Spanish Lyons: Obrigado Portugal

So, the posse of four continued on to Portugal the next weekend. We left Madrid in another diesel supercharged economy car (we love Europe) with two bags of Jamon (ham) flavored chips, some donuts, Fanta, and Ryan's black licorice candy...only the best road snacks. The road trip was about 6 hours and full of ham scented burps that no one fessed up to. Half way through we stopped at Antonio Jesus Ramon Rodriguez 's, or AR Cerveceria as the sign said, for a quick lunch. Fifty eight euros later ($90), we found our selves with more sausage and ham in our bellies than we had planned on, and a lot less money in our pockets. Antonio, with his super fast Spanish and jolly smile, suckered us into numerous sampling plates of "the best cured ham in Spain". We left nauseous and grumpy...

We continued on our journey to Lisbon; where we found out that our magnificent cook, Ryan, is a animal at the wheel, cutting off Portuguese drivers and running through tollways without paying. We set off the tollway alarm just as we entered Lisbon..."Well, none of us speak Portuguese, we can just play tourist if we get in trouble." Our tollway adrenaline rush lead us through the windy maze of the Bairro Alto streets in Lisbon. Ryan narrowly missed hitting cars, spoke French to get directions, peeled rubber after stalling the car a few times up a crazy steep hill...and finally...parked the car in a SmartCar sized spot right outside our flat. Phew...ding free! Go Ryan!! We were all glad he was driving.

Lisbon treated us to cheaper food (yummy custard tarts), a world class oceanarium, a mix of ancient tiled buildings in the area of Bairro Alto and super modern architecture along the Tagus river. The night time brought us back to our rented bohemian decorated flat for a homemade dinner and a round of Loaded Questions (classic fav of the Lyons). Tim hit the sack early each night because he is allergic to Portugal! My husband has chronic allergies. Those of you who know him, know what I am talking about (however, he is pretty sexy when he comes to bed with those little kleenex balls in his nostrils). Poor guy.

The next day the troops were roused for a Saturday on the beaches of the Atlantic. We Colorado kids acted like we've never been to a beach before! We played this amazing game called "Chase the Wave". Feeling like we were ten, we ran after the water as it receded, and then retreated as quick as we could as the wave formed and crashed down. Cor got a little too cocky and was the first unfortunate victim to get her jeans soaking wet. All in all, the beach was amazing and we had a great time being kids with Jess and Ryan. We were slowed down on our way back to Lisbon because Allergy Tim got the car high centered in some deep sand...

A quick note about our last stop in Portugal - a town named Sintra, just northwest of Lisbon...first off, go there. Amazing. Really cool castle, lush forest and great (but expensive) food. We need to give a shout out to our waiter who was full of coarse joking and funny stories. He had a bad case of the poopy mouth, but did speak amazing English.

We returned home with leftover ham chips and black licorice candies.

See some fun pics (here)...get comfy, this is a long slide show thanks to Jess' nice camera and her skills. If you'd like to speed up the slideshow, click on the link in the lower left of the slide show screen. Don't forget to click the (i) in the middle of the pictures during the slide show for a comment.

TIMandCOR