We headed to Portugal next – a country we’ve been wanting to visit since it feels like everyone and their mum has gone there and loved it recently!
We flew to Lisbon from Málaga.
Our first few days were in a lovely social hostel, where we got to know a few people and make friends from all over the world! The hostel also organised social day outings and daily dinners which was a great way to meet people.
We mixed things up with a hotel room for the last few days in Lisbon, which was on the upper part of Rossio station and had a gorgeous high-up view of the city.
Highlights were wandering around the historic (and hilly) Alfama neighborhood, checking out the Fado and Portuguese tile Azulejo museum, and of course checking out a Fado bar (Tasco do Chico) with free performances.
And on November 9… our dear friend from Montreal Rob arrived to join us on our bike trip! And on November 9… WW was struck by gastro.
On our first day in Lisbon we joined the outing to go to LX Factory, where we finally figured out that “industrial warehouse space converted to contemporary arts and handcrafts market” is a worldwide phenomenon that is the same basically everywhere you go. it was fun to hang out with the people from the hostel though! And the thrift store had cool stuff!
We highly recommend the national tile museum of Lisbon. Azulejos (Portuguese tile) are an integral part of Portuguese architectural beauty and really found absolutely everywhere! We were also excited to discover that the documentary on showing in the museum mentioning Montreal having contemporary azulejos decorating Montreal’s public spaces!
Of course we ate pasteis de nata almost everyday! Our favourite spot ended up being Manteigaria, which churned out fresh pasteis de nata so often that you often received a slightly warm, ooey-gooey one… Yum!!!!!
The hills of Lisbon are wonderfully picturesque, even if they’re hard on the thighs.
We explored the very steep hilly Alfama neighborhood in the rain, and discovered that while Portuguese pavement can be very pretty (and tiled in beautiful patterns), they are counterintuitively very slippery on a rainy slope.
We visited the Fado museum to learn about this art that is so unique to Lisbon, and also went to Tasco do Chico to catch a few live performances! Our favourite was when the owner of the place (a very dignified man) sang a song for us.
We also took a day trip to the nearby city of Sintra.
We visited Quinta da Regaleira, a manor house on sprawling palace grounds. The best parts were the underground “towers” and passages.
We also visited Palacio Nacional de Pena, which was a colourful palace up on the hill! We tried a couple of local pastries too: quijadas de sapa (cheese pastry) and travesseiros (cream-filled pastries).
This was the “Initiation Well” at Quinta da Regaleira, a very cool underground tower with a spiral staircase running down. Rumoured to be the part of the initiation ritual into the Knights Templar.
The palace grounds had some wonderfully lush landscaping.
Hello from one of the many towers in the Quinta!
To the surprise of nobody, WW matched Pena Palace perfectly.
Palacio Nacional de Pena were perfectly primary coloured against the blue sky.
The inside of Pena Palace was very ornate.
We headed south to start our bike trip through the Alentejo and Algarve.
Rob arrived in Lisbon to a very gastro-sick WW, so Jonny and Rob had a boys’ date hanging out at the Fado bar and hiking up the hill to the São Jorge Castle.
On November 10, WW still wasn’t feeling any better and decided to stay in a hotel in Evora until she recovered. Evora was the best spot for her to stay as there were buses that could connect her to the towns planned on the first few stops of the bike trip itinerary.
Meanwhile, Rob & Jonny continued on the bus to Moura, where they were due to start biking the next day.
Day 1 | Moura → Serpa
53.7km with 455m of ascent
Despite WW being sick in Evora, the day was absolutely lovely. Not too challenging, and the skies were clear and sunny the whole day! Biked past many olive trees, vineyards, and some livestock. It was a great start to the trip!
And we’re off! Day 1!
Very symmetrical crops
Some sheep with some adorable little bells on.
Meanwhile, WW just saw the inside of this hotel room of Evora all day.
Day 2 | Serpa → Mértola
60.0km with 617m of ascent
Another absolutely perfect day weather-wise! Both Rob and Jonny are feeling pretty great, except for a small issue with Rob’s knee. The road we were on was basically empty so we rode side-by-side and chatted most of the day, which was excellent.
WW started feeling better today! She spent the day exploring Evora: it has a beautiful walled old city, an old garden filled with cats and peacocks, and a chapel of bones (?!). Then, she took a bus to Almodôvar, where the boys were due to arrive tomorrow.
Day 2 and feeling good!
Mértola is drop-dead gorgeous!
Lots of reddish soil around here
WW walked around Evora and checked out this crazy “Chapel of Bones“.
Day 3 | Mértola → Almodôvar
63.5km with 771m of ascent
This day was super hard. We were both feeling the burn from the first two days, and it was basically uphill all day (which was suuuper fun). The weather cooled off a bit, which we were thankful for.
WW spent the day alone chilling in Almodôvar, and around 3PM Rob & Jonny finally rolled up – in surprise matching shirts that Rob had made back in Montreal (3 Nutz because that is our inside-joke name for our group).
Fooling around taking photos on one of our many breaks.
Rob and Jonny rolling up to surprise WW with the shirts!
Despite being high difficulty, it was still a beautiful day.
3 Nutz reunited!!
Day 4 | Almodôvar → Alte
46.5km with 860m of ascent
This was a pretty challenging day. It was the most amount of elevation gain we had ever done in one day!! On top of that, Jonny started coming down with a head cold.
It also was extremely rainy almost all day – it was almost comically bad at some points. But then the sun came out in our last hour of biking and created a beautiful, magical sunset!
Nearing our destination, a cute dog joyfully followed us down the road for a while, before we saw (from a distance) his owner pull up in a car, scolded him for being out and about, and took him away.
We arrived in the sleepy town of Alte, where we were going to have our rest day!
Really, really, really excited to bike in pouring rain!!!
Jonny was feeling pretty dead today… but at least we found some shelter to eat our lunches in.
Look at this joyful dog chasing us down! What a cutie pie!
Sometimes the sky decides to reward your rainy day with a beautiful view.
When WW got sick, this half-hearted thumbs up became a recurring joke for the rest of the trip. We loved biking in the rain, obviously. But we made it to our rest day!!!
Day 5 | Rest day in Alte
We enjoyed a lovely, chill rest day in the tiny town of Alte. It’s small but lovely! It has a couple of resident artists that have created little art pieces all over town.
We knew a thunderstorm was meant to be rolling into the area and were hoping all day that it would indeed fall on our rest day. It didn’t rain all day… until in the evening, the storm finally came, raging through town and cutting our power. We passed the time playing plenty of Star Realms!
Portugal is famous for its adorable little ceramics shops and this town was no different.
Renatta Violetta was a name we saw lots of times featured on the public art in this town.
Renatta Violetta also seemed to run the Fado bar (it seems to be in the same building as her atelier?)
We’ve introduced Rob to Star Realms, one of our favourite games, and unsurprisingly he started trouncing us at it right away.
The thunderstorm finally rolled in…
Day 6 | Alte → Silves
32.1km with 266m of ascent
We woke up to clear skies and simply could not believe our luck. It felt like we had made some kind of deal with the devil – our day was super sunny and wonderful!
It was a short, easy day today biking past orange trees and olive fields, and we finished with plenty of time to spare.
So sunny!!!
Orange thieves!!!!!
3 nutz on bikes wearing blue
We’re pretty sure these were olive trees?
Day 7 | Silves → Lagos
46.4km with 499m of ascent
Finally it stopped raining! It wasn’t so difficult, but Jonny was getting pretty sick so it wasn’t very fun for him. We stopped for lunch at a very popular spot and had to wait for way too long (and it was just okay). We also passed by a hill covered in solar panels, and the race track with the F1 Portuguese Grand Prix happens.
WW left a cute little note in the guestbook at our Silves hotel before leaving.
Jonny was honestly feeling quite sick by this time with a head cold.
We loved seeing these huge birds with their huge nests perched on top of telephone poles.
Racing off down the hill!
Day 8 | Lagos → Sagres 🏁
62.4km with 670m of ascent
Our last day was another beautiful sunny day! It was one of our longest days and definitely started to feel like a slog towards the end. We biked past Sagres to actually finish our day at Cabo de São Vicente, which is the Southwestern point of Europe!
Feeling very proud and accomplished!
Last day!!!!!!!
Made it to Cabo de São Vicente!
Beautiful dramatic cliff views to cap off our trip.
And here we are with our bikes and in our matching 3 Nutz t-shirts that Rob made for us :’)
We rented a car and chilled in the Algarve with Rob for about another week.
We toured a sardine factory, made a sardine board on a cliff, checked out some beaches, Ponta da Piedade (with some beautiful rocky outcroppings), played minigolf, checked out a local road rally race, and had a cheeky dinner over the border in Spain.
We checked out Conserveira do Arade, one of the last artisanal tinned sardine producers in the Algarve. It was really interesting for us to have this point of comparison against Conserveira Pinhais, which we visited in Porto about a week later.
We took our tinned fish to the seaside and WW made a beautiful charcuterie board for lunch!
Jonny said “make a shape!”
Boys n beers!
Enjoying the views at Ponta da Piedade in Lagos.
Tavira was a charming little town and we were feeling very lucky to have quality time with a friend.
Boys n minigolf!
We checked out a road rally race in Tavira before we left – it was a funny experience trying to navigate badly designed Portuguese websites trying to find the right spot to spectate the race.
A beautiful sunset at Cacela Velha!
Our last dinner in Faro together before parting ways 🙁
Then, we took the train up to Porto!
Our hostel in Porto was incredibly nice – it was inside of a beautiful heritage train building in São Bento station, which was beautifully decorated with tiles and had high ceilings and was honestly just absolutely gorgeous.
Our time in Porto was mainly for us to regroup and chill after an intense couple of weeks biking and road tripping! We did really love Porto though – it has more of a chill vibe than Lisbon and definitely has less of the overtouristed touch.
We also made it across the bridge to Gaia to check out the beautiful riverside view of Porto, and took the Gaia cable car down to enjoy (J) / suffer through (WW) some port wines in Gaia. WW was assured that the ports we were having were nice, but she just doesn’t like port, it seems.
Our Conserveira Pinhais tour was definitely a Disneyland level of production value (a little over the top for us), but we still definitely like their sardines the best.
It was definitely fun to see behind the scenes though!
We had a delightfully autumnal lunch featuring persimmons, roasted chestnuts, and port at Mercado do Bolhao.
There are some beautifully tiled churches in Porto, too. Also WW is feeling very chuffed at the flowers she got!
On the Gaia waterfront, we met an artist who told us stories of his childhood running up and down the stairs of Torre dos Clerigos. We bought a little painting he had done of the Porto skyline, with the tower sticking up conspicuously over everything else.
We also sampled francesinha, a decadent, sauce-covered sandwich that is emblematic of Porto’s food scene. It definitely has a strong poutine vibe!
For more photos, check out this Google Photos album.
Did you know that you can comment on this blog? Some of you do! Thanks for taking time to leave comments, we love reading them! (even if we forget to reply sometimes…)
