Category: A Spanish/Portuguese Meander 2025
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Last blast in Lisbon
After a lazy morning by the pool, we headed out to the Mosteiro dos Jerinimos, which is a Portuguese monastery, built at the end of the 15th century by King Manuel I and entrusted to the Order of Saint Jerome. Though a stunning structure, we have seen quite a few monasteries and the line up was long, so we walked…
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Lunching around Lisbon
In anticipation for our food and wine tour today, we had a small breakfast and skipped lunch. The tour was at 3pm, so we felt that it would probably do us for dinner as well. We met our charming guide Carolina , in the shady Largo Luís de Camões square and headed off to discover…
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Seeking shade, Lisbon heats up!
When researching campsites “near” Lisbon, we noted that for €4 more than a camp site, we could get a glamming site! So what would you chose… your own wet messy tent, tiny inflatable mattress etc, or a safari style clapping tent with 2 queen beds, fridge, fan etc? I can tell you what we chose!…
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Up hills and down dales in Porto
Heading further south, we landed in Porto for two nights. Our first foray into town saw us heading into a Fado show. Fado is a Portuguese traditional music style (that is also UNESCO listed), the music is known as fado a form of music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or…
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Exploring northern Portugal
For our first few days in northern Portugal, we based ourselves in the tiny seaside village of Caminha, for two reasons: Caminha was an interesting challenge of a place to be, because we were so close to the Spanish border, our phones and watches kept randomly switching time zones, consequently we were rarely confident as…
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Travelling alongside the pilgrims
As we travel west from Playa de la Arnia, we have been following the Camino Santiago, well, we’ve really been seeing pilgrims from the Camino since just before San Sebastián. The Camino Santiago is one of the three top religious pilgrimages for Christians, which include Jerusalem and Rome. If you are doing the Camino correctly…
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Meeting the Red Terror and adventures around the Picos de Europa
Sunday we sadly moved on from lovely Orio, driving over to Bilbao to do the van/car swap over. The Red Terror is a manual left hand drive MG and startling in its difference to the van…. Poor Lesley was not coping with all the mod cons for some time! We have found another striking place…
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Ode to Orio
We limped Lesley’s poor van into Orio a few days ago and you’ve never seen two people more happy to make it to a campsite. What we didn’t realise at the time was was a cute place we had managed to land ourselves into. Orio is a small fishing village of just under 6,000 residents…
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Grazing through San Sebastián
Of San Sebastián, the late Anthony Bordain said “You could make the argument that there is no better place to eat in Europe than the city of San Sebastián”, so we made it our goal to munch our way around this gastronomic delight. There are apparently more Michelin hatted restaurants here than in any other…
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Two Girls and a Tampax
(Really it was sanitary pad)…… Well, if that title didn’t get you reading this blog, nothing will! As you may have guessed from my previous entry, we are having engine troubles. We stopped at an isolated hill top for a photo yesterday and could hear the coolant boiling, added to that, it was full of…
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