May 8 to 15, Portugal

Sitting across the river the city looks spectacular. I do like Porto very much. It is probably one of the cutest cities we have been. With the tram, the super narrow houses with ceramics at their front, the river, all the bridges, the cycle way all around the river Douro that finishes in the ocean, the historical city.....they told us that Porto has become the 3rd most visited city in Europe and is easy to see why.

Porto's favorite: grilled sardines

The people are really nice and the whole atmosphere is very laid back. Still, there are plenty of houses in disarray, in extreme need of TLC. I do hope that these new wave of big tourism brings lots of money to this country so they can start doing all the restoration that is much needed. Still this city goes into my "3 months to live" list!

Back on the road and back to nature, which for us is always ocean....we arrived at Praia da Memoria and Hecti cooked a glorious BBQ to celebrate mother's day!! The next day we did a great walk at Praia de Angeiras Sul that ended in a bad note when something bite me so bad that ended the day after in hospital with fever, a huge swollen foot that was impossible to walk and an itchiness that killed me for 3 days!!

So at Guimaraes and parked on the castle's ground, Hecti spent a few hours visiting the village while I was in bed wrapped around  ice in my foot. From there we drive to Arcos de Valdevez, parked across the river and spent a few hours laughing while filming a video for Daiana's hens night (that we had to upload from our computer to send it to Marni which resulted in 4 hours at Mcdonalds!!!!).

Nature and recovered, just enough to do 2 great walks on the Peneda Geres national park. One of the walks, part of the Santiago de Compostela trail, is crossing through old stone houses, in the middle of the vineyards, up and down hills, and the goats with their bells....I feel so inspired by this view and this great sense of calmness that I declare that my next goal will be to do the peregrination in a few years time, for Hecti's 60!!!   So, cheers for our next adventure!!!

And with that note we say goodbye to Portugal, which has been so good to us!. So excited about going back to Spain and do our last week before flying to Fiji.