OK...so I am willing to give everything a second and third try... definately what is needed in the case of cycling in Portugal. I think our mistake was trying to cycle out of Lisbon- we should have grabbed a train east or south to get us out of the populated area. We should have known when we saw only 3 cyclists the whole time we were in Lisbon that its not popular for a reason! We took a ferry across to the peninsula just south of Lisbon and started to head down the coast - what we learned is that small quiet roads dont go anywhere...which had us back on busy highways. We ended the night at Setebal, amd with all of our winding and getting lost we did over 60km on what was supposed to be oureassy start day! Portugal is all hills - ALL hills! Long slow never ending hills - which all seem to go up and never down! Our second day we got stuck in a small town with one hotel - a 4 star very expensive hotel! Wierd... Today we cycled in hours of rain... but we must have been imagining it because we were told it never rains here and if it does it just spits for a bit (this was constant blowing rain). Anyway we are in Evora and it is lovely so it may win us back...