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Lisbon
Jeremy - We arrived to a beautiful sunny Lisbon on a Saturday afternoon. It was a little busier here but still had that laid back feeling, like a large town rather than a city.

In the days before we arrived there had been a huge music festival held in Lisbon and our hostel seemed to be bursting with fans with musical talent. On each of the nights we stayed there, the common room was filled with great singing and music.

The city centre was located down the hill from our hostel and on the other side was another hill with the local "Castelo" dominating the skyline. It was a city of big monuments and big squares and streets arranged in a grid. The buildings, like in other parts of the country were decorated with tiles on the outside. They also take particular pride in their pavements here, they are all made of small square stones that are arranged in numerous different patterns (see pic below).

After discovering that the bullfighting we thought was going to be on that day was actually on a Thursday (it was Sunday) we decided to set about exploring the city, the castle and the old streets around it before heading in to the Alfama (an ancient part of town with narrow winding streets), which we covered by the end of the day.

One thing we noticed about all of the towns we had been in in Portugal is that the distances are not great. We kept getting disorientated because we would often walk past our destination in a matter of minutes when we were expecting a longer walk. It means we got to see everything!

The bullfighting in Portugal is a little different to the Spanish, the bullfighter is on horseback, there is a lot more pomp and ceremony, the bull is not killed in the ring and there are about 8 guys that get charged by the bull and then wrestle it to the ground to end the fight! We only managed to see this sceptical on the local TV but prefer this style over the Spanish, though both are a bit antiquated.

There seemed to also be a disturbing trend in this part of Europe that we saw again and again later in Spain and France. A phenomenon where homeless people who are begging on the street are accompanied with a pack of up to 10 dogs all tied together. They would then drag the dogs around town and use them as a begging tool. It really annoyed me to see these poor dogs starving and being on leashes all day!

On our second day we headed to Sinatra, an hours train ride from Lisbon, which was used as a summer retreat by portugal's kings and has a really cool Moorish "Castelo" on the top of a hill with view across the countryside. We spent the afternoon climbing to the top and then enjoyed the famous gardens as we walked back through the town.

The next day we went to the beach! Another hour trip on a train took us to the town of Cascais for a lazy day on the beach. We hired an umbrella and set about relaxing with the locals that had all come out for the public holiday. I only managed one swim and Emily decided against it after noticing the amount of rubbish in the water. So we mostly cooled off under the near by shower

Belem was the last area we visited, this area is on the water front and is where some of the major monuments are located. We indulged in a couple of custard tarts (Portuguese speciality) and sausage rolls (an actual sausage wrapped in pastry) at the recommended cafe, despite the poor service the tarts were tasty!

We didn't head out to the fancy nightclubs they have here, besides not having the cool threads the possibility of a 180 euro cover charge was a little rich for us! But we had a great time and made it out to the bus station "amazing race style" two minutes before the bus left for Lagos.

The Bums in town seemed to have a habit of carting around a pack of sickly looking dogs, the more dogs the more successful the bum I guess

On top of the castle in Sintra

Monument to people who built portugals empire

Another monument in Blem

Enjoying some tarts

Lagos
Jeremy - After a 5 hour ride on a bus, with its own hostess selling snacks, we arrived to a hot afternoon with a 3km walk to our hostel located at the top of the old town (up hill!). The old town is surrounded by an old city wall and is mass of whitewash buildings and houses. Each similar but shapped to fit the space avalible and sprialling upwards as rooms and terraces are added to accomodate the growing population. Real estate agents seem to be specifically geared towards the British retiree market and there is a sense that the city has a higher proportion of foriegners than locals. We were particularly taken aback by the number of Australians there, it's like we had all floated down to the bottom of the continent!

Emily -Lagos is a great beachy resort whose only drawback was that it was filled to the brim with tourists but that's not thier fault.....................right? We spent most of our time at the beach and when we weren't there we were devouring spicy portugeuse bbq chicken. Yum!

We stayed at a great hostel and got heaps of great tips from the manager who was super keen to help us enjoy his town. The only sad thing was that the town was filled with tourists yet it seemed that only a certain segment of the locals were reaping the benefits of increased tourism while the some viewed the tourist influx from their shanty townships just outside the old town walls.

Jeremy- The best beaches were to the north of the town and were small sandy beaches at the bottom of sandstone cliff faces. On one of our beach days it was incredably hot, the type of heat that turns the sand into a hotplate and renders unprotected skin in the sun blistered after five minutes. A perfect day to be at the beach! Anyway, we decided to get a spot in as much shade as posible, which happened to be right next to the cliffs (silly place to sit i know, but we survived with out any rock falls). Over the next few hours we were then entertained as the tide began to come in and those closer to the water slow became swamped by the incoming waves. One by one sunbakers were being soaked by the rough wave sneaking up on them, it was funny from where we were. We left before it reached our spot

Sunny days

Wlaking the cliffs

Roof top sunset

We could have stayed a few more days in Lagos but decided to keep going and head in to Spain as time was a wasting. We boarded an early morning bus to Seville passing through some amazingly dry country, it looked like sences from a Western.

Seville

Emily- Once we stepped off the bus from Lagos we were hit by the 40 plus heat wave that was hitting Spain - it must of been pretty bad as Jez wanted to catch a cab to our hostel but after talking to the local tourist office I was reassured that it was only a 15 min walk and that we could manage it.
Suprisingly, we managed to find the place without much trouble and checked into our dorms. We soon realized how stingey this hostel was when we realised our eight bed dorm was really the size of a shoe box and that the hostel manager only turned the air con on during the nights. However, we did meet a lot of interesting fellow travellers - a couple of blond americans that could talk your head off, an Aussie who was planning to canoe his way from Spain to Portugal in an inflatible canoe he'd ordered off ebay and a bunch of rugby loving canadians. All in all not a bad bunch of kids to have a drink and a laugh with.

While in Seville we had our first taste of tapas - which started our spanish obsession with locating free tapas (which you can't find in Seville by the way), our experiences ranged from really bad; fried pieces of fatty ham, to delicious; bowls of smoked ham, fried sardines and lentil dips. We also went to see a flamenco show which was fabulous - the dancer really emboddied the passion and drama of flamenco. Having had a great night of flamenco and tapas the next day we headed to the Alcazar of Seville which today serves as a summer royal palace for King Carlos and Co but was originally built by the Moors to be used as a fort. Due to its Moorish heritage the palace draws on a lot of Islamic architecture which makes it quite distinct from the various other palaces and churches we had visisted in Europe. As you can see from the photos the architecture was stunning, the use of water and precision carving (all by hand) really lifted this palace into a league of its own and was merely a taster of what we were to see in Granada.

Cool building

Outside the Alcazar

Inside

The road to Granada

Coimbra was a pretty quiet and laid back university town with a great vibe. Jez and I walked around the old town a few times and discovered a local restaurant that cooked the perfect grilled sardines and bbq chicken. We loved it so much we went back again the following night. The following day we were advised by the local tourist office that a fado concert would be held in the old town as a part of the cultural festival so we spent our last night soaking up the soulful ballads of fado.

Unfortunately, as I'm a member of Generation Y I was bored after five minutes (it didn't help that the Fado started an hour later than scheduled), so we headed back to our hostel which was caught in some type of hippy timewarp - the workers were too busy sleeping in beanbags, drinking with friends or meditating to serve guests. Thankfully, we left the following day - heading to the big smoke Lisbon.

On the streets of the old town

"Where did that beer go?"

View from hostel window

Sardine special

Traditional dress (these guys came down from the mountians just for the fado!)

Fado in action

Porto is Portugal's second city and the only reason we started our Portuguese adventure here was because it was a RyanAir hub. The main highlight for any tourist here was the many port houses that can be found along the river Duoro. Jez and I did the obligatory port tasting and tour, where we learnt about the history of port and sampled the various concoctions. We loved it so much we bought ourselves a bottle and had it as an aperitif before dinner. We also indulged in a little break from hostels - especially as I was still traumatised by my Nice experience so we stayed in an Ibis hotel. Sweet! Another plus for Porto was that its quite a cheap town so we indulged in coffee houses and trendy cafes...........ahhhhhh the good life :P

The port

The Port

The tasting

The barrel

The boats

We made a quick side trip to Marseilles in order to catch a Ryan Air flight to Porto as our time in Europe was ticking away and we had still not covered Portugal, Spain and France. We caught a train to Marseilles from Nice and then caught another bus to the airport where we were staying at a Formula One hotel near the airport. We were booked onto an early morning flight so decided to prebook a taxi with the receptionist. We set our alarm and went to bed, after trying to interpret Temptation Island -France, which was being played on the one channel that our t.v could pick up.

The next thing we knew, there was a bang on our door with the receptionist asking in broken English whether we still wanted the taxi as it was waiting outside the hotel - our alarm had not worked and it was now 5.45am and our flight left in less than an hour, with Ryan Air closing its ticket booth in 20 minutes. We hurriedly threw on some clothes and zipped up our bags as we raced to the taxi, throwing some cash at the receptionist as we left. The taxi driver spoke little English but understood that we were in a hurry and put his foot to the pedal. We jumped out of the taxi leaving the driver a generous trip as we ran to the terminal. Thankfully, they were still processing passengers as we lined up to have our baggage weighed and were rushed through security to enable the flight to leave on time.

Unbeknown to us, RyanAir takes their commitment to arriving on time quite seriously - too seriously I might argue. On touchdown in Porto the captain announced that they were 4 minutes early and so played some interesting music that included an arrangement of trumpets that reminded us of the horse races, while the rest of the passengers broke out into spontaneous applause (more out of fright than appreciation; a version is available at http://www.gla.ac.uk/~woody/sounds/ryr-trumpet.amr but you may need to download real player to listen). Jez and I looked at each other in astonishment - we had entered the world of cheap European air travel and we were scared.