Portugal

In June Chris and I went on a trip to Portugal, Spain and France. We have been wanting to see the Basque Country of Spain where Chris's ancestors are from. It is kind of tricky to get there. It's in the northern part of Spain, right in the middle of the country, right where Spain connects to France. (More about that later!) We discovered the best way to get there was to first visit Portugal.

Some of the things I loved about Portugal:

*The weather was perfect, 72 degrees and sunny the whole time we were there.
*The sky is so blue.
*Custard tarts, called pasteis de nata are delicious.
*The history-Portugal is kind of a poor country now but they used to explore and conquer all over the world! Lots of old buildings to see here.
*Decorative ceilings!

Here are some pictures from our trip.

Overlooking Lisbon (Lisboa). This was our weather the whole time!

A really cool monument celebrating the Portuguese explorers, who all but conquered the world.

This isn't a great picture but it's the inside of the National Palace. A huge, ornate building but out of the way
so not many tourists. The picture below is the same room, different perspective to show the ceiling.

Eating a pasteis de nata. I couldn't get enough of these. They are best when they are a little bit warm.

We visited a coach museum. These coaches were really used by the royalty.
They were so large I couldn't step back far enough to capture the whole thing.

This was at the Castle of the Moors. It was built in the 8th and 9th
centuries and has stood the test of time. We climbed a lot of steps that day!

Another view of the castle.

No, we didn't detour to Disney World. This is a palace built for the royals in the mid-1800s.
Most of the pictures of ceilings below are from this palace.

One of the pitfalls of not knowing the language is that you really never know what you are ordering. Everything on the menu was so inexpensive, I thought I was ordering a sandwich and fries. Surprise! I got two sandwiches AND fries. We had also ordered a cheese plate that came out as a platter. Needless to say, it was our food for the next day as well!

This was a tile wall in one of the old palaces in Sintra. The palace was built in the 16th century.
I loved the blue tiles but they didn't photograph well, but at least you can see the scene.

I couldn't get over how intricate the architecture was. After a while I started taking pictures of just ceilings. Here is just a sampling of the pictures I took. These photos don't do it justice either. They were so colorful.

This was from the courtyard of a monastery.

This was a ceiling in the carriage museum.

This was a little alcove thing, decorated in seashells.

Bathroom tile in a palace.

We found Portugal a very easy place to visit. It was inexpensive, easy to navigate, lots to see, the people were friendly and mostly spoke English, and the food was delicious. You should go sometime!