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  • Roadtrip Day 1: We went to the edge of continental Europe!

    Roadtrip Day 1: We went to the edge of continental Europe!

    A quick post today before we head out to the beach. This post is a bit late coming, but Kevin’s best friend Mark is currently visiting, so we’ve been out and about (we also drove to Lisbon to pick him up 2 days in a row, because the first day we drove up we were a day too early).

    Anyways, when Tyler was here, our post-Lisbon road trip began with a drive to Cabo da Roca, a lighthouse at the westernmost point of continental Europe. Perhaps not the coolest claim to fame of all time, but it was gorgeous nonetheless.

    The western coast of Portugal is dotted with gorgeous cliffs, and Cabo da Roca is no exception. It’s a popular tourist attraction in the picturesque Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, and was the first of many beautiful spots that we saw in Sintra that day. Because it was March, we were 3 of maybe 8 people there that day. Being along the cliffs, with the beautiful green fields behind us felt magical. It was a great to start to an excellent day.

    See below for the photos!

     

  • Exploring Lisbon with my little brother

    Exploring Lisbon with my little brother

    Having already spent some time in Lisbon, Kevin and I were fully prepared to show Tyler all the best sites and scenes.

    Obviously, this included copious amounts of eating and walking.

    Tyler arrived in Lisbon in the morning, and despite getting minimal sleep, he kept going with us all day. The next day, we were once again up bright and early, and we set off on all kinds of adventures. Rather than go into wild detail about every darn thing that we did, here’s a list of the places we saw and adventures we got into:

    • Exploring the streets and vistas of Lisbon: You’ll note that there are tons of pictures of us just walking around and looking at things. A worthwhile adventure, but not an easy one. Lisbon is a city built on 7 hills, which makes for great views and great exercise. Fortunately the city is small enough that you can cover most of it’s beautiful neighbourhoods on foot, and that’s just what we did.
    • Lunch at Sea Me: Tyler’s food game started off strong at this popular sea food restaurant in Lisbon. We had tuna steak, seaweed salad, fresh fish, tiger prawns, and of course, green wine.
    • Drinking Sangria at a kiosk just outside of the Convento do Carmo: This is Kevin’s favourite square in Lisbon. It’s quieter than most (though not that day, due to construction), tucked away just in front of the famous ruins of the Convento do Carmo. The convent, built in the 1400s, was mostly destroyed during the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. The ruins of the gothic church were left standing as a type of memorial.
    • Drinks & Pool at Pavilhao Chines: Kevin and I went to this wacky place for the first time a few weeks prior, and we decided to return with Tyler. He and Kevin played a game of pool in the back room, on what must been the worst pool table in existence. When even Kevin can’t make a shot, you know it’s more than just the player’s fault.
    • The most horrible dinner we’ve ever had, at a “fancy” burger place called Guilty. I won’t even go into details. But suffice to say that Kevin and I were quite disappointed.
    • Coffee! Cafe!: People make jokes about there being a Tim Hortons or Starbucks on every corner in Canada, but in Lisbon, you’re hard pressed to walk 5 minutes in any direction without passing some type of cafe. Every park has kiosks that serve espressos (and beer!), and every block has a small cafe that serves snacks, coffee (espressos), and beer. So throughout this entire trip, we drank insane amounts of espresso. Walked 5 blocks? Time for a cafe break.
    • Evening drinks at Pensao Amor: This is one of our favourite places in Lisbon. It’s a former brothel, now decorated as a vintage burlesque bar. It’s a great setting, always lively, with good music and drinks.
    • Lunch at the Nun’s Canteen: This was probably the most interesting place that we ate while in Lisbon. Looking for a unique lunch spot, I came across this Guardian UK article about best lunch spots in Lisbon. It mentioned a canteen/cafeteria run by nuns where one can grab a cheap lunch with a great view. I marked the spot on the map, and the 3 of us set off on an adventure. 5 minutes in a cab, and we were in Lisbon’s Chiado neighbourhood. We went up a set of stairs to a house in an alleyway. The door was open, and we headed up the third floor. Once there, we found exactly what we’d been promised. A well-priced traditional Portuguese lunch, which we enjoyed on their back patio, overlooking the Tagus River and the Chiado neighbourhood below us. It’s a spot frequented by locals on lunch hour, but we did our best not to stand out as tourists in this authentically Lisbon experience.
    • Belem: Next, we headed to Lisbon’s Belem neighbourhood, where we enjoyed the following: Pasteis de Natas (which were apparently invented at the Pasteis de Belem cafe, and certainly they make the tastiest version); The Church at the Monastery of Jeronimos; Padrao dos Descombrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries); and the Torre de Belem, an ancient fortification.
    • Dinner (and later, drinks) with our friend Soledad: We went to Mercado da Ribeira, which is basically a high-end food court, featuring small outposts of all the top restaurants in the city.

    After all that adventuring, we headed home to get some sleep before starting our roadtrip in the morning! Lots of photos below, with descriptions to properly explain all the things we saw. Check ’em out:

    view of Lisbon from above – we took the famous streetcar from one end of the city to the other. This was the final view!
    siblings at the top of the city
    getting fancy with panoramic views
    at the gates to Lisbon, right at the waterfront. Not behaving
    And then, behaving. Kevin made us take a nice one for our parents.
    at a central cable car junction, on our way to lunch
    lunch appetizers at Sea Me!
    At the top of another Lisbon hill
    Tyler capturing the beauty of Lisbon 😉
    the view of the street from our AirBnB
    get to the gym, Tyler! (PS: my wardrobe change took place when we took Tyler back to the AirBnB and I unpackaged the Lululemon clothes I made him pick up in Canada for me)
    just another beautiful Lisbon streeet
    sibings and hills and streetcar tracks.
    Tyler really couldn’t get enough of the beautiful streets (I was the same when I first came to Europe)
    Praying pre-Sangria outside the Convento do Carmo
    world’s sketchiest pool table. May very well have been 50+ years old, sans maintenance
    Enjoying a cafe kiosk, 30 steps from our apartment
    Just another gorgeous building we spotted on the way to lunch
    view from the Nun’s canteen!
    inside at the canteen
    the welcoming door
    Info about lunch, for those interested
    with a cable car in the background. Same style that we took a ride on the day before
    siblings in Lisbon
    just a random beautiful street, no big deal
    seriously! a random sidewalk!
    siblings taking in the squares of Lisbon
    Kevin really put his photo skills to work on this trip. Always wanting to capture good shots for the family!
    Enjoying the view at the shores of the Tagus river. At least one of us is paying attention to the view.
    our cab to Belem was a shark! Also was driven by a woman who MADE us put on our seatbelts.
    Tyler getting artistic at Pasteis de Belem
    our Pasteis de Nata
    where/how they’re made
    SO many pasteis de nata!
    Outside of the Monastery of Jeronimos
    this building is bananas
    Inside the church – gotta keep quiet!
    Upstairs at the church. Couldn’t figure out how to get there and also couldn’t deal with not talking, so we left.
    A massive fountain in Belem. First time seeing it active!
    Tyler in front of the 25 of April Bridge. Just like his trip to San Francisco a few weeks prior!
    The massive Monument to the Discoveries. Built to commemorate Portuguese exploration.
    It. is. so. big.
    We went to the top of the Monument and caught a pretty stellar view.
    That’s the Torre de Belem in the distance
    It’s too damn hot and sunny up here!
    view of the Monastery of Jeronimos
    Overhead view of the rose compass, donated to Portugal by South Africa. The map in the centre shows all the places that Portuguese explorers went.
    oh hey coolio!
    There was an exhibit in the basement of the monument, where we saw some cool posters
    Was feeling the heat, but Kevin solved that with water and gelato.
    siblings at the Torre de Belem
    Nice bag!
    #selfie at the torre de belem
    and again
    wtf?
    having dessert with Soledad!
    look at these kids!
    having fun?
  • Did you know that Tyler came to visit?

    Did you know that Tyler came to visit?

    While Kevin and I were in Cambodia, my brothers trekked halfway around the globe to visit us for a 10 day extravaganza.

    We managed to convince Tyler to come on a similar adventure, this time in Portugal. Kevin put weeks of planning into a road trip that took us all around Portugal, where we saw some incredible sites, ate some incredible food, and laughed incredibly hard.

    He came to visit us for 10 days in the middle of April. We started with nights out in Lisbon, followed by a 3 day roadtrip that was cut short by illness. We then spent the rest of the trip in the Algarve, where we showed him this sites, relaxed among the orange trees, and convinced him to eat all kinds of amazing seafood.

    Inspired by our former roommate, Dragan, the motto of the entire trip was “turn down for what” (really, inspired by this most amazing music video), and Tyler did his very best to turn up all the time.

    We did it up pretty big, which is to say that we spared no expense and never said ‘no’ to anything.

    As a result, there are lots of photos and videos and stories to share. I expect they’ll take up the next 2 weeks worth of posts (including a couple written by Tyler himself!), so be sure to check the blog often!

    Below are a few photos of what’s to come – enjoy!

    siblings at a non-existent archeological monument
    approaching piodao from the cloudy mountains
    cows on the roadside, just normal stuff
    meta photos on an aqueduct in Tomar
    siblings in Lisbon
    siblings in Belem (part of Lisbon, really)
    slow down – goats on the road!
  • An Afternoon at the Oceanario de Lisboa

    An Afternoon at the Oceanario de Lisboa

    Last year, the Oceanario in Lisboa was recommended to me by a friend as an absolutely must-see spot in Lisbon. It didn’t make the itinerary that time, but this year we made sure it was on our to-do list.

    At a cost of nearly 20 euros each to enter, we were a bit wary. But seriously, this place is SO GREAT.

    However, it is also enormous. While at first we were super excited about how cool it was, by the end we were totally ocean-ed out and walked through the last 3 exhibits like “seriously!? there’s still more?!”. There was also no cafe inside, which was rather un-Portuguese if you ask me.

    The Oceanarium is the largest indoor aquarium in Europe, and it’s an extremely impressive exhibit. Even the signage was interesting and helpful, which is usually not the case at attractions in Portugal.

    Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

    The main exhibit is a 1,000 m2 (11,000 sq ft), 5,000 m3 (180,000 cu ft) tank with four large 49 m2 (530 sq ft) acrylic windows on its sides, and smaller focus windows strategically located around it to make sure it is a constant component throughout the exhibit space. It is 7 m (23 ft) deep, which lets pelagicswimmers to swim above the bottom dwellers, and providing the illusion of the open ocean. About 100 species from around the world are kept in this tank,[3]including sharks, rays, barracudas, groupers, and moray eels. One of the main attractions is a large sunfish.

    Four tanks around the large central tank house four different habitats with their native flora and fauna: the North Atlantic rocky coast, the Antarctic coastal line, the Temperate Pacifickelp forests, and the Tropical Indiancoral reefs. These tanks are separated from the central tank only by large sheets of acrylic to provide the illusion of a single large tank. Throughout the first floor there are an additional 25 thematic aquariums with each of the habitats’ own characteristics.

    Our favourite part was definitely the penguins, who were just so outrageously cute. We took some videos, of course, so we can revisit the cute-ness at our leisure. Other highlights included some very interesting and colourful fish, pictured below. I didn’t expect us to be quite so into the Oceanarium, but we had a really good time exploring it all.

    And of course, we foolishly took a lot of photos. The oceanarium is rather dark, so the pictures didn’t all turn out perfect, but I think they’ve captured how much fun we were having (A LOT).

    Enjoy!

     

    rays! and some rather big fish!
    this is a sunfish. this is a small one – they become enormous. google it!
    Females of the species can produce more eggs than any other known vertebrate, up to 300,000,000 at a time.
    look! a sunfish!
    here’s some info on the sunfish as well
    enter, the penguin exhibit
    thumbs up for penguins!
    look at that cute little guy, just hopping along!
    me, in front of a sign about penguin genealogy
    more cute penguins!
    then we moved onto otters, just in time for their feeding
    the feeder dropped fish into the water. they’d roll around in the water with it, then get on their backs to eat it
    the feeder guy was also feeding some boring teeny fish or something like that
    camouflage is in vogue in this tank
    look at these crazy cute frogs!
    omg and look at this one!
    these guys swim fast!!
    penguins swimming real fast!
    a star fish says hello
    so does this beautiful octopus
    look at those colours!
    some chillin’, some movin’
    this guy was just chillin’
    these were the most unique little guys. so darn cute!
    and look at this one!
    and these ones!!
    can you spot the blowfish?
    it was really windy that day
    me and mini-vasco de gama

     

  • Heather and Kevin take Lisbon

    Heather and Kevin take Lisbon

    The main thing that we orient our trips around is eating.

    Good food is a big deal to us, and so we’re often looking to try new restaurants, in hopes that they impress. In Lisbon in particular, where we hadn’t spent much time, we were looking to try new places, in search of some future favourites. We make our choices based on online research, recommendations from friends, and TripAdvisor lists.

    We were in Lisbon for 2 nights, staying in our friend Soledad’s beautiful apartment while she was away on a business trip. After our long drive, we got settled into her apartment, took a quick nap, and then headed into downtown Lisbon for dinner. Kevin knew I was having a bit of a craving for my grandmother’s perogies, so he took me to Stanislav Avenida, a well reviewed new Russian restaurant in town. And let me tell you, those reviews were well-earned. The food was amazing, as was the selection of specialty vodkas.

    Before heading back to the apartment (I’m working, you know!), we took a short walk through Lisbon. Because Kevin and I speak english to each other, we’re often mistaken for foreign tourists. People selling things on the street often call after us in English, and they’re always surprised when Kevin responds in Portuguese.

    On this particular day, this resulted in us getting free entry into the House of the Alentejo (a remote farming province in Portugal, known for being rather traditional). We definitely didn’t expect just how traditional the inside of the club would be. It was like travelling back in time. The decor throughout the building was beautiful, and obviously hadn’t been changed since the decadent days when it was built. And to top it off, upstairs was a dinner with traditional Portuguese dancing. We took a bunch of photos, otherwise we might have thought it was all a dream.

    Despite working till after 4am, we were up bright and early to explore the sites in Lisbon. This was a really fun day for me, because Kevin planned everything and I was just along for the adventure. We started off on the west side of Lisbon, in what’s known as Belem. We saw Lisbon’s famous Jeronimos Monastery, the very old Tower of Belem, and a great big monument built to commemorate Portuguese exploration. After lunch, we headed to the Aquarium, which I’ll write about separately.

    In the afternoon, we went right into Lisbon proper, where we walked, and walked, and walked, and walked. Eventually, we stopped at a pretty unique bar called Pavilhao Chinese. Their claim seems to be ‘collections of stuff’, and they have that in spades. I’ve never seen a bar quite like it, and I definitely recommend stopping in at least once.

    The last destination on our list that day was obviously dinner, and we had some of the best seafood that Lisbon offers, at Cervejaria Ramiro. Since coming to Portugal, I’ve become a complete and total seafood monster. That night we had goose barnacles, multiple types of shrimp, and clams. And we even met a fellow Canadian!

    After a full day of activities and amazing food we headed back to Soledad’s apartment. Worth noting is that this is probably the cleanest apartment I’ve ever been in. While Kevin slept, I took some of my phone calls in the bathroom, where I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor. If you can keep your bathroom floor spotless, then you’re probably the cleanest person ever. Thanks Soledad!

    If a picture is worth a thousand words, and I’ve already written 600, then you should probably just look at the photos below. They’ll tell you much more about the amazing-ness of our trip to Lisbon!

     

    getting ready for dinner at Stanislav Avenida, a new-ish Russian restaurant in Lisbon
    our starters at Stanislav Avenida
    Russian perogies (Vareniki?) and Steak Tartare at Stanislav Avenida. Seriously amazing.
    in the wet streets of Lisbon
    time travelling at the Club do Alentejo
    traditional dancing from the Alentejo province
    me in front of the Jeronimos Monastery
    a giant sword!
    exploration is cool!
    portuguese explorers
    me in front of the Ponte de 25 Abril
    yachts? meh, who cares?
    it was windy!
    the tower of belem
    at a cafe, obviously
    inside Pavilhao Chinese
    me, being amused by all the stuff.
    so. much. stuff.
    who dusts this place?!
    illustrations on the menu
    eating (and loving) goose barnacles
    me and some cute little shrimp
    not so cute anymore!
    as we drove over the vasco de gama bridge, en route to the Algarve, we spotted people fishing on the flats. probably the same people who caught last night’s dinner!
  • Roadtripping to Lisbon

    Roadtripping to Lisbon

    There’s an efficient way of driving to Lisbon, and then there’s the Heather-and-Kevin way of driving to Lisbon.

    The drive to Lisbon takes around 3 hours. Or 6 hours. You know, whatever. Here’s the map of the route we took (you can see the direct highway on the right, going straight up to Lisbon at reasonable speeds):

    Cabo_Sardão_-_Google_Maps

    Anyways, our route included missed turns due to my inability to read maps, gorgeous cliffs, lunch, a ferry ride, and a drive across Lisbon’s answer to the Golden Gate Bridge.

    The highlight of the trip was cliffs at Cabo Sardao, featured in our photos below. They were about a zillion times more beautiful and impressive in person, as with most natural sites caught on a cell phone camera. The cliffs were sheer, and Kevin was quite worried that I’d trip and fall over the edge. In every photo of me, he’s cautioning me to be careful, then grabbing my hand as soon as the photo is taken. Usually I’m the one who’s acting safety-crazed, so I got quite a laugh out of it all.

    Fun fact about Cabo Sardao: it was constructed 180 degrees differently than intended. The front door is supposed to face the road but instead it faces the sea. Apparently the guy in charge of construction read the papers wrong. And at a location that remote, you don’t exactly send out any random inspection crews.

    After Cabo Sardao, we drove to Sines, where I leveraged TripAdvisor to find us a true local hangout for lunch. The food (frango – bbq’d chicken) wasn’t amazing, but it was pretty darn good, at a laid back restaurant called Adega de Sines. We then took a short walk around Sines, and got back in the car. On a normal trip, we’d have been in Lisbon by now.

    Next, we drove to a ferry stop just south of Lisbon. I’d never taken a ferry with a car, and it was a pretty neat experience. Pretty darn windy, but interesting to experience being in a car-on-a-boat-crossing-a-harbour. After we left the ferry, we were just a quick drive away from Lisbon. Before long, we crossed the 25th of April Bridge, and were in Lisbon.

    We were in town for a few days, crashing at our friend Soledad’s gorgeous apartment while she was out of town. Our fun roadtrip was a sign of things to come, as we had a total blast exploring Lisbon together. Those stories are coming soon. For now, enjoy the photos from our roadtrip to Libson.

     

    At the Cabo Sordao cliffs!
    a bit too close to the edge for Kevin’s liking
    OMG Kevin did not like this one.
    even this he thought was too close. Behind me is the backwards lighthouse. The tower shouldn’t be on the far side from the ocean!
    lunch!
    a funny poster in the restaurant. In the Alentejo province, everything takes forever and people are happy to wait!
    outside our lunch spot
    Yes, Aunt Elaine and Nana Ev, those are cannons!
    the ferry arriving
    on the ferry!
    Kevin’s truck enjoying the ride (I’m inside the truck at this point)
    my wind-free view
    crossing the bridge
    jesus christ, we’re on a bridge!
  • We converted, and now we’re obsessed.

    We converted, and now we’re obsessed.

    Back when e-readers came out, I worked at Chapters. I thought the Kobo was a cool concept but, like many people, I love buying, holding, having books. It had been suggested that I buy an e-reader, but I’d always declined. In my mind, nothing can beat a real book, in my hand, and then on my bookshelf to be perused and re-read in the future.

    When we moved to Phnom Penh, this became something of a problem. I couldn’t take books with me to Phnom Penh, but I felt silly buying books there because I couldn’t take them with me when I left either. I had lots of time to relax, so I did buy a handful of books, but the selection was terribly limited. In one case, I actually bought a book that I knew was sitting unread in my parents’ garage.

    And that’s when I realized: e-readers are perfect for travelling or living abroad.

    When I came home at Christmas, I went out an splurged on a Kobo. I loaded it up with books, and was reading non-stop once I got to Portugal.

    After a couple of weeks, Kevin picked it up, then asked to borrow it. Within a couple of hours he was hooked.

    I hopped online and looked up e-readers in Portugal. The best option was to buy a Kindle from Amazon.com, and that’s just what I did, saying to Kevin “I’m ordering you a Kindle, but I’m keeping it for myself if it’s better than the Kobo”.

    It is, and I did.

    So now we have a set of e-readers and we rarely leave the house without them.

    I’ve read 34 books so far this year. That’s probably more books that I’ve read in the past 3 years combined.

    Kevin concurs, having read 30 so far.

    We’ve always been big readers. As kids we were total library nerds, and we consume a hefty amount of internet reading, and readings for school. But actual books, fiction in particular? We haven’t read this many in years.

    We never thought we’d say this, but we would never part with our e-readers.

    reading!
    reading by the fire, keeping warm in January.
  • Castelo de Silves

    Castelo de Silves

    When it was a bit chilly, Kevin and I drove east to see the Palace of Estoi. A few weeks later, on one of the first truly warm days this year, Kevin and I drove west to see the Castle of Silves.

    The Castle of Silves is stunning. I’d seen it many times, lit up at night, while driving through Silves to have dinner somewhere. This day was the first time Kevin and I had been there, and we were quite impressed. The Palacio do Estoi is pretty, but the Castelo de Silves is, like, a really serious/big piece of history in this region. according to Wikipedia:

    “Built between the 8th and 13th century, the castle is one of the best preserved of the Moorish fortifications in Portugal … from archaeological excavations, it is assumed that the first fortress on this site consisted of a Lusitanian castro. It is believed that Phoenicans, Greeks and Carthaginians traversed the site at one time, but that around 201 B.C. the Romans conquered Silves, transforming it into a citadel of their occupation, and commercial center that prospered for the next five centuries.

    Around 716, the Visigothic citadel was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate who reinforced the existing fortifications with a new series of walls. This new period resulted in a great period of development, under the Moorish occupiers, that include the extensive walls in the west. In 1160, it was sacked by Ferdinand I of León and Castile, but remained only for a short time in the hand of the Christians: it was quickly recaptured by the Moors. King Sancho I of Portugal, supported by the powerful Crusader army, conquered the city, after a prolong encirclement in 1189. But, a grande army, under orders from Amir al-Mu’minin, in 1191, retook the city. The buildings of the Taifa kingdoms of the 11th century, which includes the Palace of Balconies (where Al-Mutamid lived as the poet Ibn Amarhe) progressed in the 11th century. The walls and towers that today represent the Castle of Silves came from these campaigns and public works by Almoravides and Almohads in the 12th and 13th centuries. The castles internal water catchment, and large rain fed underground cistern were used to provide freshwater for the surrounding dwellings (to as late as the 1920s). It would only be in the 13th century, during the reign of Afonso III of Portugal, that forces under the command of D. Paio Peres Correia, would definitively take the fortress.

    So yeah, more than 2000 years ago, the site of Silves Castle was established by Moorish forces, who then passed it back and forth with Christian conquerors for 1400 years, until the Portuguese finally took hold of the whole thing.

    When you’re inside the castle walls, you can see why it was chosen as the location for a massive fortification. It sits atop a hill, and you can see everything for miles. You can’t quite see the ocean, but any invading ocean forces would be held up by and easily visible crossing a natural geographic barrier – the sierra hills south of the castle.

    Other than a cafe, there’s not much in the way of an organized presentation of information at the castle, but we had fun walking around the massive site, checking out the views from every angle and trying to interpret the map we had.

    There was one exhibit in the room that used to be for water storage. It described the Iberian Lynx, a beautiful animal on the verge of extinction, native to Spain & Portugal.

    Take a look at our photos below. It was a really beautiful day!

    at the cafe, trying to understand what this map is saying
    this is the backdoor entrance to this place. I got as far as that, then screamed “EW! Bugs!”, posed for a photo, and rushed away.
    View from the castle walls
    an old timey garden and an artistic shot 😉
    Me, thinking WTF? Which way to the lost secondary water chamber?
    diagrams of the endangered Iberian Lynx
    RAWR!
    Pretty sure those palm trees aren’t native
    Not sure if the Moorish men were actually this tall, but this is me and a statue outside.
    A view of the Silves Castle at night (on the right)
    Kevin gets pretty into his photo angles.
    And I got to take this one, because of course he was petting the cat!
  • Celebrating Carnival in the Algarve

    Celebrating Carnival in the Algarve

    Carnival is a fairly historied Catholic tradition (and probably goes back even further than that, really). I’m assuming most of y’all aren’t up to date on Catholic traditions, so here’s a quick refresher course, courtesy of our friends at Wikipedia:

    Carnival (see other spellings and names) is a festive season that occurs immediately before the Christian season of Lent. The main events typically occur during February. Carnival typically involves a public celebration and/or parade combining some elements of a circus, masks and public street party. People wear masks during many such celebrations, an overturning of life’s normal things. The celebrations have long been associated with heavy alcohol consumption.

    When we came to Portugal for a 2 week holiday last year, we were here for Carnival, so though this year’s festivities weren’t a surprise, they were definitely a delight.

    In Canada, I’m used to parades being a rather straightforward affair. The first float marks the beginning, and the last float marks the end. As with most things in Canada, it’s efficient. In the fun-and-fancy-free mild Portuguese weather, parades are a bit different. Instead of a straight-line-kind-of-parade, the Carnival parade is on loop!

    One of the most traditional Carnival parades is held each year in Alte. It’s definitely more old-fashioned than the parade in the neighbouring city of Loule, and it has more of a local/hometown feel to it. The floats line up, populated by people from Alte, and they’re observed by the townspeople from Alte and surrounding areas (including me and Kevin). Most people know each other, and everyone is drinking (float people and audience alike), so things get pretty fun pretty fast. For the first hour, Kevin knew and chatted with someone from every float.

    The floats aren’t that big, so there are always crowds of people walking with them. And instead of being sponsored by or representing companies, community groups, etc, they’re simply a creative theme. Often, the players on the float act out a type of narrative as well.

    One float’s theme was 101 Dalmatians. There was a “Cruella” driving the car, and a couple of henchmen who ran around picking up puppies and putting them in a big cage (who then escaped). The Braveheart float eventually staged a battle in the middle of the street, with various players storming their castle.

    Because the parade goes on and on, the floats end up evolving; acting a kind of performance art. It’s artistic and it’s very fun.

    I found some videos online taken at this year’s Alte Carnival. I played it for Kevin and his immediate reaction was “oh man, I know so many people in this … and everyone’s drunk”.

    I don’t think I’ve ever been to such a fun parade. You can check out more vidoes here, here, and here.

    We also went to the Carnival in Loule, and you can see photos of it below. Being in a city, it’s a much larger scale parade, with much fancier floats, often mocking various EU politicians. It’s neat, but doesn’t have the same spirit at the Carnival in Alte. Have a look below to see all the snapshots we captured!

    And leave a comment below: have you ever seen a parade like this one?

    Carnival in Alte
    Hippies!
    Here are cats!
    Braveheart!
    Robin Hood & his Merry Men
    me with Catia & Soledad, 2 of our friends from Alte (and 2 of Kevin’s childhood friends)
    Puppies!
    in my very own Carnival costume. (though I didn’t make it to the Carnival party because we went to dinner until 7am)
    Carnival in Loule
    Socrates at the Carnival in Loule
    Ladies at the Carnival in Loule
  • Lunch at Palacio do Estoi

    Lunch at Palacio do Estoi

    Sometimes being in Portugal with Kevin feels like being on a non-stop field trip. That is to say, he’s always cooking up new ideas and trips and adventures to keep me entertained. Back in February, Kevin planned a whole-day outing for us to see the Palacio do Estoi (aka the Palace of Estoi). Our drive to Estoi wasn’t your regular ol’ highway drive. Kevin chose the most scenic route possible, and included a stop in the nearby town of Salir, where a sign promised us castle ruins.

    Salir really was beautiful, and as it sits on a top of a hill, it cuts a lovely view. The ruins were a bit disappointing, but as you’ll see below, meeting a cute cat more than made up for it.

    Our next stop was the Palacio do Estoi. It’s a palace built by a rich guy in the late 1800s and it’s a great example of the Rococo style. It’s also probably one of the only examples of Rococo style to be found in the Algarve.

    Recently, it was acquired by a hotel chain that specializes in unique properties. They’ve added an expansion to the palace that contains a pool and accommodations. As for the original palace, they’ve kept it mostly as-is, operating 2 restaurants out of the building. As a guest or a visitor you can explore various gardens and sitting rooms, all of which maintain their original beautiful style.

    The patio outside is part of the restaurant, and that’s where we sat, enjoying a light lunch, a bottle of “vinho verde” (green wine), an ocean view, and a stunning sunset. Despite being an old beautiful palace-turned-hotel, it maintains a casual atmosphere that makes anyone feel welcome.

    It was a simple day, visiting a simple site, and it was all wonderful. If you make it to Portugal, this is a site worth seeing.

    Making a quick stop in Salir to see some castle ruins
    great view!
    Inside one of the sitting rooms.
    the walls around the palace
    From the mural inside. Kevin sent this to my parents and said it was the two of us.
    Kevin & I, looking fab.
    me and Kevin
    view from the cafe on the patio
    view from one of the balconies
    checking out someone’s wheels
    me in the palace gardens
    view of the inaccessible, wild gardens, from the gardens close to the palace
    enjoying lunch/wine and the sunset. As you can see, Kevin insists on places his lips on a fresh spot for each sip.
    Kevin’s view while peeing in a public toilet.