We had a day trip out from Lisbon with a semi private tour …… Best thing was that no-one else booked, so the tour was all ours. A luxury ride in a Mercedes people mover and guides that were flexible. So flexible that they drove to extra sites and found us a cool seaside restaurant for a speciality dish of fish stew, wine and dining with the locals. They loved us so much, they let us pay for the majority of the meal and shared the bottle of wine with us. Portugese people just love to share …. To be fair, the driver only had a small glass of wine and then we payed for his espresso coffee. His driving seemed to improve after both ….. Or perhaps that was the wine we had. Thought about ordering an extra bottle to increase our feeling of safety. But the driver may have accepted that as an invitation for more sharing of the wine.

But we enjoyed the experience and their lunch bonus was their gratuity. I called evens.

We did visit a lot of important sites and our guide Joao and his trainee Joao (hardest way to pronounce john that I have ever come across. Think I called them Jaw once or twice) provided a detailed history lesson of Portugal’s religious, royal and political events. Boy there was some serious violence and weird royal happenings that we learnt about over many centuries of battles with Moors, Templar knights, French, Portugese dictators and the list goes on. I lost count, but had another Monty Python moment of …… Let’s not bicker about who killed who …… I will not ramble on this time. But please do watch the holy grail and find the reference. The scene is best introduced by the father saying ‘huge tracts of land’ ……. You can discover the rest for yourself.

Anyway … As this trip was a little on the serious side for religious and royal historical reasons, I will not play the comic any more today and just share some photos ……..

 

Naaaah …. Who am I kidding …. Had a funny moment worth sharing at Fatima. I was respectful of everyone who was on their personal pilgrimage. I always wanted to visit this site when we were coming to portugal as mum had even talked about it many years ago.

But there I was ….. Being respectful ……. But also trying to capture a solo photo of a Pope John the second statue (he had a close link to fatima) after a tour group moved away. But one lady lingered….. I snapped a couple of photos over the five minutes I waited to see if she would move. See below ……….

But obviously her pilgrimage was to touch a statue and stay there. So I moved on.

Last photos of the day are credited to Kylie (along with many other  photos used in the blog pages). But especially these ones as you can possibly tell …….. there is no way I was leaning out over cliff top views in Nazare to take these. Check the the one that includes wild life. (No not me). Pretty cool photo ………..Exceptional timing ……….