Quinta das Flores Portimão

... into this dessert a few minutes ago.

With all this talk of food and pastries, you'd think we'd both be busting our britches but truth be known -- my jeans are fitting a bit looser and we both feel justified with the tremendous amount of distance and strenuous walking we have been doing -- up and down steep streets while gripping the cobblestone surfaces.

We haven't yet made our plans for tomorrow. The Fado Museum ...

... rich, but he basically had a private park, which houses a chapel, towers, a waterfall, and other random monuments some of which are connected by underground tunels, for a yard. We had a great time there, it was like a big playground! The second half of the day we spent hiking up to and in an old Moorish castle. The view was good, but would have been amazing if it hadn't been foggy!!

We spent most of the last day in a museum. It ...

... the Vospers but we found some wonderful new spots too! Before leaving home we had visited Sintra. The little Punto car almost didn't fit thru those narrow mountainous streets of Sintra. We spent some time in the toy factory. We also visited the coastline tourist attraction with the Portuguese translation of the "devil's mouth" a cave on the coastline makes dramatic crashing waves. We camped again in an orbitur bungalow N of Figuera da Foz at Mira. We ...

... and empty structure so it was a lot of fun on the castle walls, watching out for invaders, poking about in all of the nooks and crannies. When we had had our fill of castle-plundering it was time to catch the historic number 28 tram back down to the bottom. From what I could tell of the transport map that I had, this tram would take us all the way to our next destination, Belem. It careered through the streets plummeting down narrow alleyways relentlessly towards the bottom of the hill ...

... in Lisbon. On sunday, Nell, Brit and I went to the Oceanarium down on the waterfront during the afternoon. It was pretty cool; we got to see penguins, sharks, sunfish, you name it... I´ll show you the pictures when I get home. I also wanted to hang out on the grass outside of it...but we only stayed there for a few minutes even though it was such a nice day. We got REALLY lucky with the weather...70º each day at least! That afternoon we went down to the ...

... than before. There was another statue in the street ahead of us, this time dressed in Elizabethan clothing and painted gold and green like a tarnished bronze statue and standing on a pedestal. He looked like he'd walked right out of the Mozart sonata that played on the boom box beside him. Also on the ground around him were certificates and announcements recognizing him as "The Living Statue" and celebrating his Guinness Book of World Records achievement, not once but ...

First I thought I would stay and live in Lisboa for a month, but soon my plans changed completely.. I came here whith the expactation that me and others would try to set up a actionsambagroup, but this didn´t realy happen... In stead I visited the social centre ("Centro Social da Mouraria") recently set up by GAIA-members and helped a little bit with painting the walls. This social centre is a place where GAIA-members can have ...

... I took photos of postcards and posters in the museum shop! After waiting for another rain shower to stop, I went up to the Palace along the road (Palacio de Belem) as there were tours on Saturdays. (Good info about it on the wikipedia web site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel%C3%A9m _Palace ). This is where the Presidents of Portugal lived. The total entry for the museum and the Palace was 5e. I was not very impressed with the ...

... Tower. Of course one of the highlights was eating Portuguese egg custard tartlets at hundred-year-old café Pasteis el Belem. Not all our meals were traditional cuisine though; since it was Sunday and many stores and restaurants in the neighborhood we were staying in were closed we finished the day off with dinner at Pizza Hut. I realize most people don't follow foreign currency market fluctuations too closely, but I'm sure many of you have heard about the steady ...

... pieces by Degas and Rodin. Those were the two I loved at the Burell Collection in London. Some of the highlights, because there are too many to go through were some Japanese boxes. Incense boxes, smoking boxes, sweet meats boxes, picnice boxes. All decorated in black and gold floral motifs, mountains, and birds maybe storks. I can definetely now tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese designs. Chinese love their dragons, their ...