Good morning, friends and family. As I write this, it is 10 am on our first morning in Sevilla. As is fairly normal for our crew, I was up early, walked around a bit, found a local grocery store (there is an Aldi a half mile away from our place in Sevilla!😊), and bought provisions for the crew. They are all still asleep, so I am sitting in the very tiny living room/dining room/kitchen/griff and gage bedroom, sitting on a chair looking out at the tiny little internal courtyard/airb chute.
Our little apartment is built around two of these chutes; this one I guess looks into a neighbor's apartment, while the other has a window from one of our bedrooms to the other. Weird, right? But ingenious - it allows all rooms to get natural light and air, and also provides a place to hang up your clothes to dry - one of them has a clothesline/pulley system, which is awesome except from experience we are not great at hanging things and I fear much of our laundry would fall to the courtyard below - which I have NO idea how to access! But there is no room to hang anything in this tiny apartment, so we may have to give it a go. Dryers are NOT a thing in Portugal, and apparently not in southern Spain as well. But this also reminds me of our 4th floor walk up apartment in Lisbon - the stairwell was in the center of the building and had a huge skylight at the top. During the day, there was no need for artificial light in the stairwell. At night, there was a switch at the top and bottom and on eat floor you could push, which would turn the stairwell lights on for a few minutes and they they would turn off again. A great energy saver. (Also not having an elevator is a great energy saver, at least from an environmental standpoint. Not an energy saver from a tired legs standpoint!)
So now that we are in Spain, here are a few general impressions from our time in Portugal: cobblestones and hills!
Most of the sidewalks and many of the streets are cobblestoned - even as you get past the old parts of the cities we have been in.
Plaza in Lagos (note the old city wall behind it)
Walking to the Boca De Enferno in Cascais
Our street in Porto - hills and cobblestones!
Our street in Lisbon (hard to tell from this, but also a hill and cobblestones)
And how are we doing as a family of travelers, now that we are one country down and almost three weeks in? We are doing great. There are some challenging times, but on the whole every day has been a gift with amazing things to see and experience. And we are all still getting along with each other, which is good. It has helped that we stay in each place long enough for everyone to feel comfortable, so people can go out exploring by themselves or in smaller groups, giving us a little separation. Lagos was also a great vacation from our vacation - I'm so glad we sprung for a larger place where we could spread out and not be on top of each other all the time - and being able to hand in the terrace or quickly walk to the beach or this cliffs was really fabulous. We had so much outside and open air time. Now we are back to being on top of each other in a tiny apartment in a city, but we are ready for it!
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