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Portugal Day 12: 10 Year Anniversary Climbing and Dinner

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Ten years felt like it deserved something a little bigger than a normal travel day. We did not need the day to be perfect, but it did feel worth marking properly. So, we started our anniversary morning in Cascais, Portugal, feeling very lucky and only slightly confused about how a full decade had gone by already. We started the morning with a quick hotel breakfast before getting picked up by our climbing guide, Miguel. Miguel is 24 years old and started his guiding business last year. He already has gear, a van, and a pretty solid setup, so he seems to be doing alright. He also surfs, spearfishes, works with a nonprofit, and does several other impressive things that made us wonder what we were doing at 24. Also, he bakes cookies with his mom for his clients. So yeah. He rules. He drove us about 30 minutes outside of Cascais. On the way, we passed through a very affluent neighborhood, and Miguel said most of the people living there probably have no idea that there is hiking, climbing, a...
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Portugal Day 10 & 11 : Spa day + Drive Day

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Day 10 started with a very intentional decision: this was going to be our laziest day yet. We woke up and ordered room service, because leaving the room felt like too much ambition for the kind of day we had planned. After breakfast, we showered and went downstairs for our scheduled couples massage, which really locked in the theme. From there, we went down to the pool, grabbed a pair of loungers facing the ocean, and parked ourselves there for the next four hours. We had more Portuguese lessons with our server, who insisted that our Portuguese was good, but he definitely told that to everyone who attempted Portuguese with him. At some point, we saw someone with a really good-looking drink. We had no idea what it was called. The server didn’t seem to know either, so we took a guess and ordered daiquiris, hoping they would be the same thing. They were not. Then we got talked into ordering a giant pineapple full of piña colada to share, which felt like the correct vacation choice. Unfort...
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Portugal Day 9 : Hiking and Sailing

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We woke up with the intention of getting breakfast and going hiking. However, after breakfast, Kaylea was still very tired, so we hung around the hotel and blogged for another hour or so before venturing out for the hike. Getting started proved to be harder than we anticipated. First, we could not find the exit to the garden that led out to the trail. Once we finally did, we realized the construction was blocking the main trail entrance, and all the garden gates were locked. Back inside and upstairs we went, then out the main entrance, through the parking lot, and back through the construction. From there, it was a steep hike up the hill to the first cliff. We hiked cliffside for a while, some of it behind barriers and some of it open and uncomfortably close to the drop. Our first stop was a big sinkhole in the middle of the cliff, behind a barrier, leading down to caves below. We remembered how our guide from yesterday had pointed out hikers unknowingly standing over nothing, just a f...
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Portugal Day 8: Sun, Salt, and Sangria

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We woke up in Carvoeiro in our very nice room with a genuinely breathtaking view. The whole resort was basically one giant fabulous view. Our room had it, breakfast had it, the walkways had it. Almost everywhere you looked, there was cliff, ocean, and bright Algarve sun. The only exception was the construction happening below us, where they were building some kind of sea wall or walkway because apparently their little beach keeps getting washed away. But if you angled yourself just right, you could mostly ignore the construction site We had breakfast looking out over the water, then headed out for our 12:30 pm kayaking tour. The meeting point was only about ten minutes away in the next town, but the drive was complicated enough to add a few extra minutes to the eta. There were steep little streets, sharp curves, and a few turns where the road dropped off just enough to make the rental car feel wider than it was. We almost missed the parking lot, but eventually found it and still showed...
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Portugal Day 7: Ancient Stones, Closed Caves, and Balcony Jacuzzi Laundry Logic

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We started Day 7 with hotel breakfast, which has become one of the great stabilizing forces of this trip. Wake up, eat eggs and bread and whatever pastry seems least mysterious, then figure out what version of the plan survives contact with reality. After breakfast, we left our bags at the front desk and walked about 15 minutes to see Évora’s aqueducts. The aqueducts are around 500 years old, which is impressive, although we heard “aqueduct” and kind of expected Roman. These were not Roman. It turns out people have built impressive old infrastructure during other periods of history too. Who knew!? They were still very cool. The best part is that Évora just kind of absorbed them into the city. Buildings are built right into the arches. People walk under them. Cars squeeze through them in lanes that seem designed mostly to test your confidence and side mirrors. It’s the kind of thing that would be fenced off and over-explained in a lot of places, but here it’s just part of the neighborho...
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Portugal Day 6 : Kaylea's Birthday in Evora

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Today was Kaylea’s birthday, and thanks to our hot air balloon ride getting canceled, we got to start it the luxurious way: by sleeping in. All in all, not the worst consolation prize. We had a slow breakfast at the hotel, then headed into Évora to see the cathedral. On the way there, we wandered through a little market street full of shops selling things made out of cork. Purses, hats, wallets, shoes, postcards, bowties, probably a full cork suit if you looked hard enough. Portugal takes cork seriously. When we got to the cathedral, we found out the entrance was cash only, so we had to go find an ATM. But we came back. We are nothing if not determined tourists when there is a cathedral roof on the line. The cathedral ended up being one of the highlights of the day. They let you climb up onto the roof, which sounds more exclusive than it is because they let everyone do it, but still. They let us onto the roof. To get there, we climbed one of those tight, winding spiral staircases that ...
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Portugal Day 5 : The tiny car

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We woke up on time. Finally. After several days of travel chaos, jet lag, accidental naps, and general time-zone confusion, this felt like a major personal victory. We made it to breakfast relatively on time and were feeling pretty good about ourselves. At breakfast, we got a little bad news for future us. Our hot air balloon ride for the next day had been canceled because of the wind. That was supposed to be our big Évora birthday plan. Kaylea loves heights and has never been in an untethered balloon and the idea of travel across the inner Portuguese country side had us humble bragging for weeks ahead of time. We must've forgotten to knock on wood each time. Instead, tomorrow was now going to become spontaneous exploration day. The hot air balloon company also let us know over email that one of Aaron’s phone numbers was not working. Unfortunately, that was the same phone number we had given to all of our hotels. So that's awesome. It'll probably work out. But that was tomo...
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