Reset search
Europe 2022Europe 2022
SatelliteEdit route

Europe 2022

September - October 2022
A 46-day adventure by Chris Read more
  • 15footprints
  • 3countries
  • 46days
  • 150photos
  • 0videos
  • 39.9kkilometers
  • 36.0kkilometers
  • 3.3kkilometers
Follow Calendar Share Bucket list
Date descending
  • TravelerEurope 2022
    Day 44

    Porto Postscript

    October 21, 2022 in Portugal ⋅ 🌧 16 °C

    After 14 incredible destinations our trip is coming to an end, and while it wouldn’t be true to say we saved the best for last, Porto is pretty darned good.

    We stayed in Bolhao, about twenty minutes walk up from the bank of the Douro River via a bunch of some very picturesque (but touristic) streets.

    The famous Portuguese azulejo tiles are everywhere - inside and outside churches, on shopfronts and apartment blocks. The bathroom in our apartment was lined with recycled tiles.

    The Sao Bento railway station is a famous tile-spotter’s location, with all four walls of the classic station building lined with tiles depicting great moments in Portuguese history and the people of different regions of the country. Not sure if there are any great moments in Portuguese railway history depicted.

    But it’s the River Douro that sets Porto apart, with the land on all sides sloping steeply down to the wide river, and a series of handsome arch bridges crossing the divide high up on the slopes.

    We walked across the Ponte Luis I, designed, unsurprisingly when you see it, by a protege of Gustav Eiffel, and had brilliant views up and down the river, with Rabelo Boats laden with tourists cruising up and down, and the names of famous Port Wine Houses littering the southern bank.

    At the southern end of the bridge is Jardim do Morro, a small garden with great views that late in the afternoon was full of people lounging around listening to the buskers and waiting for the sunset.

    We also visited the Palacio da Bolsa, a stately building dedicated not to a King or a Religion but which was in fact the Chamber of Commerce (a religion in itself, some would say). The rooms were increasingly handsome and interesting, from the office occupied by the aforementioned M. Eiffel during his several-year stay in Porto all the way to the so-called Arab Room, a fantastical banquet room now available to rent for functions at between 4,000 and 15,000 euros a night.

    For a break, on a rather wet day, we took the train a few hours west to Pinhao, deep in the Douro Valley. The train journey was spectacular, with the track hugging the bank of the river for the last hour of the trip. Then we took a Rabelo Boat a further fifteen kilometres upstream to the junction of the River Tua, admiring the magnificent countryside and the river flowing quite majestically through it.

    So, that’s our trip through the Iberian Peninsula done and dusted. With highlights too numerous to mention, easy transport, friendly people and good company (thank you, Brendan) it was just marvellous!

    Oh, and COVID?

    Well, luckily we didn’t catch it. We had to wear masks on public transport in Spain, and the public were almost universally compliant with this. Otherwise, apart from some fading arrows and spots on the floor, and hand sanitiser almost everywhere, it might never have happened.    Read more

  • TravelerEurope 2022
    Day 40

    Tomar Testimony

    October 17, 2022 in Portugal ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    We caught the train about 400 kilometres north to Tomar watching the countryside change from flat and dry with lots of Cork Oaks, to greener and hillier with more intense agriculture.

    Cork growing must be the ultimate slow agriculture experience. Plant a cork tree. Wait 25 years. Get first harvest, which will not be up to scratch. Wait another 9 years for next harvest (which also may not be). Repeat.

    It is a most pleasant little town, hugging the banks of the River Nabao, with weirs regulating the water and parks for the inhabitants to enjoy themselves. Away from the river, the old town is very picturesque, although it was a little quiet when we wandered through - and stopped for a drink - on a Saturday afternoon.

    It also has the Convento de Cristo, a stone fortress towering above the town.

    Constructed from 1118 by the Knights Templar, it was controlled and improved by them (between fighting crusades and seeing off the Moors) until 1357, when the Order of Christ completed a “friendly takeover” initiated by Pope Clement I in 1312. The Order of Christ continued in occupation until the tourist industry demanded another historic site on top of a hill but with good bus parking.

    We walked up the hill, paid our 3 euros each (seniors discount; disappointingly they rarely seem to ask for proof of age) and wandered through cloister after cloister and room after room. It was an interesting few hours, and the round church was quite spectacular.

    The Festival of Iria, celebrating the virgin Saint Iria’s drowning and subsequent reappearance downriver in a marble tomb, took place the day we were in Tomar. We wandered around the crowded amusement park and market area, all set by the side of the river and full of happy, laughing Tomarites. We also made our way up the pedestrianised, cobbled main street of the old town, had a drink and thought about anywhere else we could remember going to where the shops were shut on a Sunday.    Read more

  • TravelerEurope 2022
    Day 38

    Lagos Listing

    October 15, 2022 in Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    After the fun and vitality of Lisbon it was great to calm down for a few days on the Algarve to break up our trip.

     But first, we had to get here, via two crowded trains choc-a-bloc with confused people and suitcases that wouldn’t have seemed out of place on the Queen Mary. The second, local, train was standing room only, the aisles full of bodies and backpacks.

    As for Lagos, although (since it’s a part of Europe) it does have an incredible history - most infamously as one of the first slave-trading ports - we just enjoyed the warmth and the scenery. As Dennis Denuto so succinctly put it in “The Castle”, “It’s all about the vibe”. It’s probably one of the most photogenic places we have seen.

    Lagos is on the River Bensafrim, with a vast marina full of rich persons’ playthings and a whole industry devoted to marketing and providing all sorts of water-based tours, from kayaks to yachts, caving to dolphin-spotting.

    The old town area, winding up hill from the river, is a maze of cobblestones covered in bars and restaurants, with music playing and people eating and drinking at all hours of the day and night. Just wandering around is fun.

     Just west of the mouth of the river is Praia da Batata, the first of a series of beaches, some interconnected through arches and tunnels in the sandstone cliffs, that stretches a few kilometres out to the headland at Ponta da Piedade. The scenery is stunning, with the golden sandstone cliffs and ridges, the almost-empty beaches and the clear blue of the sea making for a postcard view at every turn.

    For a few relaxing days Lagos is hard to beat, and even though we successfully avoided all history and culture (true to form, some might say), we’re still leaving with some great memories.    Read more

  • TravelerEurope 2022
    Day 35

    Lisbon Letter (2)

    October 12, 2022 in Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    As well as having fun in Alfama, choosing badly in restaurants and eating too many custard tarts, we made a couple of day trips.

    Firstly, Evora, a couple of hours away by train, and probably most famous for the Capela dos Ossos, part of the Church of St Francis. Faced with a dearth of interior design ideas, and having 5,000 exhumed bodies on hand, the entrepreneurial Franciscan monks thought that lining the walls of the chapel would be a good use for all those hard-to-store bones.

    It was strangely aesthetic rather than gruesome, although the building trade are unlikely to offer it to would-be buyers anytime soon. Still, for DIY…

    There was also a museum displaying, among other things, a part of the monastery’s collection of over 2,000 nativity scenes, some of which were magnificent pieces of craftsmanship and others just plain weird.

    Evora also has a Roman connection, and we took a walk past the ruins of the Temple of Evora, another part of the town’s UNESCO heritage.

    We also visited Sintra, set in a lush, beautiful bunch of hills just northeast of the city.

    Joining a surging mass of tourists, we queued up for our turn in the Pena Palace, a fantastical faux fortress built in 1838, by then King Consort Ferdinand II (although it was on the site of a ruined fortress that had existed since the Middle Ages). It had spectacular views of the surrounding countryside (at least, after the fog lifted) and the clambering around the ramparts was fun, but we had to sort of flow through the interiors along with the rest of the sea of visitors and didn’t really get a chance to savour the experience.

    More interesting in some ways was the National Palace, in Sintra township itself. With heritage dating back to the Moors and additions made, mainly in the 15th and 16th centuries, by a succession of kings and queens, it was a quite fascinating look at the way the royal court lived and interacted with the rest of us.

    The National Palace also has a pair of very distinctive tall, white towers and we pondered over their use until, at the end of the tour, in the kitchen, we found out that they were the chimneys!

    Our time in Lisbon has now come to an end, almost as soon as we had mastered the metro, taken the tram and learnt the labyrinth of the local area. We are off to the Algarve tomorrow for - hopefully - some time in the sun.    Read more

  • TravelerEurope 2022
    Day 33

    Lisbon Letter (1)

    October 10, 2022 in Portugal ⋅ 🌧 18 °C

    No Lisbon travel story would be complete without a shot of tram 28 winding its way through the tortuous streets of the Alfama district. The photographs, however, don’t convey the shaking of building, rumbling and rattling of machinery and screech of steel wheel on rail that accompanies the passing of each one past our apartment. Two metres from our apartment. Every fifteen minutes (and often much more frequent), six-ish in the morning to after ten at night.

    Actually, despite the noise, the discovery that we were on the route for tram 28 was quite exciting, and we loved watching the trams squeeze through the narrow passageway near our place and being able to use them for some of our commuting into town. The Alfama district was a great and welcoming place to stay.

    We started our look around Lisbon on the bank of the Tagus River, staring at the vast, prosperous-looking Placa do Commercio, with King Dom Jose I in its centre and the massive triumphal arch of the Arco de Rua Augusta guarding the way inland.

    We visited the very well-presented Lisbon Story, an audio-visual telling of Lisbon’s history, especially in relation to the earthquake of 1755, which quite possibly resulted in 90,000 deaths as well as the flat, regular grid system of the downtown Baixa district, while the areas to the east and west are completely higgledy-piggledy.

    We walked up to the Miradouro de Alcantara, one of a seemingly endless number of viewpoints around the seven hills of the city, then rode downtown again on the funicular Ascensor de Gloria.

    By far the best views of the city and surrounds, however, were from Castelo de Sao Jorge (another Saint George - he seems to have utilised his dragon-killing skills in lots of places), where we also stumbled around the battlements and looked into some archaeological diggings.

    On our second day, the Lisbon Marathon took place. How they found enough relatively flat streets for it is anyone’s guess, but there was a great carnival atmosphere downtown, accompanied by cheers from the spectators and limping and groaning from the competitors.

    We also took in some culture at, among others, Mosteiro dos Jeronimos, west of town and containing the tomb of Vasco da Gama, as well as at Igreja de Sao Roque, a quite beautiful church with a museum devoted mainly to holy relics. Fortunately there were no saintly body parts on display this time.    Read more

  • TravelerEurope 2022
    Day 30

    San Sebastian Spiel

    October 7, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C

    What a contrast! We left dry, brown, monumental Madrid, sat on a train for five hours of changing scenery and ended up in Basque Country, in green, seaside San Sebastian.

    With its own language, higher wealth relative to the rest of Spain and independent spirit, the Basque area is a bit unique. With the beautifully shell-shaped La Concha Bay, a vibrant and crowded old town and a fun-loving mix of locals and tourists, San Sebastián is most definitely unique.

    Although each part of the city has its appeal, “attractive” is the common theme. Even the railway station roof was designed by Gustav Eiffel.

    The old town, which, as it dates from the early 1800’s, isn’t really all that old, is an exciting network of narrow streets lined with crowded bars and restaurants and hordes of tourists. At its heart is Constitution Square, very picturesque and formerly a bull ring.

    The beachfront, with acres and acres of sand, is a standout amongst its peers, with a broad attractive promenade lined with some elegant-if-aged hotels from a bygone era. The beach, too, was dotted with leathery, elegant-if-aged humans relaxing in various states of semi-undress.

    We caught an antique funicular up Monte Igueldo, and found, along with the incredible views of the city and up and down the coast, a tacky amusement park taking up prime real estate.

    We also walked along the Urumea River that flows through town, and around the base of Mount Urgull for some great views of the Bay of Biscay.

    It has been good to finish our time in Spain with such a highlight. Some of the little things we will remember include the Hotel Niza, with its elevator dated 1911 and floors that sloped inwards as though the whole building was being sucked down the lift well. Then there was the Indian restaurant that had RUN OUT OF PAPPADUMS!

    We head to Portugal now, still enchanted by the wonders of Spain.    Read more

  • TravelerEurope 2022
    Day 26

    Madrid Memorandum (2)

    October 3, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    Our Madrid adventure continued with a few hours in the Prado. It was a great experience and we walked and stared until our legs ached. But boy, some of those artists must have had some weird stuff going on! Just take a look at Goya’s black paintings, for example (but don’t do it in front of the children!).

    We took a look at Retiro, the huge, manicured park, complete with boating lake, statues, buskers and lunchers that was quite packed on a Saturday afternoon, as was Plaza Mayor, the huge and elegant main square.

    The Temple of Debod, given to Spain in return for helping with the Aswan Dam, was an unexpected sight in another impressive park.

    We also took a day tour to Avila and Segovia, ten hours either sitting on a bus or following a woman with a flag.

    Avila, of which we had never heard, was a neat little town - the historic old town centre almost toy-like - with quite immaculate intact city walls, a basilica and the Iglesia-convento de Santa Teresa, built on the site of her birthplace. Saint Teresa means a lot to the Avilians, although whether it was a good idea to keep one of her wrinkled, decayed, 700-year-old fingers on display is uncertain. Still, apparently Rome has her right foot and part of her upper jaw, and there are other bits of her in various locations around Europe, so they’re not the only ones.

    Segovia, much bigger and with a spectacularly-sited alcazar, was more real, and we walked right across town from the Alcazar to the cathedral and finally the famous aqueduct. And rightly famous it is, too. Running right down one side of the Plaza del Azoguejo, and about 25 metres tall at its highest, it is pretty much unavoidable. It was an impressive end to an exciting, if long, day.

    We finished off our time in Madrid with some more walking downtown, followed by a couple of drinks in the rooftop bar of the Circulo de Bellas Artes. It was crowded and atmospheric, but, to be honest, a beautiful skyline isn’t really one of Madrid’s prime attributes.

    Madrid has been a brilliant, entertaining and interesting experience.    Read more

  • TravelerEurope 2022
    Day 24

    Madrid Memorandum (1)

    October 1, 2022 in Spain ⋅ 🌙 18 °C

    Even a two-hour delay on our train from Caceres couldn’t dampen our spirits, as we left the heat of the south and settled into a cooler and rather damp Madrid.

    Our first stop was the Palacio Real, surrounded all around by beautifully manicured square and gardens and aesthetically matched by the cathedral across the square from it.

    The cathedral has the almost unique distinction of NOT being recommended for a visit by the Lonely Planet, so we skipped it.

    The Palacio Real, though, was stunning. Room after room filled with sumptuous furnishings and works of art, each decorated differently and almost all with incredible frescoes on their ceilings, it was almost a bit “ho-hum, another beautiful room” by the end. The Gasparini Room, entirely floor to ceiling and wall to wall carvings and Rococo swirls, took 55 years to finish, which was unfortunate as the king who commissioned it died in the meantime.

    There was some recent history there as well, including the signed deed of abdication of King Juan Carlos I from 2014. The Spanish people, it seems, didn’t take kindly to either his elephant hunting, his dodgy deals with Saudi businessmen or his mistress. Either way, it was interesting to see some modern history in amongst the antiquities.

    The following day we took a train to Toledo and, no, didn’t see Corporal Klinger anywhere.

    We did see some beautiful windows and stonework (that was just the railway station) as we trudged up the hill and across the Alcantara bridge (11th-century, but originally Roman) into the town.

    We spent longer than expected in the cathedral - Catedral Primada Santa Maria de Toledo, the head honcho of Spanish churches. That was because it was one of the best we have seen, particularly its stunning altar piece - “El Transparente” - lit by light from an incredibly-decorated skylight high in the structure.

    Toledo, was also fun (if slightly hard work) to walk around. Plaza Zocodover was crowded and bustling and the Synagogue of El Transito contained a small and indecipherable museum. Unfortunately, the Alcazar, imposingly commanding even in hilly Toledo, was closed for renovations.

    Since the sword is now pretty much obsolete for anything other than opening very large letters, it was also intriguing to see shop after shop selling this famous-if-now-pointless Toledo product.

    Madrid continues in a few days time…    Read more

  • TravelerEurope 2022
    Day 20

    Caceres Correspondence

    September 27, 2022 in Spain ⋅ 🌙 19 °C

    We left the heat and bustle of Seville and took a very interesting 4-hour local train ride to Caceres, winding and rattling our way up hill from Andalucia until the land flattened out into a vast, brown plain for miles in every direction.

    We saw some interesting places, most of them rather desolate. Modern factories near the main roads had replaced the ruined ones by the side of the railway line.

    At the stations there would be a crowd of onlookers to see the travellers off, as if a train journey was still an event to be anticipated and romanticised.

    Caceres was a pleasant change, cooler and calmer. Dating to the year 25 BC but largely enhanced in the 1500’s using riches plundered from the Americas, its combination of Roman, Moorish and Western architecture got it onto the UNESCO list in 1986.

    The Monumental City of Caceres, the old town, is a monochromatic tribute to the art of stonemasonry, all brown-grey stone buildings and brown-grey cobblestones. The only other colours to be seen are the occasional flag on an official building and the traffic signs.

    We walked around and around, up and down hill, and took a look into the Concatedral de Santa Maria and its bell tower. We then visited the Museo de Caceres, which would have benefited from some English descriptions, although it was free for us old people. It also turned out there were some works by Picasso and El Greco in the fine arts section, but we ignoramuses breezed past them without paying attention.

    The museum building was on the site of the original Moorish fortress from the 12th century and we took a look down into the water cistern that still lies intact underneath.

    Finally, Plaza Mayor, adjacent to the old town, was a great, huge place to have a drink and a snack and watch the world go by (with a brown-grey backdrop). Come eight o’clock it would be crowded with couples, noisy children, dogs and pigeons, the restaurants would be filling up and another day of our Spanish holiday would be coming to a close.    Read more

  • TravelerEurope 2022
    Day 19

    Seville Epistle

    September 26, 2022 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    As our train headed toward Seville, the laughter and talk of a group of young women overpowering the carriage, the endless olive trees that were our scenery so far gave way to endless orange trees. Otherwise the country all looked about the same.

    We hit Seville on a weekend and it was all abuzz. No namby-pamby siestas for these people, when there was a long lunch and loud conversation to be had.

    The historic area around the Cathedral and the Alcazar was filled with horse-and-cart-riding tourists, cameras and selfie sticks and long queues.

    We visited the Alcazar in the cool of the next morning and it proved to be a worthy addition to our itinerary of Moorish architecture. The interiors reeked with history, either that of the Muslim founders over a thousand years ago, or their Castilian successors since the 1400’s.

    We walked along a raised wall with incredible views of the gardens, with pools and fountains and kilometres of perfectly-groomed hedges.

    A great, probably COVID-inspired development since we last travelled is the downloadable audio guide - scan the QR code with your phone and away you go, although it does need a local data connection.

    For a quick dose of extra culture we visited the Hospital de Los Venerables, a former refuge for ailing priests with a church that has a stunning painted ceiling as well as a small but significant art collection. Who knew there were rules for depicting the immaculate conception? Apparently she must be wearing blue and white, and be standing on a moon, which may or may not explain something about the early religious scholars!

    The Cathedral was our last stop, and it was a little overwhelming, an absolutely cavernous interior supported by monstrous pillars, endless chapels around the walls containing the usual dusty statuary and some stunning altar pieces.

    We had a couple of fabulous dinners close to home in Plaza Abastos, in the shadow of the Setas de Seville, a frankly weird wood and concrete structure that covers the entire square. Just when you think you are starting to understand a place…

    We felt like we barely scratched Seville, but are looking forward to our next few days in Caceres.    Read more

  • 2024© FindPenguins
  • Home
  • About us
  • Blog
  • Group Tracking
  • Press
  • Terms
  • Privacy Policy & Cookies
  • Support
  • Legal notice
  • English