Portugal

1 country

2 people

3 ho(s)tels

4 hundred miles covered

5 souvenirs

6 cities

7 forms of transportation

8 -y degree weather

9 hundred+ pictures

10 days

Wow. Our trip to Portugal was fantastic! We loved everything about it. The country, the people, the language, the weather, the scenery, the prices, the food, the transportation... We had been hoping this trip would be one for the books, and we are happy to say it definitely was. So much so that we are wanting to make it back as many times as we can before we move back State-side.

We started in Porto. It is a very old, well-worn city with most buildings

covered in painted tiles.

Clerigos Tower

We learned the palm trees in Portugal are not originally native. They were brought back from India during the Age of Exploration.

Old fort from right after the end of Spanish rule. The Portuguese were adamant about never being ruled by another country again.

The coastline was surprisingly beautiful.

Painted tiles on a building

Overlooking the city from the Clerigos Tower

We took a boat cruise along the Duoro River. So pretty.

After spending 2.5 days in Porto, we traveled South to Conimbriga, an ancient Roman ruins site. We are suckers for history, especially of the Roman kind.

Lots of well-preserved tile mosaic floors.

House of Fountains

Huge. Beautiful.

After touring Conimbriga, we jumped on a bus and headed further South to Lisbon.

Torre de Belem

Beautiful!

A monument to mark where the Portuguese explorers, like Vasco de Gama and Henry the Navigator, left from the Port of Lisbon.

We watched Portugal play Norway. They won 1-0. It was so exciting!

We were also able to meet up with Tom, the owner/writer/manager of portugoal.net, the site Nathan has written articles for. He was a really nice guy and Nathan enjoyed chatting with him about Portugal's national team and all its players.

We love Cristiano Ronaldo.

Castelo de Sao Jorge

We took a day trip from Lisbon to Sintra. Really quaint town with a castle where the Portuguese royalty used to summer.

Painted glass tiles

Painted tiles in an outdoor space where the royalty cooled off. There are holes in the wall where water used to spray out.

Cabo de Roca: the most Western point in Europe

(aka the closest we have been to the US in our travels)

Then, we traveled even further South to Lagos in the Algarve. We stayed at a luxury bed and breakfast owned by a British couple. We learned the Algarve is the vacation hot spot for Brits and Germans.

We went a little East to the town of Albufeira to do an ATV tour. It was one of our favorite parts of the whole trip. We went for 4 hours/40 miles. Our tour guide, an English man named Rory, led us through lemon, orange, and cork orchards. The lemon was the sweetest we have ever smelled, the orange was the juiciest we have ever eaten, and the cork... well, we didn't know it was a fungus that grew on trees and could be harvested only every 9 years.

Our other favorite part of the trip was the grotto tour we took along the coast of Lagos in a tiny boat with an old Portuguese man. So breathtaking. The Lagos beaches were spectacular. The most gorgeous Nathan or I have ever seen.

The last two days of our trip consisted of an 8 hour bus ride all the way back up to Porto... (Seriously was not bad. We thought it was going to be awful, but were really grateful it wasn't.) A quiet night in Porto, and then a flight back to Germany the next day. We loved our time in Portugal. Loved. Loved. Loved. Anyone reading this: Go to Portugal!