Last week Adrianne and I spent a wonderful week in Portugal. The children stayed home with Oma and Nagypapa, which turned out to be great for everybody.We started our trip in Lissbon, where we visited and stayed with Ivo (Adrianne's cousin from Brazil). We really enjoyed his friends company. We had a downtown dinner with a group of friends from his PhD program, as well as a wonderful lunch prepared by his landlady and friend Alda. The wine, the octopus and the olive pate was delicious. We also visited Europe's largest aquarium, which was very nice.
Following Lissbon, we took to the coutryside with our rented car, and for the next five days visited and stayed in stunning castles from the XIII-XIV century (the castles were actually part of a network of goverment owned and operated properties called Pousadas).
We drive through the "Tuscany of Portugal" the Alentejo region. This region of rolling hills is dotted with whitewashed, walled villages, countless cork oaks, gnarled olive trees and wineyards. It is known for its food and wine, and we did enjoy both. The many well preserved castles and churches often show moorish motives, since Portugal was only reconquered by the christians some 800 years ago. Being outside the tourist season there were very few tourists.
At the end of our trip we joined HP's High Achiever celebration to which Adrianne was invited. We stayed in a five star resort outside of Sintra that is 40 minutes from Lissbon. It was really nice, but after eight days we did not mind going home to the kids. Next post is after our Greece trip in the middle of May.
