Our Surprise Guest, Lisbon, and Silves

Guess what?? We’re in Spain now! I’ll attempt to bring you up to date on what we’ve been up to.

David’s friend Laurent made a spontaneous visit to us from France which was such a treat! He flew into Lisbon and we rented to car to go up and meet him and take advantage of getting to spend some time there without having to bring the boat up. We got a hotel and it was our first night sleeping on land in eight months! The bed was huge! In truth it was the same size as our bed at home but it felt huge. I had a very long bath and just because I could, also took a very long shower. And to top things off, we watched bad TV in bed! That night we had one of the most memorable meals ever at Restaurant Eleven. It was a true culinary experience that left us swooning.

Laurent arrived and we met up with our friends from Moonstruck and had a nice long, leisurely lunch of fish and many bottles of wine. Ah…got to love Europe! We then proceeded on our whirlwind tour of Lisbon, most of which took place by car, taking in the various monuments. We would have liked to have had more time, but needed to get back to the boat in Lagos. We did manage a visit to the Gulbenkian which had an impressive collection of European, Islamic, Egyptian, and Asian Art. Equally impressive is that the entire permanent collection used to be privately owned and was donated.

We still had the rental car the next day and decided to just drive and get lost on the country roads. We stumbled on a cluster of old stone homes and felt like we had gone back in time and were seeing things as they must have been 100 years ago. I really wanted to get a picture of this sweet old couple sitting out on their front patio but didn’t want to be rude. David and I had been seeing these trees whose bark had been removed from about two thirds of the way down. Laurent solved the mystery, turns out this is where cork comes from. Next was lunch and a stroll through the quaint town of Silves. I loved all of the different color painted houses.

I’ll leave it there for now b/c I want to get this posted and I need to download a bunch of photos. Stay tuned…