9 September 2019

Several months ago, a plan was hatched.

Mithyl and I go back to 1973 when we became “pen friends”. I would write to her in very bad French/ Franglais and she would respond in very good English. This was way before the days of Facebook, Whatsapp and Messenger. If only Google Translate had been invented then!

We have met in person a couple of times, and given that we were roughly in the same area (Europe!) why not meet up again?

So the plan was to be in the same place at 12:45 pm on the 9/9/19.

The place was Lisbon airport.

And it all went according to plan.

Mithyl left Toulouse at about the same time we left Évora, and as brilliant planning would have it, we all arrived at the airport within 20 minutes of each other at the designated meeting place.

Grahame and I were so cocky our plan would work, we took a small detour to see some of Portugal’s answer to Stonehenge! “Recinto Megalítico Dos Almendres”

Unlike Stonehenge, we had to head off the beaten track and down a few dirt roads and past heaps of decorked cork trees.

There a heaps of these sites scattered around this part of Portugal dating back to Neolithic Period somewhere between the 6th and 4 Millenia BC!!

We collected Mithyl, rearranged the car and headed to Cascais. The drive along the coastline made a welcome change to the dryness of the countryside.

First to see the Atlantic by the way.

The drive around the coastline was so pretty.

And of course, Cascais has a castle. Much to our relief/ disappointment it was closed on Mondays so we had a quick look and moved on.

We checked into our Airbnb and met our Superhost Carla. She was so busy giving us instructions and ideas for our visit we managed To collect our first parking ticket.

Fortunately, Sintra Parking fines are a little more manageable than those in Newcastle.

Sintra, about 20 minutes out of Lisbon looks amazing. We went for a short walk to introduce Mithyl to our “getting lost with style” style. Not sure she appreciated the three thousand extra steps!!

We finally found a supermarket about 100 metres from home. The exercise was good for us anyway!!

We settled in to our Airbnb, had an easy dinner and planned a big day in Lisbon tomorrow.