I spent my time in Portugal trying to be in Portugal and not spending it behind the eyepiece of a camera or at a keyboard, with varying levels of success. The goal was to unwind and I think I was pretty successful at that, other than the stressful parts of driving in unfamiliar cities. I did keep some brief notes on paper, and I’ll do my best to line them up with any pictures I’ve got.
Friday 21 June – 9,310 steps
We caught an Uber to the airport and had a smooth flight over the Atlantic to Madrid, where things went a little sideways. Iberia airlines do a great job in the air but only provide 37 seconds to catch connecting flights, which meant what you might expect: we missed ours. Madrid airport is huge and they made us transit from one end of it to the other, with a 12-minute train ride in the middle. We got to our gate and the woman told us we couldn’t board, so we had to join a queue of other people waiting at a help desk for further information. They put us on a new flight leaving in 6 hours and gave us vouchers for the McDonald’s in the airport (no thanks) so we got some Iberico sandwiches and found some benches near a charging station to wait things out. The flight to Porto went pretty quickly. By the time we got our baggage, it was 10PM local time and all the rental counters were closed, so we Uber’d to our apartment and dropped our stuff off. Then we wandered the neighborhood to find some food and got pizza at a place around the corner playing Bollywood music videos.
Saturday 22 June – 4,903 steps
Rising late in the day, we Uber’d back to the airport and picked up a new rental: a shiny gray Peugeot 308. The Uber driver told us we were right on time for the Festa De São João Porto, the yearly tribute to St. John the Baptist, and the city’s biggest celebration. We returned home and I found an app to handle street parking in Porto, which was confusing at first until I got the hang of how it tracked time. I don’t have the final bill from Budget yet but I never saw a ticket tucked under the wiper, so I think we made out OK.
We then wandered the neighborhood looking for some dinner and found a place down the hill who served us giant plates of meat with expertly cooked cabbage and potatoes.
Sunday 23 June – 10,756 steps
We walked across the street to a tiny storefront called Comfort Cakes and were lucky enough to be seated out back in a cozy garden, where we got a hearty, healthy breakfast with great coffee. From there we walked downtown to the river for the first time, a total drop of about 470 feet over almost two miles. Walking downhill for the first half was pretty normal; it felt like most normal cities in that the streets and sidewalks were wide and things felt airy. At about the mile mark things suddenly narrowed and the sidewalks were only big enough for one person. We were clearly in the Old City at this point, and it was wonderful. Apart from almost getting run over. We made it down to one of the landmarks on the bucket list, the Igreja do Carmo, and did a little shopping across the street.
Walking down by the river, they were clearly ramping up for the celebration but we weren’t feeling up to the crowds quite yet. So we wandered back north a little bit, and stopped in a restaurant for a Francesinha, which was good but not the wonderous delicacy we had been promised. Wandering back to the house, we relaxed and listened to the city as they shot off fireworks and watched candle-powered lanterns float across the skyline.
Monday 24 June – 7,468 steps
This was our first travel day; we rose late and got on the road in the early afternoon to Lisbon. Driving through the Portuguese countryside reminded me a lot of California in that the ground cover is all brown but the trees are green, and the vistas are wide. The Peugeot was very pleasant to drive long distance once we figured out how it integrated CarPlay with our phones; the only trouble we had was when Maps got behind where we were and missed important turns in the city. We made it into Lisbon in the afternoon and Siri helpfully directed us to pull into a taxi stand outside our hotel, which made the drivers very unhappy.
I backed out of there and drove up steep alleyways until I found a place to park, then walked to the hotel for a garage key and hiked back to the car. After checking in, we did a little wandering and found an outdoor café serving seafood, where Jen and I shared a giant lobster/seafood stew.
Tuesday 25 June – 14,840 steps, 28 floors
This was our big sightseeing day and we had a lot of ground to cover, so we hit the ground running. We got a quick breakfast and then waited in line for a trolley to carry us up the hills to an open-air flea market on the other side of the castle. This was worth the wait, as the climb was steep (I’d gotten us a hotel in the Rossio district, which is centrally located in the historical area but almost at sea level) and we hopped off with only a short walk to go. We toured the market—so many tempting things there, so little suitcase space—saw the National Pantheon, and hiked over to the castle to wait in line for entry. After some confusion and indifferent ticketing agents we finally got inside and were delighted to find a whole family of peacocks wandering the grounds.
The main castle involved a lot of stairs, and we climbed many of them before our calves and knees rang the alarm bell. After exiting the castle we wandered back into the central section of the city and had dinner at a little out-of-the-way restaurant our concierge recommended. Here we had some traditional Portuguese fish—Jen had the cod while I had the seabream. She got a nicely filleted cut on her plate and I got the whole wangdang fish—but it was delicious even though I had to remove a few bones. We capped off the meal with some Port wine and a dessert, and left a good tip for our waiter, who couldn’t have been nicer.
Wednesday 26 June – 6,611 steps
We got up earlier this day because we knew we had to get on the road and out of town early, so I found a breakfast spot called The Folks Sé, where Jen said she had the best french toast of her life, and where my black coffee was good enough to convince me that black coffee is good. We wandered back to the room, got our gear together, and reversed the complicated process of checking out to get on the road. Our destination was the town of Evora, where Finn had found something she wanted to see: the Chapel of Bones. The drive was pretty uneventful but the Maps app suddenly got very balky which resulted in us driving in loops around an ancient city filled with one-way alleys the width of a closet door. We finally found a place to pull over, reset the map, and dive into the city a different way, which led us (by chance) to a tiny parking lot where we were able to find a spot.
The Chapel of Bones is part of a larger church built by Franciscan monks, and is breathtaking to behold. I haven’t been to the Catacombs in Paris but this is a similar vibe. We toured the church and surrounding area, then hopped in the car to continue on to Seville, which was another three and a half hours away. The drive was lovely, and whatever anxieties we had about crossing into Spain were for nothing. Just like in the States, there’s just a sign and then the road quality changes. We got into Seville late, and I was past the hangry stage. We tried to get seats at the hotel restaurant but it was smaller than advertised and full, so we settled for room service cheeseburgers and champagne.
Thursday 27 June – 12,770 steps
We woke up early to hike to the Alcazar, which was only a mile of very confusing directions away. The map app got us pretty turned around but we were able to make it within our admittance time and we got our bearings inside a glorious outer courtyard. Once through the main gate the true beauty of the place was breathtaking. We’ve seen parts of it on Game of Thrones but to actually be there is another thing entirely. The palace is sprawling and includes indoor and outdoor gardens, and I think we walked every inch of it. The tilework is exqusite, and even if we couldn’t make it to the Alhambra further west, I’m so glad we made this trip. There were a few moments in the courtyard when the murmur of the crowd died back and a flock of starlings chirped as they chased each other in circles; I could imagine standing there centuries ago as a visitor to the palace.
From there we walked out into the center of Seville and up to the main cathedral, where I popped online and got us some tickets. I’ve been in a lot of cathedrals over the years, but this one was whoa. Like somebody with Trump’s sense of interior decoration got in there and barfed gold leaf all over everything. It’s beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but overdone by a factor of three. We walked the whole cathedral, stopping to look at the remains of Christopher Columbus and reviewing the choir box in the center, which looked more like a set from the Ministry of Magic in a Harry Potter novel.
Feeling exhausted, and unable to face up to the reality of all of the stairs between us and the top of the bell tower, we walked back to the car and hit the road for Sintra. It was a long drive—about four and a half hours—and we wound up getting in to our tiny hillside hotel at after 9PM. They got us checked in and we set Finn up for bed while we ventured out in a rainstorm for some dinner. We had to walk up the hillside road into town and found seats at an excellent little restaurant the concierge recommended to us. Unfortunately, the walk back down the hillside was just as wet, but with full stomachs, it wasn’t as bad.
Friday 28 June – 8,089 steps, 34 floors
Our day in Sintra was one of highs and lows, successes and failures. The hotel provided a lovely little breakfast to our room, and we got the car packed up and ready as soon as we could. Driving into Sintra, we hunted for a parking spot and found one close to the Sintra National Palace. Because the parking app I already had on my phone was incompatible and the other three it suggested would not let me open accounts, I sent the girls ahead while I struggled to get the parking issue sorted out. Then it turned out we were in the entirely wrong place; the palace we wanted to see was further up the mountain and we’d need to take a bus to get there. We bought new tickets and I got some coins to cover the parking, and we hopped on the bus up into the mist.
Ordinarily Sintra is clear and you can see the surrounding castles and countryside for miles, but it was socked in with fog all day for us. Which made it kind of spooky and cool, actually. The bus dropped us at the Moorish Castle, which is a little further down the road, but we then realized we needed to get to the National Palace of Pena (the thing we’d actually come to see) as soon as possible, because there was still a half-hour hike up the hill to get to the entrance.
Once we were there, though, it was worth the money and hassle. The castle is like a life-size version of the fanciful ones I built out of LEGO when I was 9; the architecture was incredible throughout the whole building. We toured the palace and ended up outside overlooking what would have been the valley. Knowing the parking meter was a ticking time bomb, I left the ladies to get a bite to eat and check out the Moorish Castle, and hoofed it back downhill to get more money in the meter. With that done (7 minutes to spare!) I walked further up the street to a café and sat down to a delicious ham and cheese sandwich with a warm cappuccino.
The girls gave me a play-by-play and returned to the car soaking wet; the rain had increased as they were touring the second castle. I’d heated up the car and we hit the road for Porto. We stopped off at a service stop for gas, sandwiches, and a Red Bull for me, and made it back to our apartment after the sun had set.
Part 2 coming up next.