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| In Lisbon Portugal |
After a night in the hotel hiding from the crazy torrential downpours and thunderstorms, we got a nice early start to make the most of our time and to the sights in Portugal. The thunder is definitely an indication of warmer weather... in just a few short days we’ve gone from think fleece jackets to 1 thin layer! Woohoo... bring on the warmth!
Before we headed out though we tackled these leaks.. identified them to come in through the little side “sunroofs”. The roofrack collects and drips right above it, so the slow leak has just been enough to siphon in and onto the seats. Why is it that the stuff that should not get wet always gets wet first? We neatly stuck some strips of black Duct Tape over and this seemed to do the job as we’ve had no more leaks (yay!)... but the rain sure kept coming.
In our attempt to get an early start into Porto, we hit their morning city traffic. And the rain not letting up again forced us to just drive through and take it all in. Not to bummed though as the city was quite rundown and didn’t have a lot of sights to see. Turns out Portugal has the highest accident rate per capita.. and we seriously could see that in driving in that traffic! So we decided to head further south as quickly as possible.
And so glad we did since we got to spend quite a bit of time in Coimbra - a quant and younger (age wise, not architecturally) town with a labyrinth of streets and alleys. We decided to just park and get blissfully lost. In an attempt to find some cheap sustenance we stumbled upon one of those “hole-in-the-wall” types where we could not understand a word on the menu... our favorite kind of restaurant. Neither one of us know ANY Portuguese so this was one of those experiences we will always treasure. Turns out that 5 Euros each got us wine, plenty of Portuguese rolls (yum), soup, a main stew, dessert and espresso!! And we didn’t order any of it.. the sweet lady there (that didn’t speak a lick of English either) just kept bringing it all out!! It was great and so delicious.
With full tummies we just kind of started strolling back to our car and joking around, we got stopped by a very nice Canadian couple (Louise and Bev) that live in Casablanca, Morocco and after a nice chat and some very helpful travel tips.. they very sweetly offered us a free bed for when we are in town there this weekend! I was so moved by this and to me this was the proper start of the journey.. we’ve moved from being just tourists to now being travelers. We’re sharing this journey with others around the world and the generosity and kindness is so moving.
We didn’t think we could fit it in, but we actually managed to squeeze in a half-day in Lisbon. What a strangely cool city. We decided to just park and stroll around for hours and take in all that this unique place has to offer. It is a multi-layered city with so many different levels that creates such an enchanting experience.
We didn’t have time to take a cable car up the crazy steep streets to the top to see the castle on the hill, so we decided to take the Landy up to see it a bit closer... ha! What an EXPERIENCE!! Turns out our GPS has no concept of how tight and windy the roads are up there. We got so lost and had to take so many crazy turns.. Tim was stressing out a bit... I on the other hand was just loving it! It tok us of the beaten tourist path, and as tight as the streets were, you could see right into homes and cafe’s to see the real life of Lisbon behind the scenes. Something I will always treasure!
By some miracle of God we made it towards the top of the hill to take in the amazing views and sights.. and back down and out the city again! We’re heading further south down the coast, but are gonna try to camp somewhere tonight as the rain seemed to have held off a bit.
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