James & Clare, Coddiwomplers Inc: Portugal, a pooch & a couple of crazy kitties

Abondoned boat, Peniche

We left Spain in a Landrover Freelander we had purchased off a Brit expat. It was an exceptionally good deal so we were a little apprehensive as to it's reliability!

We were headed for our next sit in Portugal and were all geared up for as much camping as we could manage around the weather. We noticed the roads change considerably once we crossed the border. They were a lot narrower and windier. The Portuguese also have a smart way of keeping speed down through the villages. Instead of judder bars or humps they have a set of traffic lights on the approach to each village and if your speed is too high they go amber then red and you have to stop and sit there like an idiot till the light goes green. Not sure that the locals take any notice of them, but we were quick learn.

Just over the border we stopped at a campground for the night and pitched our tent for the first time. We wondered up to the supermarket to purchase our favourite camping food .... cooked chicken (or similar), yummy crusty bread and a bag of salad.

We caught ourselves feeding the 'resident'
campground cats

The next day we headed for Lisbon. We wouldn't normally stay in the city but James had a medical appointment booked for his visa application to New Zealand. With all his research he had discovered the medical was A LOT cheaper done here than in the UK, and as we were passing by it seemed logical to stop a night for this purpose.

The route we took into Lisbon took in the Vasco da Gama, one of the longest bridges in Europe.

We parked the car on a hill, and with some difficulty, outside our hostal then walked down to a local cafe for coffee and Portugese custard tarts :-)

Listening to the locals speaking in the cafe we wondered why they seemed to be speaking Russian. They weren't! After nearly a year floating around Spanish speaking countries we weren't quite prepared for the very marked difference that is the Portuguese language. It is a lot more guttural and harsh than Spanish. Not to mention the fact that we didn't speak a word of it. Not to worry. The Portuguese seemed a lot less 'tourist weary' than the Spanish and were very patient with us during our attempts at making ourselves understood.

Whilst speaking with the home owners we were to sit for north of Lisbon they had mentioned that the roads of Lisbon were a nightmare to negotiate. How hard could this be, we thought. We are often in the position of finding our way around unfamiliar territory and besides, we have Google Maps! Hmmm, this place turned out to be another level tricky all together. It seems they have built roads on top of each other that present a challenge to any online map app. Finding the medical centre the next day turned into a comedy involving ending up in a tourist bus car park with the map trying to send us up a curb and over a bank, while a gaggle of bus drivers were trying to wave us out of their patch. We pulled the 'dumb tourist' card and beat a hasty retreat ..... by road, not bank.

The view of Lisbon from our hostal

Our next stop was the gorgeous seaside resort town of Peniche, home to some of the best surfing in Portugal. We pitched our tent in the local campground for a couple of nights and enjoyed walking the coast and streets of Peniche, all the time thankful that we were here off-season.

There are sea walls around the harbour and leading to and from the two adjacent lighthouses. A walk around them is a must.

Not to mention standing idly, gazing out to sea

The breakwaters along the walls are fascinating in themselves.

And, of course, a perfect canvas for the local artists!

The wall around the centre of town is pretty impressive too, seen here in the background.

Inside the fort walls

We even ventured out on a fishing expidition late one afternoon, having spotted some decent sized fish while walking. We spoke with a German guy from the campground who fishes at Peniche every year. We didn't catch anything but we never view time spent 'not catching' as a waste of time.

The ladder down to our fishing spot

During our walk around the town we came across the 'local' indoor food market where we stopped for a very cheap and cheerful cup of coffee, much to the owners delight. He ran around trying to find something to play on the TV while his wife made the coffee. We suspect they don't get a lot of tourists drinking their coffee. They are more likely to frequent the trendy coffee shops on the high street.

At the local supermarket we found some delicious looking pastries called Feijaos. In NZ a Feijoa is a popular edible fruit that hails from South America originally. We love them. So we bought the pastries thinking they may have just misspelt the name. Ah, NO. These were bean (as in legume!) paste sweet pastries. Wrong on so many levels but the locals love them and .... waste not, want not, we ate them.

Our housesit was on the Atlantic coast at a rather famous golf resort, the Praia del Rey. What a wonderful coast line this is. Much more interesting than the calm waters of the Med!

Our charges were Coco, the elderly Labrador

Ari cat

And Little, the crazy cat!

As a house/pet sit, this would rate as one of the easier we have done. As it was off-season, we pretty much had no neighbours .... apart from the English yobos who came to stay for a week at "Daddy's" holiday home. Coco didn't require much walking so we went on several small jaunts a day, accompanied by the kitties of an evening. Little took a little while to come round (as some cats do), but once she did she became a constant source of amusement.

This is her giving James what-for because
he was taking too long with her dinner :-)

Ari was pretty chilled all of the time ......

And, although Coco was old and slow, she still like to dance around the yard at times.

We enjoyed the local food A LOT. The breads and cheeses from the local market in Obidos were cheap and extremely good.

The displays at the supermarket rather amused us.

And we finally found our beloved quail at a reasonable cost. James got to it and created a masterpiece for dinner.

We never did figure our what their obsession with salted fish is though. And we never did try it, which is not like us. It just looks wholeheartedly unappealing. We even spotted a ceramic salted fish in a souvenir shop. What's with that!