Sintra can be easily reached from Lisbon via train. If you ever find yourself in Lisbon, I recommend making a day trip here. There are many wonderful sights to be seen and you get a good work out walking up and down the steps and narrow streets. We managed to enjoy two sights in particular […]
Three hours and Eu30 took us along the super highway from Porto to the outskirts of Lisbon, where we turned off to visit the palace at Queluz. The palace is quite grand and well furnished with period furniture, porcelain, glassware, silver, and other decorative items. It is probably the last Rococo palace built in Europe. […]
The journey so far: We are staying in a suburb of Porto, which is great, since we have free parking and our hotel is right next to the Porto Metro, so in about 10 minutes we were in the heart of the city for a Eu1 fare. The main bridge that crosses the Douro river […]
At one of the port lodges, they told us that the next tour in English would be around 4:15. Kelly said “but it is already 5 o’clock” to which the nice lady responded “no, it is only 4 right now”. So we discovered that for the last few days we have been blissfully going around […]
This morning we drove from Braganca to the Douro Valley, which is the principle area for making port. They also make traditional wines here as well on wine estates called quintas. We drove approx. 80 miles around the valley, which is very beautiful – green terraced fields along the steep river banks with the RIver […]
We tried to drive to a place across the road from our hotel in the Bilbao suburb of Barakaldo to get breakfast, missed the entrance, drove around the building and ended up on the motorway, which subsequently took us miles out of the way before we got off and found ourselves well and truly lost. […]
Driving in Europe is expensive. There are no two ways about it. So why hire a car? Pros: Gives you the Independence to go where you want , when you want. Provides the ability to stay at properties not easily served by public transportation or taxis. If you are trying to save money, it allows […]
After leaving Zaragoza we drove to Bilbao, which took about 3 hours and brought us through some pretty Basque countryside that reminded me of Lichtenstein and the Austrian Alps. We checked in to the hotel, dropped off laundry, had some lunch & headed into town. A little known fact is that when J.R.R. Tolkien visited […]
We began this morning by picking up our rental car at Sixt. Then drove to Cadaques on the Costa Brava to visit the nearby Casa y Museo Dali in Portlligat. We lucked out because as it turns out the house is very small and in order to control numbers, a reserved, timed ticket is required. […]
After a slow start this morning, we went to The Phone House and got a prepaid SIM card for one of our phones. Using our US T-Mobile SIMs is expensive here. For starters, it’s about $1 per minute to make a local call and if somebody calls me from the States, their call is free […]