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...

Three days into cycling and if you asked my opinion about cycling in Portugal, I would say DONT DO IT!!!!!
OK, lets back up a bit...
We spent our last day in the Lisbon area in Sintra. We took the regional train, which took about 45 minutes. Lovely little town with lots of palaces, pretty parks (with lots of song birds), winding cobbled streets, castles on hills, etc. You could spend days in the area exploring. We hiked up to the castle ruin, 1200 metres straight up! Great fun being able to run around the walls, in NA they would have this all cordoned off for safety, here its go at your own risk. Fabulous views into the hills and valleys.
Will write more about our cycling adventures later as we are going to grab the little bit of sunshine of today and explore Evora...