Portugal
Nabainhos

Discover travel destinations of travelers writing a travel journal on FindPenguins.
Travelers at this place
    • Day 23

      Parque Natural da Serra da Estrela

      April 16, 2022 in Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

      It’s funny that most campgrounds we stay at are run by people who migrated to Portugal rather than by locals. And many of them are Dutch, as is the case with the owners of the cute “campismo” in the nature park Serra da Estrela where we end up for three nights. It’s a small and green campground with beautiful views of the valley. As the weather is warm and sunny for days in a row now, we use the opportunity to do our laundry and relax a little more. Reading a book (I’m in the midst of Dracula, the classic I bought at the Harry Potter bookstore in Porto and that I can’t put down), playing some games (Clever, Mölkky), eating freshly made traditional Portuguese Easter bread, joining the campground yoga class, and - because we can’t help ourselves - taking a long stroll through the town of Melo. As we have been quite busy going from one highlight to the other, it is nice to take it extra slow these few days.

      We do take a full day to explore the nature park around us: driving a loop with our van we admire the scenery. The valley of the park by glacial movement during the ice age, which is why aside from lakes and meadows we can also see huge rocks lay about. It is also the only place in Portugal where one can ski in winter - we can even see some leftover snow when visiting the highest point of the country (1993 meter).

      We pause our drive for a 12 km hike. Once more we train our legs while we climb up the rocky paths that sometimes look more like a waterfall than a walkway (only one of us makes it back to the van with dry feet, I’ll leave it for you to guess who :-)). The hike goes up to a artificial lake with a sci-fi kind of hole in it to collect extra water for a lower located lagoon and water dam. The water travels down more than 1500 meter; it must have been quite the task to make!

      With tired legs, rested minds and laundry done we are good to travel on.
      Read more

    • Day 48

      Day 48 - Portugal

      October 22, 2024 in Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

      Today we got up relatively early thanks to Marla pickles who wanted to go out to the toilet before 7 am then we had a slow couple of hours. I had a shower, we packed up the van and then we went off for a walk in the Sandy Pine forest before we had to leave at 10:30.

      We headed for a lidl that we’d found on the way, but it turned out to have extremely inappropriate car parking. It was midday by now so we parked up by the side of the road and ate our sandwiches that we’d made before we left.

      Then we plotted a new destination of a Portuguese supermarket and headed off over the border to Portugal. We didn’t understand the Toll system so it was a bit confusing once we got into Portugal. We may have ended up paying our toll three times once using my credit card and Charlie might have registered twice. Who knows…. But we got to our Portuguese supermarket which I was able to park absolutely fine. Charlie went inside came back with some goodies. It was all very fishy and they didn’t have much in the vegetarian way, but we have some good staples and treats.

      Then we carried on the campsite which is lovely quite a big terraced campsite with lots and lots of pitches but we wanted a sunny one so we have parked next to some Germans.

      Also the time zone from Spain to Portugal is different, that was a bit of a surprise. We didn’t know that was gonna happen. And it’s going to change again on Sunday - we aren’t going to know if we are coming or going!

      Dinner tonight was falafel, couscous, tomatoes and cucumber. And dessert was some pastel de nata that Charlie got from the supermarket - very delicious!

      After dinner I did some crochet while Charlie hunted all of the flies that had snuck into the van!
      Read more

    • Day 49

      Day 49 - decompression day

      October 23, 2024 in Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

      First full day in Portugal and we had a very relaxed day today, well I did and Charlie worked hard.

      Marla did very well this morning and didn’t wake us up until just about 7 am. Considering the clocks changed when we entered Portugal, it was really 8 am and she would have eaten her breakfast by then, so she did very well.

      We were going to go for a hike today, but Marla looked absolutely shattered so we just let her relax, rest and decompress. We didn’t really know where we were going so it probably would’ve been a bit stressful anyway. ii’s been absolutely beautiful weather here, a bit windy but that not a bad thing. It meant we probably kept a bit cooler than we would have otherwise.

      I did some crocheting this afternoon and Charlie did exercises and some yoga. Dinner was a vegetable curry all handmade by Charlie, it was very tasty indeed. He says it didn’t look very pretty but I thought it was beautiful. Impressively it was made with everything from tins so tinned spinach, chickpeas, trapped potatoes and rice. We were going to have a bag of pre-made dhal with it that we bought from home, but we realised it had a hole in it and we didn’t know when that appeared best not to eat it. This evening we caught up on some TV, just generally relaxed. Moving day tomorrow so watch the space
      Read more

    You might also know this place by the following names:

    Nabainhos

    Join us:

    FindPenguins for iOSFindPenguins for Android