Our destination was Europcar located in the northeast section of Lisbon. This taxi driver got us there in record time. All good. I had arranged and paid for the rental car quite some time ago. They needed our visa card and passports. Plus, we purchased the EZPass where the car is read by an automatic toll system as many of the Portugese roads are tolled. This means we don't have to stop at the tolls! Our Visa will be charged. In addition, Lana was added as a second driver. This will be necessary for the wine tastings as Lana is always the designated driver. We have a five speed FIAT hatchback that is pretty comfortable and carries our three suitcases easily. Air conditioning is a must!!!
We are both pretty anxious about a car rental in Europe as a result of bad experiences on past vacations with the GPS units. We have never had a good experience as they either break down, don't work with the address provided or provide wrong directions. Grrr! We borrowed a GPS from friends and loaded a map of Portugal/Spain. Just to mitigate any potential problems we asked for directions from Europcar to get us out of Lisbon and on the way towards Cabo da Roca. Pretty easy directions out of Lisbon which were appreciated as immediately the GPS unit wouldn't recognize anything and thought we were in Canada. This lasted for about 10 minutes with both of us almost getting sick to our stomachs. After 10 minutes, the GPS finally hooked up the satellite and provided directions. Phew!!!!
Our first destination was Cabo da Roca which is the westernmost extent of land in continental Europe. Plus, the views were supposed to be incredible. Problem is the GPS took us down into a dirt road that winded around a mountain forest and obviously wrong. We got our car back on a main road after about 30 minutes... not a good start....
We dropped that destination and went with our second destination of Santuário de Peninha (small chapel on top of a hill with great views). Yes, the views were outstanding as it is perched on a tall hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Beautiful blue skies and it got windy so that cooled us off. More uphill walking to get there. We stopped in the shade and ate our sandwiches as it was after 12 noon. You cannot go into this old building. Other tourists taking many photos. We decided no photos of the ocean as a camera shot can't do the view justice.
Our next two stops we can combine into one car park as they are located reasonable close together. The GPS unit worked again and took us into the Sintra hills where the Pena National Palace and Castelo dos Mouros were located. As we were driving this very winding road on the hill it became apparent very quickly we may not find parking and they could mean a 2-3 km hike straight up hill. Lana has very good 'parking karma' and it happened again as we lucked into a spot that was between both attractions and very close. Our car fit perfectly as you can see from the photo below (the first car in the pic). Of course Lana needed to crawl over the driver's seat to get out of the car. Wow, our luck is changing.
Our first stop is the Pena National Palace. We get in a queue to purchase tickets for both attractions. Total price for two attractions and two persons was 41Euro. Our friend Wolfgang recommended both castles. Basically, the Pena National Palace was built in the 19th Century with influences from Moorish and Manueline styles of architecture. You can see this from the pics below. Guess what? Another long climb up some pretty steep walks to get to the palace. Many people were either resting on the way up or took a tram for an extra price. Plus, it is very hot today.
To actually tour the inside of the palace you get in a queue and shuffle along after the people ahead of you. Bonus is you get to see how royalty lived in this palace. Interesting though that this palace was originally built as a monastery. The views from the palace were of the Atlantic ocean and the surrounding forests and hills so that was appreciated. As well, you can walk around the entire huge park.
I got this picture off the internet as I wasn't flying over the palace today. ;-)
The colours and the styles are out of a fairy tale.
Simply beautiful!
Palace surrounded by foliage and trees.
Royal emblem from the ceiling on one of the rooms in the palace.
Dining room.
Triton (rising from the sea) at the entrance.
flat surface painting that looks 3 dimensional.
Columns of sea coral by the entrance.
We love this place as you can see from the pics.
Incredible entrance!
Typical tiles influenced by the time of the Moors in Portugal.
Chandelier made to look like flowers (glass).
We left the Pena palace and walked up another steep incline/road to get to the Castelo dos Mouros (Castle of the Moors). Its history dates to the 8th Century when the Moors (Muslims) ruled the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal/Spain). A few hundred years ago some earthquakes destroyed much of the walls as you will see from the photos. It must have been quite imposing over the centuries before the quake damage.
They fly the flag of the Arab world as a homage to the historical presence of the Moors.
Hey, many many more stairs to climb! But the views from the top were outrageous.
The Castle of the Moors is on a hill just below the Pena National Palace as you can see from this photo taken towards the Pena Palace.
Lana finally relaxing at the top. Check out the view and the Atlantic in the distance. As you will note, she is carrying her umbrella. If it is sunny then Lana is using her umbrella to shade herself from the sun--typical Asian :)
One of the towers.
Randy just finished conquering the Moors for a second time.
After all that fighting, resting on my laurels.
Pulled out of the parking with our next destination the seaside town of Nazaré. I became intrigued by this town as it is famous in the surfing community. Some of the tallest waves in the world have been known to local surfers. The actual tall wave surfing occurs north of Nazaré. Our goal was to check on this town as it was by the sea and kinda on the way to our night destination being Coimbra.
Good news as the GPS unit recognized the town address and took us right to the beach area. Wow, this was quite unexpected in terms of what we found. Coming into town along the street and sitting in chairs on sidewalks and on the road were ladies advertising rooms for rent! Very unusual!
This long and wide natural beach is nestled between cliffs on the north side and a small hill on the south side. There were tens of thousands of people here! There was no parking to find anywhere near the beach. Traffic moved extremely slowly. Many tourist restaurants and souvenir shops. I can't say I have ever seen this before.
Great idea for smokers. Rather than littering the beach/sand with their butts you take this ashtray with you. Brilliant! Plus, in Europe many people smoke.
Thousands of beach cabanas!
A few surfers on short boards and long boards. This dude standing on his surf board using a paddle is a first for me.
Thousands of beach goers with beach umbrellas. You could look for quite a large distance and see nothing but.
The boardwalk between the street and the beach. As you can see the buildings are right along the beach.
More cabanas!
Yes, super crowded! Lana has "butt envy" as there are lots of women walking around wearing dental floss bikini's and she's noticed the prominent behinds on some of the women. Lana wishes she had even a small portion of the behinds she's seeing here LOL.
Looking down towards the south end of this extremely long beach.
We parked our car very far away from the beach and up a steep and long hill climb from the beach. It will be a long upward walk back to the car later. We had to be careful to memorize our route so we could find our car later. When we got to the beach I took off my shoes and socks to feel the sand as we walked to the water. A great setting and fun place to hang out. Waves, water, people, energy yet relaxing.
Next decision was to find a place to eat before we travelled to our Pousada. We walked up a narrow side street and found a small place that looked inviting. Lana ordered the Bifana and I ordered the Alheira. Plus, I had to have a cold beer! Ricardo was our server and we had some good chats about all sorts of things as they weren't too busy. He explained in Portugal there were two main beer; Super Bock and Sagres. I ordered on Super Bock and then another. Delicious. The food was actually pretty good! We were surprised.
Super Bock beer with Alheira dish. Alheira is a Portugese sausage that never uses pork as an ingredient. The reason is the origin is Jewish. The sausage was so tasty. The fries were excellent and the egg good.
Lana's Bifana dish was excellent as well. Like thinly sliced boneless pork loin seasoned with spices.
We did find our car and then time to enter the address of our Pousada. The GPS could not find the address nor the name of the Pousada. YIKES! I knew the address was officially in Condeixa so we used that as our destination. Fortunately, in Vancouver I had printed out Google Map directions. The second occasion today where the GPS was not registering the address.
A long drive on some freeways mostly. I have to say that driving these toll road freeways impressed me with just how fast the Portugese like to drive. It was like being on the German autobahn, but in this case they have a 120 speed limit. I was passed on many occasions by drivers going at least 200 km/hour. The three lane sections are driven like in Germany where the slowest drivers stay in the right lane. You only use the middle lane to pass the slower drivers in the right lane and when you need to pull out of the left lane as someone is coming up quickly. We saw one example where a super fast driver pulled right up on the guy's bumper and almost crashed.
We pulled off the freeway at the appropriate offramp, but as Lana was turning off the GPS voice we passed the turnoff to get us to Condeixa! Now we were stuck going the wrong way on another long toll road. Found a place to make a loop around and found the turnoff and then used the printed directions to get us to our Pousada. We arrived around 20:30 and it was getting dark.
Arrival at Pousada Condeixa Coimbra. Yeh!!!! We are both frustrated with the GPS, but we got here. The clerk helped us to our room. This is a place where the key is placed inside the room in a sensor that operates all electrical in the room. I booked it through hotels.com We love our room as it is spacious, king size bed, bathtub for Lana and great view of the lawn in the back and surrounding countryside. Our room includes breakfast.
Today we walked about 10 kms. Much of this was uphill. Another day of good exercise to help deal with the calories. It is now late and Lana is watching tv. Tomorrow, our final destination with be the Douro Valley!
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