vampyresheep

Sunday, we set off early, saying goodbye to our lovely hotel and a sleepy Bairro Alto, to Rossio station for our train to Sintra.

All the photos for this day can be seen here

Friday

The full gallery link is here: pics!

Back in work, with blisters upon blisters, aching calves and incredibly sleep deprived after flight delay meant we didn’t get home until 1.30 this morning.  It was a rather fantastic long, long weekend in Lisbon.  A full trip report will follow, with photos of course – probably not going to upload the full albums to Facebook, so I hope people spend a few moments/mouse clicks to read my blog posts instead.

I’ve never been to Portugal before – the image of resorts on the Algarve was not somewhere top on my radar for holiday.  But after seeing friend’s post about Lisbon and Sintra, my interest was piqued.  We were not disappointed.

I’m not sure what I am going to miss more; the city of Lisbon itself, an adorably shabby sprawling mass of a place enhanced by surprise panoramic vistas; the incredible food (seriously, we did not have a bad meal even in the most touristy of places and Portuguese is now at the top of my list of preferred cuisine!); the touting of cheap but delicious booze on every corner; the touting of cheap but delicious pastries on every corner;  or the much needed winter sunshine. 20c for 5 days out of 6 was just blissful.

The second half of our stay was in nearby Sintra.  This was a more classically picturesque place, an Italianate village located in the hills and surrounded by higher hills topped with palaces. This part of the stay managed to somehow be more physically exhausting but mentally relaxing at the same time.  We walked miles and saw many beautiful things.

Overall however, our hearts were left in Lisbon.  Sintra, beautiful as it is, was for me one of those places where once you’ve ticked off all the attractions there was little else to be there for but Lisbon I felt we’d only scraped the surface.  The downsides, which in some way also form part of the positives, was all the damn hills and stairs, along with the dilemma of whether you wanted to do all the things or just find a pleasant place to sit with a beer watching the world go by – either way you felt you were missing out on the other.

I hope to return.

Our final day in Mexico! The good thing about such a long and varied holiday though is whilst we were sad to leave, we'd been here long enough for one visit - although already decided we want to return! Unfortunately little opened on Mondays so we had limited opportunity to make the most of our final day.

Saturday
Today we explore the Zocalo area of CDMX/Mexico City - slightly daunting, after all the warnings not to stray too far from the tourist areas and at the same time, so much that I want to see. It was a very, very busy day! (long post, many pics!)

This day has been split out into several photo galleries:
Gallery 1 - Bella Artes is here
Gallery 2 - Av. Francisco Madera (House of Tiles, Post Office etc) is here
Gallery 3 - around the Zocalo: Templo Mayor, the Cathedral, the Palacio Nacional and Rivera murals - is here
Gallery 4 - Rivera mural museum, Torre LatinoAmericana at night and el Scary Witches - is here

Thursday
Today we finally get to visit Teotihuacan, the third biggest pyramid in the world and one of the places I was most looking forward to visiting. 

 

The full photogallery of Teotihuacan photos are here

Tues

Sunday

And the full gallery of this day is here

Thursday

We had another tour booked, this time with Fundacion En Via, a charity who provide loans and training to help indigenous women set up businesses.  We meet with our small tour group at the beautiful Oaxaca Cultural Institute and set off back down the route towards Hierve El Agua to a small hillside village called San Miguel del Valle.

The full gallery for San Miguel de Valle is here
The full gallery for the nighttime parades back in Oaxaca are here

Tuesday

Wednesday

the full gallery for Tuesday at Hierve el Agua and Mitla is here
the full gallery for Wednesday at San Martin Tilcajete is here