And onwards

• 50odd's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Lisbon

Trip Start Jul 07, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End May 27, 2010 Next
Entry

  Lisbon, Estremadura, Portugal
Thursday, September 4, 2008

04 Sept 2008
In the convivo
The Orbitur campsite Costa de Caparica

Yesterday we crossed the river from Lisbon over to the Costa Caparica.  The ride into and out of Lisbon was a blooming nightmare.  We don't have brilliant maps and certainly none of them small enough scale to get us through a city like Lisbon.  Rather than go through we decided to kind of go round, down to the coast and along to Belem and catch the ferry from there.  Sounds easy when you say it like that.

The trouble with every city is that they assume you will be travelling in a vehicle of some kind and that you want to get somewhere fast, usually the motorway.  Of course, we're not allowed on motorways so we use the N roads.  Quite often they will guide you to a destination making you believe it isn't the motorway and then when you get there it is.  Most annoying.

I reckon we did 20kms more than we should have done, Dave reckons 10.  In any case, it took us a long time and we were both well fed up.  It soon dissipates though, unlike when you've had a horrible day at work and you get that horrible sinking feeling because you've got to go back there the next day and face it all over again.  It's never like that.

Having said that, we woke up this morning and decided we would stay put for a day, just like that!  Ooh, the glory of freedom.  Actually, it was raining, so we put off going first thing (packing up wet is always a nightmare) and decided to go make use of the free internet access to catch up on mail and stuff, by the time we'd done that neither of us had it in us to move. 

So we had a leisurely walk into town, bought a newspaper (we've been starved since we left) which I've now read and wished I hadn't wasted E3.25 on.  Also, went to the supermarket and bought some provisions for the next 2 days, the total for which was (and this includes wine for dinner and a big bottle of beer for lunch) E6.47.  Portugal is cheap.

Claire said she envied our freedom (but not the 50 kms cycling a day :) and I hadn't really thought about it until she said that.  I suppose there are people who would HATE to be doing what we do (certainly some of our friends) and would much rather be doing a trip 'in style', or at least with a slightly less earthy ring to it.  This kind of freedom affords you a great deal of choice, so I'm guessing that if you are quite lazy it wouldn't be good to be travelling with another lazy person, otherwise you'd never get anywhere.  I suppose if you can find a travelling partner who compliments you (we've met people travelling who having been together for years, have after only months on the road, split up) then you're doing OK.  In any case, I would recommend taking time off, irrespective of what you do with it, just remember we all need a purpose.

So chums, I've been sat at this not very ergonomically designed table for far too long and my neck is beginning to ache. 

Cheerio for now

Laters

Print this entry Share Lisbon hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry