Portugal

Sintra

This place is home to the Pena Castle and gardens, a cute village and a Moorish Castle. It was only 40 mins by train from Lisbon. The highlight of Sintra was their extravagant palace and gardens, previously home to King Ferdinand II and his wife Amelia. This King was an artist, and decided he wanted his gardens to be a mixture of home (Germany) and other exotic places - even had a section dedicated to Australian/New Zealand rainforest ferns. The result was magical - and then you hit the palace - talk about a fairytale. We spent hours here just wandering. This is one of my most favourite places so far.

Pena Palace

The gardens

Lagos

Well known as a party and beach town, Lagos held up to its reputation. Again we ran into our Sydney mates and hung out on the main beach with them, bodysurfing some pretty aggressive waves, and Nick enjoying watching old people and kids get dumped by the surf - he reckons it was like watching funniest home video show. (I hate that show).

the boys body surfing

We finally ate Piri Piri Chicken - not as hot as we expected - but you could just ask for more sauce and that spiced it up plenty! The party scene was impressive - so many bars with so many cheap drink specials... There was one bar that is famous for tallying beer bongs consumed per country (Australia was winning, surprise surprise, and all the boys added one to the tally - but were very very very sorry for it later...) They also had a ¨9 deadly sins¨competition, where one had to shot 9 shots as fast as possible - if you beat the record (8.5 sec for men, 11 sec for the ladies) you didn´t have to pay the 30 Euro they cost. But you got a tshirt. Wisely we did not attempt this. The 2 for one cocktails at 5 Euros, and the free shot on arrival at Red Eye bar were enough to keep us in bed most of the next day as it was...

The highlight of Lagos was the kayaking adventure, where we paddled 3 hours along the coast exploring secret caves and grottoes that you could paddle right into. Glorious!

Kayaking

We travelled by overnight bus to Porto in Portugal - 8 hours traveling, but lucky to get 4 hours sleep. This was despite trying to exhaust ourselves in Madrid the day before, conquering both the Reina Sofia art gallery for 3 hours, then Fi went out to Segovia in the afternoon.

The Reina Sofia is a modern art museum, most famous for holding Picasso´s Guernica piece, and lots of surrealist Dali work. I don´t know much about art - but these two crazy artists are definitely my favourite so I was super excited to go. It was a really good exhibition - showing the progress of these guys work, from early days portraits (pretty standard) into the art they became famous for - some of it bizarrely minimalist - eg another cool artist called Miro (similar style to Picasso) last few works were giant canvasses with nothing more than a couple of black dots?! Thats art?!
Nick liked Luna, an artist who did many wartime pieces (ww2) in black pen only, just thousands of lines in so much detail it was jaw-dropping.

We also did a walking tour of Madrid which made us fall in love with this city - rumour had it that Madrid was missable, but we found it anything but! A clean modern city with plenty of character, the "oldest door in europe" a street called "fist in the face" street, the largest palace in Europe, and free tapas with drinks if you know where to go. Again I was fascinated and astounded by the turbulent recent history - cruel dictators ruling up until near the time I was born? Its hard to believe. They say this is why Spain has such a festive feel about it now - enjoying their freedom...

Segovia is an ancient city an hour out of Madrid, and its famous for its aqueduct and castle and cathedral - all very impressive. Most impressive however was the torrential downpour that descended upon us just before we left - we got completely saturated!

the aqueducts of Segovia

The castle with stormy skies

Oporto
Our first impression of Portugal was how wonderfully helpful and lovely the Portuguese are - but then again we did arrive at 6am on a Saturday morning - we were catching everyone on their way home from a big night out! Famous for port and chicken, we really wanted to visit to taste the port, despite not having much time. We were exhausted, but still managed to see the sights and get the feel of this beautiful, but gritty city. The port was pretty good - you got to do free tastings along the river where the warehouses were, and we did a tour of one - the most well known - Sandemans. Awesome advertising, and the best of the ports we tasted. But not as good as Aussie port!

The cellars of Sandemans

View of Porto, old town

Portuguese architecture seems quite different to Spanish - purely in that they cover all their outdoor walls in tiles, which makes for very pretty contrasts among the houses along the streets.

Lisbon
We are staying in the coolest hostel - what a view! we are on the major square and have the castle on the hill in the background. Awesome! This afternoon we toured the castle, and took a tram (just like ours) through the hilly cobbled narrow streets of the old town - just beautiful! you could reach out the window of the tram and run your hand along the walls.

at the castle in Lisbon

We also went to a district called Belem to visit its Monastery (which closed two minutes before we got there, bugger). This little part of town was also know for its custard tarts - some say the best in Portugal. And you should have seen the line out the door! They were amazing - puff party base which was sweet and crispy. hmmmm.

The eating of the custard tarts. freaking tasty

Going to try and catch a Fado show tonight after dinner at the hostel, then will check out Sintra tomorrow, before heading down to Lagos for more beach time.

more photos on flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27613924@N06/