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Leaving Portugal: An Epilogue

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Our last morning in Portugal started with two alarms going off at 6:00 a.m., which we immediately snoozed until 6:30. It felt less like waking up and more like admitting defeat. We had arranged private transport to the airport, and thank goodness we did. Our driver was a very nice lady who spent part of the ride halfway trying to convince us to move to Portugal. After two weeks there, this was not the hardest sales pitch in the world to sit through. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 12:20. We dropped our bags at 9:07 and made it through security around 9:30, which made us feel like we were doing great. Then we found the passport line. It was one of the longest, most chaotic lines we have ever been in. An hour and a half across what felt like the entire airport. It was Vatican-level long. The kind of line where you keep turning corners and hoping you are near the end, only to discover a whole new civilization of people waiting ahead of you. A charismatic guy jumped the line and joine...
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Day 14: Sintra!

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Our latest day sleeping in yet. We slept until 9:15 and barely made it in time for breakfast. This felt scandalously late compared to the rest of the trip, even though it is probably still a respectable vacation wake-up time for normal people. The first item on the docket was getting rid of our rental car. We did not want to deal with parking in Sintra, and we definitely did not want to deal with returning it at the airport, so we dropped it off first thing in the morning. Goodbye, tiny car. You served us well. You also made several hills feel more dramatic than they probably needed to be. From there, we got an Uber to Sintra city center. That turned out to be the wrong place to go, but our driver seemed to know what we were actually looking for and helped point us in the right direction. We walked around Sintra for a bit, then bought a bus ticket to check out the attractions. It is amazing that buses are able to drive on those roads. They are crazy steep, crazy tight, and somehow...
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Day 13: The Not-So-Secret Beach

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Our early morning streak was never destined to last. With no set timetable and only a loose agenda for the day, we slept in until 8:30. That still probably counts as early for vacation, but compared to the rest of the trip, it felt luxurious. Our room had a nice patio overlooking the main street and the small bay, so we grabbed breakfast and brought it back to the room to take advantage of it. Unfortunately, our patio did not have an umbrella, and the sun was already making itself known. We ate pretty quickly, then finished our coffee inside while packing up for the hike. The trailhead was about 30 minutes away, but we were low on gas, and the car’s fuel alert started to wig Aaron out a bit. Kaylea had already checked the map and calculated that we had enough gas to get there and back, but the alert did what alerts are designed to do and made everything feel more urgent than it needed to be. We stopped for gas. The pump did not like Aaron’s card, so he had to go inside to pay. That...
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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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