Back To Portugal

Cascais Street Scene

Regis turned sixty five this year. Rather than being upset about “growing old”, she is taking a positive approach and is getting a big charge out of being able to get “senior's discount” on stuff. For this major milestone birthday, she wanted to do something special and decided to take the children and “their's” on a European vacation. Originally the plan was to go to Croatia, but the logistics of arranging for flights from people scattered across Canada proved difficult and very expensive to this location. Instead, after consulting with the flight guru Ben (Ryan's partner), it was decided that going back to Portugal was a more reasonable alternative. Our last trip to Portugal was with my sister Linda and her husband Pete, and we spent a month on the Algarve, so on this adventure we decided to explore the western coast around Lisbon and Porto.

Grilled Chicken, Portuguese Style

Now you know that I normally have very little to do with the planning of these trips as I employ a very effective travel planner, my wife Regis. She loves planning trips and spends months planning, checking and replanning vacations. Although she does an amazing job, the months and months of research and work that goes into her planning was driving me crazy – to the point that I was not looking forward to travel at all by the time we were actually ready to depart. When she said she wanted to organize this family travel adventure I said I was fine with it on the condition that I be left out of the loop completely. And I meant COMPLETELY; I did not want to be consulted at all, I had no opinions, no input, no consultations and most importantly no complaints! A bit silly (The no complaints thing), since she does such an amazing job planning that I never have anything to complain about and always enjoy the places we visit. This worked well for me. I knew that discussions, diagrams, spreadsheets, and phone calls were going on behind my back organizing the trip, but I knew nothing about where exactly we were going or what our itinerary was.

Beautiful B & B (We did not stay here)

And now I am in the town of Cascias on the Atlantic coast of Portugal in a lovely little apartment not far from the historic town centre. The flight over was smooth and uneventful, we found the Metro stop at the Lisbon airport without difficulty, got a Portuguese phone SIM, got on the train up to coast to Cascais, and sampled some delicious Portuguese food already. No problems, beautiful warm weather, and no complaints. Look for posts updating you on our adventures over the next couple of weeks. I wonder how long we are here for?

The Beach at Cascais

Cascais Town Square