Portugal speed dating

We have just spent a few brilliant days in Portugal the gratitude of our friend Daniel and his family who very kindly not only accommodated us and fed us, but also Daniel took us on a grand tour of Lisbon and Sintra. I called our visit speed dating as we basically kept running around from one great view or beautiful building to another one just clicking the camera shutter like a whole group of Japanese tourists. There were far too many interesting things to see to fit even into a week’s time… which is a shame but it does make us want to come back to Portugal some other time even more to see just more and more.

Lisbon is a very colourful and stylish old city with the gleam of its past glory coming from every street corner and pretty much every building façade even if tired with time.

Sintra is an absolutely enchanting city full to the brim with great mansions of rich merchants and palaces of even richer King’s entourage. The most amazing of all is Quinta da Regaleira in which we spent most of our second day in Portugal getting lost in the maze of its gardens, caves and secret passages. This place could easily be on the other side of the rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland!

Tomorrow veeeery early morning we set off onto the second leg of our journey, going south finally towards the Sahara Desert into Morocco. We hope to cross the Gibraltar Strait tomorrow what may prove tricky - we have no tickets for the ferry as they seem to be virtually unobtainable via the internet unless you are travelling in the peak summer months, also tomorrow being the 24th of December will be a tricky day itself with a lot of people from Spain crossing into Morocco seeking some better weather for their winter holidays…