After I finished work in London in April, Seth came to visit me for a few days and then we took off to Portugal for a week. I’m not really sure where I got the idea that I should spend my vacation in Portugal – I’d heard lots of good things about Spain and so I thought if I was to visit Spain, maybe I would visit Portugal as well. However, after a quick google search of Portuguese attractions, my interest in visiting Portugal greatly increased. Our 10-day trip from Spain to Portugal turned into a trip to just Portugal. I don’t think we could have done either country justice in 10 days and I’m glad we decided to spend the whole time in Portugal!

The Algarve

We flew into the Southern coast of Portugal to visit the Algarve. The Algarve is a long string of beaches and sandstone cliffs extending across the southern coast of the country. We stayed in a small town called Lagos for 2 days and had an amazing time exploring the area. We felt like we were in Paradise! Since we travelled in April, it was still sunny and warm, but not yet crowded with tourists. We spent our time eating in sidewalk cafes, strolling down white sandy beaches and enjoying as many flavours of gelato as we could find! It’s not quite warm enough in April for swimming, but if you’re used to Newfie summers I think you’ll be able to handle it!

After a few days in the Algarve, we took off for Lisbon. I can’t say a whole lot about Lisbon because we spent most of our time doing attractions outside of the city, but the city has a great feel to it and the cobblestone roads make you feel like you’ve gone back in time a few years. We spent a day hiking along the Arrabida Coast line – it reminded me a lot of home and we enjoyed the opportunity to experience a lesser-seen part of Portugal.

Funchal, Madeira

For the second half of our trip, we flew to the Portuguese Island of Madeira. Portugal has two sets of islands located near the coast of Morocco: the Azores and Madeira. Madeira was definitely my favourite part of Portugal and I’d recommended it to anyone as a fantastic place to go on vacation. Madeira is much further south that the rest of Portugal and so it’s a lot warmer; even warm enough to go swimming all year long. We stayed in Madeira’s capital, Funchal. Unfortunately most of the beaches in Madeira are small pebble beaches, but if you’re willing to take a short boat ride to the nearby island of Porto Santo, there’s a white sandy beach that stretches for 9km!

Madeira is an entirely volcanic island, formed of high cliffs and mountains rising right out of the ocean. It’s hard to go anywhere on the island where there’s not a breathtaking view! There are also a lot of tropical and exotic plants on the island. Usually I don’t pay that much attention to the flora, but it’s impossible to ignore it in Madeira. One day we took a cable car up the mountain and visited the most beautiful garden at the top! I can’t tell you much about the actual plants, except that you’ll completely lose yourself in all the bright colours and beautiful scents!

Delicious meal

Finally, Madeira also has incredible sea life and seafood. Every night Seth and I would try something different. Madeira’s special is black scabbard fish, which they serve with fried banana – it is delicious! On our last day, we went out on a catamaran looking for sea life. We were lucky enough to find about a dozen dolphins that entertained us for the better part of an hour. Unfortunately I lost my hat overboard, but the crew was nice enough to fish it out for me!

Anyways, Portugal has now become one of my favourite European countries that I’ve visited and I think you should make this a must-visit country on your next trip to Europe!

Obrigado,
Maria

I spent last weekend in Norway and it was fantastic! I flew up to Trondheim last Thursday, which is where my friends Rocky and Grant live. Trondheim is a lot like St. John’s in that it’s situated on the water and it’s very hilly. It’s a lot different then St. John’s in that it’s surrounded by mountains and that the city is actually located right on a fjord. It’s pretty beautiful.

They took me up to a fort that overlooks the city on Thursday night and on Friday Grant took me around the city. We spent some time in the city center and the University where he works and I had my first bowl of traditional Norwegian rice pudding. Everyone dies over it and the University and it was pretty good. We went to the Trondheim Science museum in the afternoon; I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting it to be very good, but it was great! It’s just all this crazy science stuff that boggles your mind! Rocky and Grant threw a birthday party for one of their friends in the evening so got to meet a few Norwegians as well!

On Saturday we went skiing. The best hill nearby is actually in Sweden, so we drove about 2.5 hours through Norway and across the border to the biggest ski hill in Sweden. The mountain was incredible! Mostly it was just really big; it was fairly tall, but it extended so far sideways that it continued onto two other mountains on either side. From the top you can see tons of mountains all around; it was pretty incredible and I had a great day of skiing! Crossing the border was a bit surreal though….you just drive on through like you’re crossing a provincial border.

On my last day the guys took me snowshoeing. We wanted to hike up one of the mountains around the city that has a really good view of the fjord. We figured we’d just drive up most of the mountain, park the van and hike upwards. Something you’ve got to give the Norwegians credit for: they are really in shape and they really like their nature. There were so many people up on Sunday morning to go to the mountain and go cross-country skiing. I couldn’t believe it! We ended up parking at the bottom of the mountain and snowshoed up through the trees. I was dying a little bit on the way up, but the view at the top made it totally worth it

To finish off this post I’ve decided to include some fun facts about Norway that I learned from Rocky, who is the fount of all knowledge on random things about Norway. I really enjoyed the trip and would love to go back some day. The flight back to London was incredible because we flew right over a huge mountain range and all you could see was the white tips of the mountains as they gave way to fjords all around. In was incredible! The guys came up to visit London this past weekend, so check back soon for another post about that!

Love Maria

Fun Facts about Norway (as learned from Rocky Strong)

• If you’re a true Norwegian, instead of going to the ski hills, you hike up a random uninhabited mountain and then ski down it
• It’s illegal to drive a skidoo in Norway unless you own a farm and get a license. This is because when snow falls on a field, it is considered nature and you can’t ruin it by driving over it
• Norwegians think snowshoes are weird; we got a lot of weird looks when we went snowshoeing and I personally got a lot of joy out of watching Grant running around “wrecking the nature”
• Kids in preschool spend their entire days outside, unless it goes below -30, they never go inside
• They have this brown cheese that is kind of carmel-y and really popular. For total success you put it on a waffle for dessert (I tried this, it’s delicious)
• Everyone cross-country skis and bikes. Even in the winter people bike all the time. They don’t salt their roads as all. NBD.
• And, my personal favourite and weirdest thing I learned: Norwegians put their babies outside to sleep at night. Unless it’s below -10 then you’re allowed to do this. They really like fresh air.