Bom dia gringos

Well we have been in Portugal for a couple of weeks now and been lovin the sun, sand, surf, food, beer etc.....

We arrived in the capital of Lisbon and went straight to a small coastal town of Peniche to meet my good friends Scott and Sam, the surf was flat so the days were passed in the appropriate way of sampling the local cerveja´s (beers).

Sam and Scott left on the friday so we went to Lisbon to have a look around the tourist part of the city, which featured a beautiful castel Castelo Sao Jorge on the highest point, and some beautiful buildings and churches. The nightlife was excellent as was the food.

Portugal is pretty small so everthing is quite close to drive, and there are so many surf breaks along the coast. We hired ourselves a car which is easily the smallest car both of us has driven, and instanlty felt the freedom of being behind the wheel again and the chaos of driving on the right hand side with the notoriously agressive Portugese drivers.

A highlight of the drive was stopping in Sintra, a beautiful wooded hillside town with a moorish castle and royal palace on top of the peaks. The palace has a vibrant pink and yellow exterrior and was a romantic escape spot for the Portugese royals, filled with ocean style carvings on also had a huge garden filled with imported trees and ferns, and mini castles in the lakes just for the ducks and swans. The royals knew how to live here!

We are in Peniche at the moment having spent a few days with Johanna and her friend Almut as they came up to learn to surf. Peniche is a small fishing peninsula with lots of waves on both coasts so it is good in lots of wind directions. We have had some good surfs at a right hand point break called Consolacoa, old people flock here to lay on the rocks as they contain a mineral which is good for reumatism. So it is like surfing in the middle of a retirement village.

Tomorrow Johanna,Reg and I are going to make our way north towards the wine region of Porto, so the photos may be a bit blurry for this part of the trip.

We have had a great time so far here, and only a week left here. Hopefully the week will contain lots more surfing in good waves, and some more sight seeing.

Thanks for your comments, it is nice to hear from you all.

- Paul and Reg