An Iberian Experience - Portugal

I am officially awful at recounting holiday experiences. I'm always reminded of those start-of-term assignments you used to get in primary school where you had to write about what you did on holiday, and now, just as then, any attempt I make to write such a thing descends into little more than a blow by blow account of what I did. Which is hardly any fun for anyone. But it's not going to stop me, and at least with the magic of Blogger I can add photos.

On Monday evening I got back to Utrecht after spending ten days travelling around the Iberian peninsular, taking in Portugal, Spain, Morocco and Gibraltar. In now time-honoured fashion, here's a little Google Maps summary of where I got to:


By way of a summary, I think I can quite accurately compress ten days into twelve words: Portugal was good. Spain was fantastic. Morocco was bad. Gibraltar was amazing.

I started off by flying to Faro in the Algarve. It's an odd place, it felt like a holiday resort town with no-one making their holidays there. That was actually quite a recurring theme. Temperatures everywhere I went average about 22C, but to the people living there, it's still out of season, so there's apparently nothing odd about walking around in ski-jackets and scarves. I felt decidedly out of place in my t-shirts just about everywhere I went. But, despite this oddity it was a pretty little town, and the relative lack of tourists probably helped.


After only five hours there though it was time to catch a train to Lisbon, which was uneventful enough, aside from being evicted from my seat, and the scenery was pretty amazing having never been that far south before - I can't say I'm accustomed to seeing fields of orange trees. I got into Lisbon quite late, and decided to leave exploring until the next day.

Either I missed something with Lisbon, or it was missing something itself - things just never really clicked, and by 2pm on the first afternoon I felt like I'd seen everything it had to offer, which shouldn't be the case in a capital city. I spent the day just walking around the city, and climbed up to the old castle ruins which provided an oddly underwhelming view across the whole city and the river.



I did though get the chance to witness a rather spectacular, and quite unexplained, military parade by what appeared to be (worryingly) child soliders. So that was nice.


So as result of feeling I'd exhausted central Lisbon, at 3pm I decided to walk to the little district of Belem, 6kms away, and I'm so glad that I did. Walking along the river was just lovely and Belem itself so such a contrast to Lisbon proper, it just seemed much more full of life and laid back. the fact that it has what is reputed to be Portugal's best custard tarts was naturally quite a draw as well.



The next day (after stopping by Belem for more custard tarts), I decamped to the nearby hill-top town of Sintra which Lonely Planet listed as the 'star' place in Portugal. It was raining, and I didn't really know what to expect, but as impulse decisions go, it has to be one of the best I've made. It was spectacular. The town is loomed over by a Palace and a ruined castle high up on the hill tops and I immediately resolved to climb up there, and equally quickly found myself sitting on a bus up instead. The town itself was pretty, but from at the top of the castle, it was stunning.



On the one side you could see Lisbon, and on the other you could see over the town all the way to the Atlantic. It was terribly windy, but that just added to everything. I had a lovely walk down through the forests at sunset before making my way back to Lisbon ready to move onto Spain the next day.

I now have to go and tend to some bread that I'm baking, but I will be back at some point with the Spanish instalment.