Europe – Portugal

We’re off travelling again for a few weeks.  We decided to start in Portugal.

We spent about 3 days in Lisbon mainly recovering from jet lag and exploring the more touristy parts of the town while doing so. Lisbon is relatively modern by European standards. A major earthquake (estimated at 8.5 to 9.0 Richter) on November 1st in 1755 destroyed much of the city. This was shortly followed by a tsunami that destroyed much of the south coast and caused more damage to Lisbon. As the triple-threat completed, the candles the population had lit for the commemoration of All Saints Day ignited massive fires throughout the city.  Estimates vary but it seems around half the population was killed and around 85% of the buildings destroyed. The city engineers used this destruction as an opportunity to rebuild the city with a more modern layout including some wider roads and many public squares.  It is still very cramped by our standards but much better than it could have been.

 

Fish and seafood are definitely the most popular foods here.  Dinners were heavily tilted in favour of fish, in particular cod.  Oddly, the country doesn’t seem to have any domestic cod and imports most of it from Norway.  Sardines are a big thing here (sorry).  They are popular for any meal.  This tourist shop in Lisbon only sells sardines.  You go in and buy the can with your birth year on it.

From Lisbon, we travelled south in the Algarve area to walk several sections of the Rota Vicentina (Fisherman’s Trail).  The tour group we were with had said we’d do between 6 and 10 kilometres each day.  Fortunately we had several people with us who had equipment to actually measure the distances.  Most days were around 15k and had significant amounts of up and down.  Our legs were aching.  But the scenery was beautiful and the dinners excellent if a little too wine-soaked.

Between the walks, we visited several towns, a tile factory where we painted our own tile, a pottery studio, forts, a distillery, a bakery where we made our own bread for lunch and several nice restaurants.  Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of two of the more interesting forts.  Both were at the top of high cliffs.  I think one was about 35 metres up and the other was closer to 75 metres above the sea.  The previously mentioned tsunami had destroyed both of them.  I acquired a new respected for the height and power of a tsunami while seeing those.

Here is a shot of one town we stayed in taken from a section of our walk.

 

We are now back in Lisbon letting our legs recover while we figure out our next stop.