Saturday 3rd December 2022
We have a big day planned today. We are on our way just before 8am. Firstly we are hiking nearby and then hoping to drive 6-700km. The walk is along a boardwalk through a gorge along a river. It took 1hr 23mins to get to the trailhead at Passadiços do Paiva near Arouca in Portugal. We then caught a taxi from there to the trailhead at Espiunca which was a 19min drive along a winding road. We were on the trail by 9.50am after purchasing our ticket to walk online (1 euro each). We enjoyed a lovely walk along the boardwalk which was 8km one way. In some sections it was icy and very slippery. My shoes had me only do a couple of whoopsy-daisies but David was like he was ice skating. He was slipping all over the place and had to go slow with baby steps to avoid being on his bottom. It was our Piz Boe hike in the snow in reverse. At about the 7km mark we came to the longest suspension bridge in the world. It was called 516 Arouca because it was 516m long. It spanned the gorge at 175m high and was an impressive sight. We unfortunately couldn’t cross it as you had to have a ticket for a particular time and there were none available for today unless we went to the other side at Alvarenga and this was problematic time wise for us as we still had a long way to drive (12 euro each). After a quick lunch at the trailhead when we finished our walk we were on our way by 12.30pm. A great morning followed by a long afternoon of driving. The initial drive was through the most winding, narrow road with some amazing scenery, boulders, farms and little towns. We continued on and passed some more lovely scenery, went through at least 8 toll booths and drove 680km to Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain (14 euro). We arrived at our hotel along the motorway just in time to watch Australia play in their round of 16 World Cup match against in the cafeteria/pub where we were staying. English was problematic but with some help from another patron we managed to order some dinner and drinks, watch the game and pay the bill. There wasn’t much interest in the game by the pother patrons and we unfortunately lost. The temperature was on 2°C when we arrived and by the time we left the pub to go to our room it was 0°C. It was expected to be -2° overnight and still 0° at 9am tomorrow. A bit concerning that the roads might be icy but we will watch what the locals do before we leave.

Friday 2nd December 2022
We woke reasonably early because of the time zone change but still didn’t get away too early. We enjoyed a lovely breakfast included in our accommodation, attempted to chat with our Portuguese/French speaking hostess. It was challenging but we managed to get what we needed. I used google translate to thank her for a lovely stay, beautiful accommodation and breakfast. It always makes them smile. I tried to learn the correct pronunciation of a couple of words, and also that some of the words I was saying had different endings for different gender. Don’t know how they will handle this with the Non-binary people of today’s age. We headed back to the room for DB to formulate a plan for our city walk in Lisboa (Lisbon). I hate the way we change the spelling of places in other countries, so I always try to use the correct spelling. We headed off at about 10am for the short drive to Lisboa, we arrive there at about 11.30am, a little later than we had hoped. We secured a spot in another squeezy underground parking station. It had been tricky getting in to the city centre and as always I am in awe at David’s calmness in the midst of a challenging new city. He does so well. We head down to the esplanade along the waterfront which is surprisingly very crowded with tourists. It is probably the most tourists we have seen all holiday. Our first stop is Commerce Square and the equestrian statue of King José I. We then walked through the main shopping street of the city with boutiques, souvenirs shops, patisseries and restaurants lining the pedestrian mall. We then went to the Santa Justa Lift and then walked a distance to see the Sao Jorge Castle via Rossio Square, unfortunately there was a very long queue to get in and we didn’t really have time to wait. Today’s city visit is to be short as we need to drive at least 500km of our 3000km we still have to get to Ben’s by Tuesday afternoon. We walked all around the castle trying to find a vantage spot to view it from above but we should have realised that it was at the top of the hill and we needed a helicopter or a drone to view it.

“Sao Jorge Castle occupies a commanding position overlooking the city of Lisbon and the Tagus River. The strongly fortified citadel dates from medieval times and is located atop the highest hill in the historic centre of the city.” We should have read this description before we set out this morning and we would have saved ourselves about a 30min walk trying to see it. Oh well, it was a lovely walk through the back streets of Lisboa Old City with its colourful buildings and many mosaic tiled facades. It truly is beautiful. We continued back down to the city centre where we tried some street food from a couple of the Christmas market stalls. David had a suckling pig wrap with lettuce and straws (our crisp french fries) and I had a plate of mixed sausages. We then also had a little pork pie followed by a Portugese tart for dessert. No dinner for me tonight. After walking over 10km in 3.5 hours we decided to get on the road at about 3pm. We will struggle to make the required distance again today. We are definitely making life more difficult as each day goes on. The plan was for David to get us out of the city on to the motorway and then I would have a drive. Unfortunately for David, I was comatosed by then and couldn’t wake up enough to drive. He managed to drive a total of 340km, another fail, we wanted to do 500km today.

“Lisbon is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2.”

“Commerce Square, which was completely rebuilt after the devastating earthquake of 1755. It is 35,000m2 with the equestrian statue of King José I.“

“Santa Justa Lift is a vertical street lift which offers views over the downtown area, the Rossio Square and the Sao Jorge Castle.The lift was built in 1902 and was originally powered by steam before being converted to electricity in 1902.  It has a neogothic iron lace exterior and is an impressive piece of engineering. “

“Rossio Square has been one of Lisbon’s main squares since the Middle Ages, it is laid out in beautiful wave-patterned Portugese paving with two baroque fountains.”

Thursday 1st December 2022
Today is to be the start of our quick trip through Portugal. We left some of our breakfast groceries at the shop last night, so after a quick walk to purchase them again we were on our way at about 10am. We walked to the parking garage near our apartment, unfortunately the parking is quite expensive in the cities, we were only expecting 24hrs (25 euro) but unfortunately we were there 40 hours so it was 50 euro. Ouch! Oh well, we had a couple of good nights in Sevilla and the accommodation was pretty cheap. We headed on our way to Portugal, the traffic in Sevilla was quite hectic but once out on the motorway it was clear sailing. It was like a ghost freeway there was so little traffic. Whenever we came out of a tunnel David said it felt like we were the only survivors of the holocaust until he saw the next car. We finally crossed the border at 10.50am. This was a little time consuming as we came to a toll checkpoint where we had to register our credit card so it could charge us automatically via cameras and number plate recognition cameras. After working out how to set this up, we were on our way again. We then drove along the freeway for a short time, then David decided to head out towards the beach. This was unsuccessful as it was more time consuming and there wasn’t a great deal to see. We drove through the town of Olhao and a few others. In the end we popped back on the motorway and enjoyed the scenery from there. We stopped at Praia da Marinha and did a hike along the Seven Hanging Valleys trail. This was a coastal walk with views similar to that of the Twelve Apostles on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria or the rocks at Maitland Bay. It was a very pretty coastline with lovely white houses along the coast as well. We were lucky the rain was imminent but didn’t eventuate. Thank goodness. The walk took us about 2 hours and was a welcome break. We then continued on our way at around 3.30pm. We have had a time change as we crossed the border and we are now 11 hours behind Central Coast time. We were going to try to get as close to Lisbon as possible tonight. We drove through some beautiful lush green farmland. It appeared they just built the freeway away from all the towns as we hardly passed any in the afternoon drive. We fell a little short of Lisbon and are staying in a little room at a small town called Landeira. It is run by a lovely lady who only speaks Portugese and French, and very little English. We only have the basics of Portuguese again – Hello – Ola, Goodbye-Adeus, Please – Por Favor, Thankyou-Obrigardo, Yes-Sim, No-No and toilet. We managed to communicate most things but used google translate by talking into the speaker which converted it on the fly. Life has been made so much easier when you travel with the new technical tools. They are good for some things.