  This amazing mountain top palace was built in about 1836 by  Ferdinand of Bavaria and his wife Queen Maria II as a summer residence.  The town of Sintra is quite impressive and exudes wealth.  This was our last visit with Lars and Sandra and we said a sad goodbye as our bus headed off to our next stop.   

By 6PM our tour bus had crossed the very green and wet Sintra mountain ranges and we visited Rock Cape (Cabo de Roca) which is the western most point in continental Europe.  Our guide pointed out that the cape is on the exact same latitude as Washington, DC about 3000 miles due west.

Our final stop was at the beach resort of Cascais and across the Cascais Bay was the adjoining town of Estoril.  The casinos in Estoril are said to have provided the inspiration for the first James Bond book, Casino Royale, because Ian Fleming was living in this area during WW II.

Just as I was thinking I had this Portuguese language pronunciations figured out I heard from our tour guide that the name Estoril is pronounced "studio".  Huh?? Go figure.

Our bus conveniently dropped us off at the Pombal Circle very near our hotel and our grand adventures in Portugal were ended.

May 7, 2011 Saturday

We were up early for our 830AM flight from Lisbon to Madrid with a connecting flight to Chicago and then to San Diego.  Unfortunately, the weather in Madrid was not cooperating. Our flight to Madrid was very late. We missed our connection and stood in line for hours to get re-booked.  At the end of the day we ended up overnight in Madrid at a nice hotel courtesy of Iberia Air.

May 8, 2011 Sunday

At least we had this chance to see a little bit of Madrid; our flights this day were on time and we arrived San Diego by 7PM after about 13 hours flying time.

THE END