I have not sought during my life to
amass wealth and to adorn my body, buut I have sought to adorn my soul with the jewels of wisdom, patience, and above all with a love of liberty
- Socrates

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...

Guess I came out here to see
some stuff for myself... I mean, why leave the telling up to everybody else? -
Ani DiFranco

Lisbon is like a contradiction to Japan! It is loud, dirty, gritty, old and aged in areas, no-glitz, etc - and it is all part of its charm! The Portugese are so full of life and love of people and food. It is so different from our life, people grow up in the same neighbourhood and all know each other. We have just been enjoying the simple time of getting lost in winding streets, sitting in cafes and pastry shops to enjoy a good coffee, wandering in parks to enjoy the shade from the unseasonable heat, and eating some wonderful meals in tiny, simple restaurants. No agenda, no special plans. We did go up the hill to see the castle, it has some spectacular views of the city. We have been exploring all sorts of neighbourhoods on subway, buses, trams and mostly by foot (boy, do you feel the cobblestones by the end of the end of the day!). Off to get lost again and discover another great place to eat...
Any suggestions from anybody for places to see in the south of Portugal - we will be riding out towards Setebal to start, then along the west coast, to the south (avoiding Faro, etc), and then up into the central/east area, back across to Lisbon... Suggestions and favourites welcome!!

Bom Dia! Hello from Lisbon, Portugal! Pretty crazy...we have now almost travelled around the globe, but doing it the long way by doubling back on ourselves! We got on a flight from Toronto on Sunday night at 5:30pm, it was pretty tight - again, think the flu may have worked in our favour so we could get on. Did a change in Frankfurt to fly to Lisbon - Frankfurt is one of the longest terminals - we must have walked over 3 km to get to our gate - they are all in a straight line. Pretty tired as our body clocks are now completely off, I have no idea what time I am on!
The plan is to spend until Friday here in Lisboa and then get on some bikes and spend 2 weeks cycling through Portugal. Off to bed, even though it is 6:30pm here, we can't stay awake another minute. Due to our strange travelling habits and using credit cards in 3 cities/countries/continents within 72 hours, Scott's card got shut down - all good now and fixed :)

Here's the link for the photos. Click on details to see my notes or watch as a slideshow. Enjoy!

Japan photos