Beautiful Portugal

Friday, April 27th
Left Sevilla and drove to Evora Portugal.  We saw lots of storks along the way.  They build their nests at the top of electric poles.

In Evora, we stayed at the Hotel Ibis.  Even though it was quite cold, after we checked in and rested a little, we took a walk around in the old town.  Here's a picture of laundry hanging in the streets of Evora.  This is the kind of picture that a while back I said I'd post.  The kind of scene that makes me so glad that I have the clothes-hanging situation that I DO have and not something like this, since every time I hang up clothes, I drop at least one or two items.

Can you imagine?  Every time I'd have to go downstairs and pick up a sock or an underwear off the sidewalk!

We walked all across the old town and saw these old Roman ruins.

In this picture, to the right of the center, you can see an old aqueduct.  The sky also looks like a terrific storm was coming, but it only sprinkled a little bit.

We tried to eat at a restaurant in this plaza but they were all closed because we didn't realize there was an hour difference between Spain and Portugal.

So we walked back to our hotel, and here is another street scene in Evora.

We finally settled on eating at a Churrasqueria close to our hotel which even though they weren't scheduled to open for 30 minutes said we could go ahead and sit down and order.  We had an excellent dinner that evening.

Saturday, April 28th
Today we drove to Lisbon, and along the way the countryside was so beautiful.  Portugal is a beautiful country.  When we got to Portugal, we drove right through it since the city looked so huge and confusing.  We drove to some coastal cities and admired the beautiful scenery.  We felt very much like we were driving along the west coast of the United States, except this was the west coast of Portugal!

There were plenty people gliding on the air currents.

We found a nice restaurant along the beach where we had lunch. 

After lunch, the waiter invited us to go underneath the restaurant where they had many pools with all the shellfish that they serve.  It was quite interesting.   Then we drove back along the lower coast, stopping in Cascais to see the Boca do Inferno.

This day also we had angry looking clouds in the distance, and this time, the storm did get to where we were.  Fortunately, we were already in the car when it hit.

That evening, we had dinner at the same churrasqueria as yesterday.  Portugal was beautiful and very charming.  Lots of history there and many interesting castles, buildings, forts,etc.  We would definitely like to go back one of these days.


Sunday, April 29th
Left Portugal, drove to Toledo.  Stopped in a town called Elvas, took pix of the acueduct and found ourselves driving in through the old walls of the city.  That was a little scary since the entrances through the walls were for one car only so you had to honk and just HOPE no one was coming from the opposite direction.  We ate lunch in our car - weather was cold and rainy.
Got to Toledo and found ourselves once again driving in the old historic section of a town.  This place was amazing, too, and to get to our hotel, we had to drive on some streets where our car barely fit.  We had to fold the rear view mirrors in so they wouldn't hit the side walls.  It was cold and just sprinkling when we arrived,   We had to stop the car, take out the luggage quickly since it was a narrow one lane road and then Guillermo and I drove the car down to a place where we could park it for the next two nights.  Then we walked back uphill in the cold and now a good rain back to our hotel.  We had dinner in a little bar which was ok.