Greg and Mandy's Travels

A relaxed start to the day, with a wander down to yet another plaza for a cup of coffee. They’d actually been to barista school – texturised froth and art on top.

Lugged our bags over the cobbles on our longest walk yet to transport, and eventually found the swank train station with lots of non-Spanish eating options (if you get my drift). Spain seems to have outlawed plastic straws to help the environment (which is good), but then put my drink in a paper bag, my fries in a second, and my burger in a third. Then, because I couldn’t carry them all, put the three bags inside a large fourth one, together with two ketchups and eighteen napkins.…

Same story all over the world in cities with rivers. The city is built on one side of the river, and the gentry settle there. The poorer classes, or perhaps the ethnic minorities, settle on the other bank, and have to trudge over the river each day to get to their work. Nobody wants to live on the other side of the river, and you can’t give away the land. Eventually, when the prices on the city side get out of hand, people gaze wistfully at the decaying and crammed accomodation on the other bank, and this phenomenon that we call ‘urban renewal’ starts.…

Have you ever thrown a party, and nobody came? Bet you didn’t do it to the extent that Seville did. But the story starts a few hundred years ago, way back around 1492 when the Spanish kings sent Christopher Columbus out to discover a new way to India, and ran into America. At the time, Spain and Portugal were engaged in a fierce rivalry to claim every piece of the ‘non-Christian’ world, especially in South America, and they were fighting each other, as well as the peoples they were overrunning.

Well, the Pope thought it unseemly that two catholic nations were fighting each other, got them together in Spain in 1494, and signed the Treaty of Tordesillas which neatly divided the ‘New World’ of the Americas between the two superpowers by drawing a north-to-south line of demarcation in the Atlantic Ocean.…

Last morning in Portugal so we headed down to the main square in search of our last Portuguese tart. This time they made us a cappuccino by pouring a shot, then squirting canned cream on the top! At least a little more life in the place on a Saturday morning with a market being set up in the town square. A little different to markets back home that start around 6am, and people pack up by lunchtime. Here they were still unfolding their tables at 10am and pulling their stock out of the cars.

Left the apartment around 11, and rolled our way down to the bus station where we sat patiently until the bus arrived just after noon.…

You know that feeling you get when you go to a summer resort town in the winter. The ice cream shops are boarded up. The fairground rides are all wrapped, and the shopkeepers stand around forlornly. Well, that’s what Faro is like. It seemed that there was one tourist bus in town today. They alighted as a pack with lanyards around their necks, and trudged up the mall in a group through the rain. We actually saw one tour vendor bring in his boards and lock up the shop after the group went past, and it wasn’t even lunchtime.

And the weather didn’t spare us either.…

Moved from the top of Portugal to the bottom of the country today. After waking yet again to the enticing smell of Portuguese tarts being baked outside our bedroom window, we went for our morning coffee and to purchase supplies for the day ahead.

Tugged our bags back down the hill to the station, and boarded the morning IC train back to Lisbon. Train was very crowded, but everybody wears masks. People are so compliant, and put them on religiously when they go into shops or public transport. Nobody wants to assert their constitutional right to be a public nuisance, and so everybody can get on with their life.…

Our last day in Porto. Went out for breakfast at the renowned Confeitaria do Bolhão, conveniently situated out our back window. Well, at least we had to have some compensation. Our bedroom window backs on to the bakery kitchen, and the lights are on at 4am with the exhaust fans running at full bore as they start the daily baking. The wafting smell of Portuguese tarts drifts into our room, and there was really nothing for it but to go and sample the wares.

The weather closed in around lunchtime as we walked down to the river and along the old city walls to the plaza for lunch.…

No great rush this morning, so a leisurely breakfast, did some washing in the hope that it would dry before we leave, and headed off to our morning free walking tour of the city, via a coffee shop of course. There were 18 in our tour group, and we spent three hours getting a potted view of the history of Porto from our architect tour guide – Jaime. As is usual, his life is a real mixture. If I can remember, he was born to a Jewish mother in Angola which was a Portuguese colony at the time. He then came to Portugal before living in India and studying in Mexico, before going to Argentina, marrying and staying.…

But its always onwards and upwards when you are on a holiday so, summoned by the alarm, we were out of the apartment before 7am, and trundling off over the cobbles on our way to the station. Certainly gave us a good cardio workout for the morning as we toiled up the hills pulling our suitcases, and the sunrise in the morning was lovely from the top. Have I mentioned how hilly Lisbon is?

Caught the 7:30am train north towards Porto, but took a pit stop half way in Coimbra to break up the trip. Nice town, great pastries. Came across the ruins of the torture chambers of the Portuguese inquisition.…

You’ve heard of tiny houses, but this was a tiny apartment. The bed folded out of the wall, as long as you folded the table and chairs away first to give it room. The suitcases had to live on the kitchen floor (which was also the dining room floor and the entrance floor). Not only couldn’t you swing a cat in there, you couldn’t fit it in. The cupboards didn’t have handles to save space. Actually a very clever piece of design where a single inch wasn’t wasted. Lucky we were neither tall nor overweight, or we wouldn’t have got in.…