Thursday 9th June
We left Evora on Wednesday [1st] morning and drove to a town called Obidos where we spent the afternoon. It is an old walled town with cobbled streets and whitewashed buildings which was used as a present from Spanish princes to their brides. We first walked through the main street and stopped to have a coffee served in a biscuity cup with chocolate lining as we had been told about this by our friends from Morocco, Anne and Clyde so we thought we better try it. After you drink the coffee you eat the cup [saves dishes]. We found it a lovely quaint town and we decided to climb up the steps to walk on the ramparts and see the views of the surrounding countryside The scenery from the ramparts was great as we could see the entire town from there also across the valley with the terracotta roofed houses, vineyards and windmills. This took us about an hour as we stopped and talked to people as we went. It was a pleasant place to spend an afternoon and we even met some Australian’s who were doing a bus tour.
At about 4.30 we started of to our next campsite which was near a town called Nazare. where we basically had relaxing a couple of days catching up with washing, swimming in the pool and reading. We did meet a friendly Portuguese family who said that they would like to immigrate to Australia and were interested in asking all about it.
On Friday morning we headed towards Porto stopping along the way in a town called Coimbra. This is a university town situated on a hill overlooking a river and after finding a place to park we spent a few hours walking up and around the old part of the town through the narrow streets. Tired from the walk and the hot day we decided to head straight to a campsite in Magdelene situated about 11 km from Porto and arrived at about 5pm. We had been told by our friend Bradley that Porto was worth seeing so the next day we took a bus in the Porto. The bus ride was about 45 minutes and quite an experience, he drove very fast through the narrow streets and the nearness to the buildings and other cars was scary. A short walk from the bus stop we found the tourist information office and purchased a ticket for the tourist double Decker bus. This ticket included a day travel on the tourist bus, all local buses, a river cruise and a tour into a cellar of a port producer. We did all of this and more.
Lunch was spent at the Pizza Hut with bad service but good food and dinner was spent in a really nice restaurant where the service, food, atmosphere and the price were all excellent. Ewout had roasted pork that was succulent and tasty and Jenny had Sardines coated with crumbs and fried. After a busy day we got back to our camper at 9pm and crashed out until the morning.
Off again in the morning we drove to a beach side campsite out side of Viana do Castella. The beach looked great but unfortunately the place it renown for its windsurfing so you guess the weather, warm but windy. The wind was not as bad in the campground so we could still swim in the pool. We met lots of friendly people on the campsite, 3 Swiss lads who were there to windsurf, a nice Dutch couple who we spent the afternoon chatting and drinking with and a lovely English couple who we spent the next evening with and didn’t get to sleep until 1 in the morning as the time went so quick. Guy and Fran [the English couple] are also planning to see some of the Tour de France and we will try and meet them there.
We said out farewells in the afternoon and drove to a town called Lugo where we stopped overnight in a camperstop car park. It was quiet and there we four other motor homes there, one and English one. They told us that 5 minutes walk away there is a walled old part of the town, so in the morning we went for a walk and had a look. They were doing a lot of restoration work and there was a lot of scaffolding around many of the building. From there we drove to Ribadesella a town close to the coast. It took longer than expected as there were a lot of major road works going on so it was on and off the motorway most of the way, and then we had to stop and do some shopping.
Today we plan to leave the campsite and drive to Bilbao where we will spend the night in readiness to visit the Guggenheim Museum tomorrow. Should be interesting.
