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We left Evora and headed back towards Lisbon, as our flight left at 8am
the next morning. We decided to stop by Estoril on the coast of
Portugal, because I thought it would be a shame to be this close to the
ocean and not see it. We had planned to skip the Costa del Sol in
Spain and the Algarve in Portugal because they are overdeveloped beach
towns, and neither of us likes to spend time working on a tan (this is
obvious from the pictures, I'm sure!). Estoril,
however, was right on our way and so we stopped. I had heard that it
was past its prime, but for someone who's idea of a beach town is Santa
Cruz, California, it looked pretty good to me. The beach wasn't
much, but it was uncrowded in late September, and we got to watch one very
good boogie-boarder and some surfers practice.
After we hung out a bit, we traveled the 12km or so to Sintra to see
the
inside of the Pena Palace. I'm really glad we went back--the palace was
superb inside, and we got some better pictures of the outside because we
could climb on the balconies. Some of the earlier pictures of the
Pena palace were actually taken on our last day.
We had a quick lunch in Sintra, and headed back to Lisbon to find a
hotel for the night. We went to the airport and circled out from
there hoping to find something, but all of the hotels were in the center
of town and it was really hard to navigate and park and see if they were
available. So we finally just bit the bullet and went to the Radison near
the airport and spent the $215.00 they were asking. Keep in mind
this is more than the best hotel we stayed at--even the Parador was only
about $140.00. All they had left was an executive suite so we got this
truly large room. Oh well, it was right by the airport so there were
no hassles in the morning. We got on our flight home, made the
change in Heathrow without incident, and arrived in SFO on schedule.
Unfortunately for me, I had gotten food poisoning somewhere along the
line, and was sick as a dog for the last couple hours of the trip.
Oh well, nobody likes airplane food anyhow!
What a great trip!
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