Our trip to Portugal
After a decade of daydreaming about it, Sara and I finally made it to Portugal for a couple of weeks. I can honestly say it was worth the crazy long wait.
Our trip began and ended in the Estremadura, where we stayed in Amadora for a week and used the mighty Lisbon Card to check out the region together. Sure, we had to deal with some thugs in the train station once. And yes, a baby threw up at my feet. It was still pretty fantastic.
Week two was a different animal. It started with a drive up the Autostrada to the GPS-proof part of the Beira Litoral. Once there, we village-hopped around the countryside and partied nonstop with Sara's extended family. Sardine festivals, pig roasts, you name it. Voa (Sara's grandmother) outlasted us every night.
Humbled, we'd crawl back to Voa's summer house — a place called the Italu — which everyone we met seemed to know is haunted by a playboy ghost named Amaral (only women can see him, but he's known to tickle men's feet). Needless to say, our willingness to stay there earned us instant cred. Or scorn. Seriously, it's hard to tell the difference when you don't really speak Portuguese so much.
Plenty of other stuff happened during our trip, too. I won't bore you with the details, but I will encourage you to flip through our photos for more of the story. Or we can just say we had ourselves a time and leave it at that.
