pleasant portugal

hello, esther here. I was told my blogs were more interesting than Morgan's, so this one's for you ben! ;)
so we went to portugal at easter and it far exceeded all my expectations! After arising at an early 2am on Good Friday morning, we waited at the bus stop from 3-3.45am in the freezing wind to then realise that the buses were operating on a saturday timetable! Fortunately one came at 4 and we managed to make the next bus leaving from victoria to stansted. and yes, everytime we have a ridiculously early flight from stansted, I always say I'll never do that again....only to do it again :( same goes for ryanair, but this time we paid a whole £4 extra to get priority boarding - will definitely be doing that in the future.

So we arrived in Porto at about 9am and navigated our way to the hotel which was right on top of the only hill on the north side of the river. We then walked across the cool bridge (the one everyone talks about with 2 levels - one for pedestrians and one for cars) and made our way down to the other side where all the port houses were. We didn't know much about Porto before going there but after our short walk we were already loving it! Plus the weather was beautiful and sunny, blue skies :) At this stage we decided to try some local foods...perhaps not the best idea..just some weird kind of sausage which I didn't fully appreciate! After an hour boat trip down the Douro River passing under the 5 bridges, we then made our way up the hill on the south side of the river (the city of Gaia) to Graham's winery. Once reaching the top, we were greeted with an awesome view over to the old side of Porto. We went on a guided tour given by a 21yr old british(!) dude around the winery - loads of huge barrels filled with port! The smell was really nice as they had been emptying a barrel the day before. It was interesting, I learnt a few things.... such as they have to keep a certain amount of bottles (something like 200) of port for each year declared a vintage year (3 per decade) and they house them in these cool cellars; they have all these old books recording all the trading going on with the british; they grow all their grapes in the Douro valley and to get white port they just don't squeeze the skins; up until recently, all grape squashing was done by men & their feet and many other wineries still do this today; and, I never knew of the existence or ruby or white port! Both of which were absolutely delicious (I'm not a huge tawny port fan). Following the tour we got to taste all three = yum :) We then crossed back to the north side and began working through my list of things to see - azulejos(blue&white-tiled)-covered churches; a really cool bookshop with an antique red staircase inside; the Sao Francisco church; and finally a walk along the Ribeira which is the World Heritage listed area along the river, which is where I decided we were going to eat - much to morgan's dissatisfaction, as it was after all in the most tourist-populated area. And as morgan predicted, the food was terrible. Oh well ;)

Saturday morning, after a breakfast of "cake" (sadly it's hard to find tea in Portugal..plenty of espressos) we caught a 2hr43 train trip to Lisbon - highest speed we reached was 220km/hr. Such a cool way to see the country...we did plenty of reading throughout the trip and got to see lots too, all from the comfort of our seats :) Interesting how a lot of Portugal is quite run-down, it reminded me of a cross between dirty Egypt and pretty Italy...interesting. After working out where we were, we made our way into Baixa (the centre of town) where we checked out the local square; survived a 5minute freak storm; walked around the pedestrianised streets; saw the local friendly policeman on Gob-style transport who would happily pose with tourists for photos; sat in Rossio square to eat lunch and saw the indian people playing their panpipes...seriously, we've seen them in almost every city we go to! Then we found our hotel which was embarassingly 5-star quality - it was the cheapest one I could find, honestly!! Next a trip to Belem, where we treated ourselves with the delights of some custard tarts + tea + port...soooo good. This place was so busy we had to wait in a queue first! Then we checked out Jeronimos Monastery and the Monument of Discoveries and caught the tram back into the town centre and walked up the hills right to the very top to St Jorge's Castle where we were able to see out over the whole city of Lisbon. Watched the sunset and walked around the old streets of the Alfama which was a real lovely area - nice and quiet - and we found THE best restaurant there and enjoyed some great food & wine.

On Easter Sunday we spent the day in Sintra, which is a 30min train trip west of Lisbon. We visited the most amazing fantasy-style palace, Palácio da Pena and then spent the rest of the morning walking around the grounds - and losing my navigational skills :( - and walking up a mountain to what must've been one of the highest points in Lisbon. It was so windy, we felt like we were going to be blown off! I think this would have to be one of my highlights. We then visited another palace, Quinta da Regaleira, which I call the fairytale castle. Wandering around the beautiful gardens (lots of wisteria!) we stumbled upon a cave and followed the dark tunnel for quite a while until we found ourselves at the bottom of what was an initiation well...pretty crazy. We found this door which led into pitch-blackness so tried to use our mobile phones and take photos to light everything up but eventually decided we perhaps weren't meant to go down there... strange gardens really. Back in Lisbon we wandered around the quiet streets of Bairro Alto and ordered some pizza from a local cafe which they took out of the freezer and chucked into the microwave!! actually tasted pretty good, and meant we got to hang out with the locals and watch barcelona play on the tv ;)

Monday we were up early to catch a bus for 3.5hrs to Praia da Rocha. The bus dropped us off and we had no idea where to go! We managed to spy a tourist information sign and eventually found our hotel. There's basically just one main street with the hotels on it and from there you just walk down to what must be the biggest expanses of beach I've ever seen (in terms of depth that is). Not much to do really but lie on the beach! so that's what we did, and morgan even braved the water. So we had a nice relaxing end to our trip, and in 18 degree weather which was lovely!!

all in all, thoroughly enjoyed portugal, would definitely go back to Porto again and do one of the all day cruises into the Douro Valley and more port-tasting.
see photos here