I've been in Portugal for 3 days now. The people are friendly, the roads are great and food is decent. Katie and I left the airport in the rain after 20 hours of traveling, and 3 hours of organizing and preparing the bikes. We had a hotel booked about 4 miles away. The wet cobblestone roads, traffic and fully loaded bikes that we had not yet practice balancing all made for a hectic start. Regardless we made it to the cool little hotel in the historic part of Lisbon. We wandered around town in the evening and toured the castle nearby (more of a fort than a castle). Construction started in 48bc! We also stumbled upon a museum showing an excavation of old city ruins, forgotten, built over and rediscovered.
That night due to jet lag, many late nights getting ready and the wear of traveling we slept 13 straight hours. Waking up just before the knock to let us know it is as time to check out. But I the time we got out of there I had a plan to cycle south over a very large bridge and continue on to a national park to camp in. Just like the day before the steep winding cobblestone roads made maneuvering difficult and navigating even worse. After several wrong turns we found ourselves on the approach drive to the bridge. As we stood there getting ready for the climb 4 different drivers yelled to us that it was impossible to bike across the bridge and to turn around. It was hard to argue with that many people so we biked back, nearly to where we started and caught a ferry across the inlet.
Travel since then has been much easier. The roads are good, traffic is light and besides a steady drizzle through the night the weather has been very pleasant. Tonight I can hear the waves of the Atlantic crashing on the shore a quarter mile away.
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