portugal and spain - the thelma and louise tour

Well, well well, the month with mum came and went in a flash, and now i am trying to record what happened..... It turns out that we did an awful lot really...... BUT - I am flat out catching up with work, paperwork, etc etc and cant give it the attention that it deserves here now.....

SO, here is the summary....

Mum arrived and had the jet lag to prove that she had a 32 hour journey!!

Ruben and I cooked up a spanish tapas lunch, Pete visited and we propped mum up with our news until we let her crash and try to catch up on sleep

We picked up our very cute hire car on Wed 4 April and drove on the wrong side of the road, in a manual, out of Madrid, through the countryside and into Portugal.

As we had no plans, we were able to stop in Portalegre just across the border as we were tired and couldnt face the next few hours driving into Lisbon. Cute walled town not built for foreign drivers - we drove around and around and around and around being quite lost but managed to get a pretty good feel for the place without walking a step! Found a room, had an (interesting) meal and crashed.

Next day we went to Evora and I managed to follow my nose to the pension that I stayed in in 1998!!! The same lady was there and i explained that Id stayed there before. The town is really lovely - we had some roasted chestnuts in the square, watching the old men standing around and chatting all afternoon while their wives cooked!! The Roman ruins were lovely and this is where I started to see the street art that i noticed everywhere throughout Portugal.

Driving into Lisbon was really lovely - the Golden Gate style bridge is really impressive, the Jesus statue on the hill mirrors the twin in Rio de Janeiro and watches over the gorgeous city. Again getting a tad lost we accidentally looped past the airport twice before getting into town. A visit to the tourist office told us that the city was fully booked, so we decided to push on to Sintra. Visited the Tower of Balem and San Jeronimos monastry before taking the hilly roads up to the picturesque town, known for its fairytale castles. We found a room and tried to visit the castle. When i came here in 1998 the hill top was shrouded in cloud and the "amazing views" were hidden from us...... but this was a clear day and it was time to finally see it..... except we were stuck in a traffic jam, kept missing our street and when we finally got there we were told that sorry, we are closed now....... Stoopid castle!!! Met some nice people in a winebar later that night and had some looooovely chees made from goat, sheep and cow!! yummmmm

Lisbon - finally!! Lovely day, strange but comfortable room and a beautiful city to explore on foot. We took the scenic bus, went up the old winding streets of the Barrio Alto - old district, found some amazing funky designer shops, ate some divine pastries and at the very end, when mum was about to crash, we ran into some Aussie boys with money to burn who bought us dinner and beers!! Think they were missing their mum as mum was duly adopted as the group mum!! The budget gods were smiling on us as our room that night turned out to be free also - we couldnt get the guy to let us pay, so we left, feeling guilty, but...... if they dont want it, they dont want it!!

Big day of driving to Lagos...... and finally the cold weather cleared so that we could enjoy the beach!! We walked and shopped and drank beers by the edge of the sea!! LOVELY!! Mum now got the cold I had the week before so we decided to slow down the pace and stay another night here to relax and unwind. Day two was more of the same!!

Time to leave Portugal and drive across to Seville! Again, struck on a cool pension with a friendly owner who helped us park illegally and watched over our car in its poll position outside the front door. Our central position made it easy to walk and eat and watch flamenco at our leisure...... then, in the middle of the night it all went a bit pear shaped...... yelling, screaming, breaking bottles, for HOURS..... who´s that yelling in the middle of the echoing stone streets..... oh, dear, its our kindly host and a lady.....got pretty scary actually and also meant that we didnt sleep at all from about 2-5am!! Then when we tried to pay the 40 euro per night that he quoted me became 80 euro..... ummm, no, we cant pay that..... on and on it went until he gave in (perhaps recalling that he told us the wrong price, perhaps not, i dont know). Regardless, we decided it was all a bit too much and high-tailed it out of there..... But the highlights were the tapas, the funny barmen and the flamenco show!!

Now, because we listened to the advise of a drunk irishman, we drove the looooooooooooooong way to Rhonda instread of the 2 hour direct road!! But it was scenic....... although with no sleep we had a few stops were we crashed in the car park of a roadside diner for a bit of shut-eye...... We finally arrived in the mountains around 7 and could see how lovely the place is. The ancient bridge (in this picture) is really impressive and is the main feature.... the deep gorge is amazing and this was apparently the town that Hemmingway used "For Whom the Bell Tolls" - and was one of the most dramatic scenes in the book where the republicans sacked the town and threw the fascists off the walls into the gorge and left to die.... Explored more in the morning and enjoyed being out of a big city!

Next morning we ventured into the lap of luxury to visit Kim´s best friend Bron and her hubby Spencer!! Pulling our dusty car into the Mansions Club in Marbella was a relief, but after negotiating the tiniest roads, lanes and walled cities, this is the first time i didnt feel brave enough to park the car..... a crooked park by the Jaguar in the next spot meant that it was too tight a fit, and as the owner is an Arab diplomat and his minder in the (not so subtle) parked car behind us is the chief of police, I decided that this was not the time to have my first accident! The flat was amazing and Bron and Spence were totally welcoming. A perfect finish to our budget road tour! We went for dinner at the posh wharf of Porta Banus, had lunch at the uber posh "Nicky´s Beach" beach club (think 1950 euros for a bottle of champers) and very relaxing time talking and drinking red wine.

Sadly, this brings us to the end of the road part of the trip - a 6 hour drive up to Madrid finished us off.... we picked up Ruben on the way through and knowing that we would have no food in the fridge, he came fully equipped to cook us dinner!!! Tired but happy we crashed in the pad in Madrid.

I worked the next two weeks, but we managed to do some other things along the way..... This was meant to be brief, but, well, there is a lot to tell.

Will update more soon with the rest of our time together.....

PS: The new pics are on Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/kellieu) - not all captioned yet, but from our trip!