We went to pick up our wedding photos from the photographer yesterday, and they look GREAT!! We will upload some of those pictures shortly since we have most of them on digital file. Now we just have to pick the winner to use for our Thank You card.
I went with mike and a few of his friends to a track on Sunday. This is the first for most of us. I wasn't planning to go at first since only the boys signed up for it, but after much convincing from Mike, I went. And I'm glad I did. Even though I didn't get drive and experience the fun and adrenalain like the boys, but being a co-pilot like the ones in rally racing was really fun too. I learned a lot from the course instructors. Ways to drive efficiently on the race track and ways they apply to daily driving. I will be uploading some of the pictures of the day. Next things we need to do now is to get a daily stick shift car!
one more thing to add to the To-Accomplish list:
*learn track driving
During our trip to Portugal, Mike and I came up with a list of things we would like to accomplish together when we return to Vancouver. Here's a few things from the list.
* learn to speak Japanese
* learn to speak Spanish
* take dancing lessons and when we are good enough - enter competitions
* go swimming on a regular basis
* take bikram lessons together
.....
Life is short, we should seize the day and do something that we really enjoy.
Mike and I are back in vancouver. It was no easy flight back. Even though we fly business class for both ways, it's still quite exhausting. Our itinerary is to depart Lisboa at 12:30pm to Newark NYC. Have a 2 hours lay over there, and then to Toronto, and have a 3 hours lay over there, THEN finally head to Vancouver. But that only happens in a perfect world.
But in reality, when we got to Newark NYC, we realized our original flight to Toronto got cancelled. So we have to re-schedule to a later flight, which now become a 3 hr lay over in Newark, and we have to connect to the flight to vancouver right away. During the original 3 hrs lay over in toronto, I was hoping to meet up with my parents at the airport to see them before i got back, and give them the tarts and gifts we got them in portugal. But we have to text message them to cancel.
We finally boarded the flight in Newark to Toronto, and it welcome us with one delay after another. We didn't take off until an hr after the scheduled time. When we arrived to toronto, we rushed through custom and baggage. And on the way to catch the shuttle to the next terminal for the connecting flight, the staff told us not to bother as it will depart in 5 minutes. There's no way we can make it there on time. So we have to re-schedule once again. Now we are to fly out the next morning at 9am. I was actually glad we missed it since I really want to see my family. I miss everyone and milo. And I know they want to see me just the same. I called my parents to pick us up at the airport. At home, we showed them all the pictures we took during the trip. We chatted a little before we head to bed.
We got on the flight this morning and finally arrived in Vancouver. It took us literally an entire day to get back. All i can say is we are totally exhausted.
I'm back in Vancouver! I know I haven't update all of you regarding our last 3 days in Lisboa. Reason being is that our hotel in lisboa is charging us $22 euro per day for internet!! I would imagine internet access would be more rare and expensive in small towns in Portugal. But apparently Lisboa is the most expensive. The other 2 towns we were at prior to this only cost $10 euro/day and $5 euro/day. Go figure. Thus, i'll do the update of the last 3 days in this post.
We drove into Lisboa from evora. We returned the car in the city since Lisboa is afterall the capital city of Portugal, which mean they do have subway and transit systems. But overall, I can probably sum up our stay in the city in two words. Walking and Tourist. Maybe we have been spoiled by the ruralness (not sure if there's such a word) and the rawness of the portugese culture the other 2 small towns had offered. It's like we were the only ones there exploring the country. Whereas lisboa is a whole other story. It is just like another european big city to us. Tons of tourist, urban, cars, subway and locals that speaks english. It was a little dissapointing. We didn't really feel so inspire to explore the city. B/c all we really have to do is follow where the crowd of tourists goes. We have also retired our portugese phrase book as most locals speaks english to us automatically.
Most of our touring were done on foot. As our hotel was located in part of downtown, we walked to all the tourist spots aournd and also to get ourself oriented on the first day we got there. The second day we did a walking tour following our Lonely Planet Guide book. Despite it's a WALKING tour and they have given us a map and written directions of where to go and what to see, we still managed to constantly get ourselve lost! We never ended up finishing the suggested 2 hours walking tour. It took us that amount of time half way. Then we got totally lost and end up taking a short cut to the final point of the walking tour. Roads in Portugal are not tourist friendly. But we did make a detour to this thing call Theives Market. They only have it on saturday. It's like a big garage sale in this square. There are both new and old things at the stands. But I'm not surprise if some of them are actually theives. Some of those people looks like the type that you would find on Hasting Street in Vancouver. The last day, we got ourselve a one day transit pass. Took the tram to yet another tourist spot, where they are famous for the Portugese custard tart. We bought 1.5 dozens. Mike ate 8 of them. I had 2. The rest were for my family. After that, we took the tram + subway to Oriente where this famous stadium (equivelent to ACC for toronto) and this big shopping mall located. Then we hop onto the subway again to Baixa Chaido. This cool, hip area to with small boutique shops and interesting restuarants equivelent to Queen Street west in toronto). Since it starting pouring out, couldn't really do much walking. So we went back to the hotel and chillax until dinner time. Then we went back to Baixa Chaido to find a cool dinner spot for our last night there. Ended up going to the Brazilian restuarant. Mike had duck meat and I had fillet mignon brazilian style. For dessert, I had a creme w/ passion fruit/ginger/peach, and mike had a pear sorbet with vodka. The food is pretty awesome. We didn't really buy anything in portugal. Our expenses were only for 3 things. Transportation, accomadation and FOOD!!! We spent $3 euro for sight-seeing. It's the entrance fee to the bone chapel in Evora. All the other stuff is either free There's really nothing much there is to buy. Their stuff is not exactly cheaper nor nicer. Nothing that i can't get in North america. Plus we're not really a shopping travellers.
Overall, i really like portugal. Food, people and culture. I would definately go back again. This time to the northern cities.
Quite an advanture we have today. As we are done with Evora, we decided to visit the cities around evora. We visited Viana do Alentejo, Portel, Reguengos de Monsaraz, Sao Pedro do Corval and Estremoz. The drive was super fun during the day, but once it got dark, it was quite intense. The roads were dark (i say 80% of the highway has no street light), whindy and the sky was spitting on and off. Given that we have no cell phone, some unprecise street mapping from our GPS system as most of those are country farm area, we thought we were a little crazy. But it was definately worth it!
Highlight of the day, we only spent 11 euro all day (no including gas, i estimate 1/2 a tan)! We got into Estremoz at 9pm and found out that we only have 15 euro in our name (left the rest in the hotel), and we haven't ate since we left Evora in the morning. So we went to what seems to be a local resto hang out, thought we would just order an appetizer to hold our hunger until we get back to evora. We ordered 2 special of the day, chicken w/fries (btw, everything in portugal comes with potato on the side, either be fries, potato chips or steam potatos) and bacalhau (fish). We didn't get any drink since we were afraid we can't afford it. When the waiter came to us with the bill, it was only 7,89 euro!!! That's the cheapest dinner we have since we got to portugal. Our avg dinner cost 40 euro each night. And this is the first night we didn't have wine with our meal. We actually had a little wine withdrawal. Since we got here, we avg about half a bottle of wine a day. So back to the story, you ask how is it 11 euro that we spent? On the way back to evora, we realized we have to pay toll for the motorway. We were ready to pull out our canadian bills that we still kept in our wallet. Lucky us it only cost us 2,20 euro. The day worked out to be perfect!
Tomorrow we will be leaving Evora and heading into Lisbao. We will be returning our rental as Lisboa has a pretty good subway system. Can't wait to take the subway!
Before I go, there's a few things we noticed in Portugal.
- Portugal has the best tasting fries we ever had! It's reallly good everywhere, not just isolated restaurant.
- There's a lot of stray dogs and cats
- There is bound to have a Chinese person open a store or restaurant any where. No matter how remote or small the city is.
- hmmm..there's more..can't remember right now..will update..
Today we live a life of a local portugese. We heading out in the afternoon into town. Parked our car in one of the few free parking lot in the city (thanks to the tips of our hotel front desk person). Did i tell you guys that we got a parking ticket yesterday?! We parked at a resident parking. Apparently we were lucky since they only gave us a ticket for 6,55 euro, while a parking ticket usually cost 30 euro. Since we no access of paying our ticket over ATM and have no euro cheque to mail, we have to go directly to Sitee (transportation office) to pay for our ticket. Once that's done, we walked to a local sandwich shop for a bite. Once we got out, we saw this street stand of roasted chestnuts which we can't pass for. So we got a cone of chestnuts for 1.50 euro. While we eating our hot roasted chestnuts, heading toward to a local supermarket for grocery, guess what we saw. A pastry store with portugese egg custer tarts. We just had to go in. We ordered an egg custer tart, an almond tart and mike got a cup of expresso. Within one block, we made three food stop, can't do any better than that. Finally we got our grocery, it started raining, so we head to the car and back to the hotel. Once we got back to the hotel, we notice the parking is FULL, and we see people other than the ones that works there. I swear, for the last 2 days we were there, i'm pretty certain that mike and i are the only couple that lives there. B/c other than hotel staff, we haven't seen one single guest. All of a sudden, we see guests walking in and out, in the lounge, in the bar, in the restaurant, packed out the parking lot. So weird.
Anyways, we headed back out for dinner. Went to this place every book say it's the pick of the town. (i know i know, we are suppose to go venture, but we'll just try this one first). Despite the reputation of the resturant, we find the food ok. Maybe it's just not our kind of food. Oh well.
Tomorrow we will drive to the cities around Evora since we already know evora like the back of our hands. Hopefully we'll find some jem around here.
Today is another tiring day. We drove into Evora (it's a mile away from our hotel) and we pretty much walked around all day. We walked for at least 6 hrs straight and I think we hit all the scenic point there is in town. OH, we finally saw asian tourist! A bunch of them. We saw this japanese tour at one scenic point. It's a bunch of old japanese men and women. There was also a young asian couple. We also saw quite a number of other tourists that are like us. Each holding their own copy of a map of Evora and a copy of the lonely planet guide book. That made me feel some what at ease. Just knowing that we are not the only tourist in town. We hit up another local restaurant today. Food was great as usual. We decided that tomorrow, we will detach our dinner decision from the guide book or other's suggestions but to try our own luck. We figuere that since this is such a small town, we can't really go wrong at any one of the local food joints. Whereas in a big city, there are bigger range between good and bad food joints.
Tomorrow we will walk around some more. Go to the local market, and do some more city search.
We are in Evora! So tired. today is our travel day. Woke up early at 9am (we call this early now), and Budget dropped off the rental car for us at the hotel. It's a manual 4 door Ford Fiesta, which is a fordfocus in canada. We set up our gps on mike's laptop and began our journey. First stop, into the town of albufeira. Today has been a little cloudy and windy. Glad we had all the sunshine during the time we were at the resort. Did some site seeing and pictures taking then head to our next stop Beja, which is a town we thought we passed by before hitting Evora. During the drive on the motorway, we notice they put up signs along the way as we pass by scenic spots. After seeing several of them, we couldn't help but stop at one call Castro
Verde (as we understand it's a castle of some sort). We made our little detour into the little town hoping to see the castro. But after many turns around those european streets, we saw a castle looking like building, but not so sure it that is really the scenic point that we intent to see. Oh well. Off to the motorway again.
After an hour or so on the motorway we got to Evora! The gps mapping pretty much useless as they don't have the name for most of the street. They are just called "local street" on the computer. But since it's a small town and we have a book on portugal, plus our hotel is apparently a scenic site in the city, we manage to find it with some looking. After much driving all day, we were exhausted. But given the expansive and lack of dinner choice in the hotel, we ask the reception at the hotel for a good local joint to eat, then drove into town for some good old local dinner. It was SOOOO good. It's a small family own restaurant. No one that goes there order from the menu, they just tell the son or dad of the place to bring them whatever is good for the day. We had this thing call "black pork" which is famous in this
town. It's pig which they grow that they do not trap in pens. They are allow to run freely in the farm, thus "black". After the meal, we went back to the hotel and here i am.
We'll be doing sight seeing in town the next few days. Evora is a really old city, with many historic sites. Hope we wont' get lost!
p.s. i'm starting to think people in portugal has never seen chinese people. We seems to get alot of looks from local and even tourists! what the heck. I guess not alot of asian goes to portugal. So far, i think we saw like 3 asian, NOT chinese, asian of some sort.
btw..we loaded our pix on flickr, check back to see as we will load pix on it daily.
Photos
Today will be our last day in this town. At the restaurant where we had dinner last night, we met this holland couple. They have a cottage here and been coming to portugal for 23 years. We chatted alot with them and the family that runs the restaurant. According to the couple, that restaurant has to best Chicken Piri Piri (bar-b-q chicken with hot sauce) in town. They are a close friends with the family too since they eat there whenever they are in town from holland. The chicken was
awesome. We also tried the town special drink Almond Liqure. It's a strong liquor they serve after the meal. It taste like concentrated almond tofu. A little FYI, all the restaurant here serve free Port wine at the end of the meal. And drinking wine seems like mandatory in portuagal since they are also a wine country. So since we got here, we drink everyday. Mike was saying last night that he seen me drink more wine then he ever seen me dink in 4 years. hahaha..but they are really good. We still need to try one of the specialty Green Wine.
So back to today update..we didnt do much. Went to the supermarket across the street from the hotel to get our breakfast for the next few days, and got some on the road snacks for tomorrow road trip. Took a long walk on the beach and took alot of pic of the place since it's our last day. We'll load them on flickr after dinner. Go check it out!
Tonight we will go have some tapas for dinner. Try their famous grill sardine. We'll let you know how that goes. Then we have to plan out where to go tomorrow. Not sure if i'll have internet tomorrow...we'll see.
adeus!
Today we did more tanning and swimming. Tomorrow will be our last day here in Albufeira. Next stop will be Evora. We will be renting a car on monday. We calculated taking bus/taxi would cost us the same or more if we are to rent a car. Plus we get more flexibility if we rent.
First we will drive around the cities/towns around here, then will head to Evora via the motorway (highway). A local here we met yesterday told us a nice scenic route to get there. Can't wait to start some real sight seeing since we are starting to get restless from tanning, eating and swimming the last 2 days.
I'm now in portugal!! the hotel is beautiful. We are staying at Sheraton Algarve. Even though it took us a few bus/taxi transfer to get here from the airport, it's all worth it. It's right by the beach and it's more like a resort than a hotel.
The weather is great. We sun tan and swam on the beach/pool today. The only thing is this place is a little away from town. So we either have to eat at the restaurants inside the hotel (expensive), or eat at the local restuarants just outside the hotel. Even though they are less expensive then the hotel, but i'm sure they are also tourist trap comparing to the ones more closer to the town. It's ok, we wanted to relax the first few days anyways. We will leave here on monday and head to Evora, a more rural town. There should be more sightseeing there.
