Day 1: Arriving in Madrid
Day 2: Madrid to Toledo to Cordoba
Day 3: Cordoba to Granada
Day 4: Granada to Costa del Sol
Day 5: Costa del Sol
Day 6: Costa del Sol to Gibraltar to Seville
Day 7: Seville
Day 8: Seville to Lisbon
Day 9: Lisbon
Day 10: Lisbon to Salamanca
Day 11: Salamanca to Madrid
Day 12: Madrid
Day 13: Madrid (extra day after tour ends)

Summary/Conclusion

The Toronto Reunion (plus additional links)

Sign my Guestbook
View my Guestbook

Around the Tejo River-front in Lisbon


Our bus near the riverfront in Lisbon




Views around Sintra


Delia, Mary Cris, Antonietta and I enjoying an excellent chicken lunch in Cascais


The streets of Cascais

Tuesday, September 5, 2000

This morning was probably one of the more difficult ones, personally, to get moving. I'm positive getting wasted in a mixture of medication and alcohol the night before significantly contributed. I couldn't even muster much of an appetite for breakfast, especially when I ended up going to the wrong dispenser and poured warm milk onto my cereal. I had a warm, soggy taste and then pushed it away. Again, there were some missing bodies who decided it was best to hibernate in their beds instead of getting up for our included morning tour and drive of Lisbon. We made our way onto the bus, everybody completely without energy. We had a local tour guide accompany us on the bus as we drove towards the riverfront of the Tejo River. In all honesty, I retained absolutely nothing from the commentary from our tour guide; my attention span that morning was completely shot. We did get off the bus and entered a cathedral. Eventually we made our way down to the waterfront and took pictures of the various monuments which included the Belem Tower. We got back on the bus and continued through Lisbon, dropping off those who were not taking the optional drive to Sintra and Cascais.

I completely dropped off into unconsciousness during the drive to Sintra. I was so tired, I didn't even bother to get out my neck pillow because I didn't have the effort to inflate it. I finally woke (along with most of the rest of the bus) when our tour guide started talking about Sintra, to which again, I retained absolutely no information from the guide. Louisa, who sat beside me during the ride, did point out that I was quietly snoring during my slumber, but only loud enough for her to hear. We got into Sintra in the late morning, where we had completely free time for a couple of hours. Some of us thought that may have been 2 hours too many. While a very pretty little town up in the mountains with steep, narrow and twisting streets, there really wasn't too much to see or do in Sintra, except take a local bus or taxi up to a castle to get a high view of the town and everything else below. Some did end up going up to the castle, while some just decided to stay around the town. We were also told that there was quite a bit of additional walking once the bus or taxi would drop us off near the top. That alone was the deciding factor for me not to go. Mary Cris, Delia and I decided to just wander around Sintra, and we pretty much walked in circles and didn't find a whole lot. While my cold got a little bit worse from the day before (do you think getting less than three hours sleep might have contributed to that? :-), Mary Cris had just begun to feel symptoms, to which she quickly blamed me for it. We found a pharmacy for Mary Cris to pick up some drugs of her own for her cold. We essentially sat around and did nothing for the last hour except have a bit of cheese cake (which was excellent) and drink lots of water, as it was very hot, even up in the mountains.

The bus eventually arrived to pick us up and take us on a short drive to Cascais, a small fishing town right on the Atlantic coast. Jacquie told us of a restaurant that served excellent chicken, to which some of us decided to try, having not had much to eat all day. And it certainly was delicious chicken. So far, most of us found the food in Portugal to be better than the food in Spain, and the service was also much better. We all got our food within 10 minutes of ordering, and when we asked for ketchup, we got it within a minute, whereas in Spain we would get it after all but one person at the table would be finished their meal, and after several requests. With food in our stomachs, we felt slightly rejuvenated, especially Mary Cris who seemed to have really enjoyed the new drugs she had purchased in Sintra. We wandered around the main shopping areas, with the sweltering sun on our backs. The temperature here was only around 33ºC, but it certainly felt hotter. Linda and I broke off from the rest of the crowd and decided to find a beach where a few others had gone almost immediately after getting off the bus. We found a rather small beach in which we did find Landi and Maria already lying in the sun, working on their tans. Linda and I didn't have our bathing suits on, so we just put our feet in the ocean water and walked a few feet out. Nearly all the muscles in my feet went numb because the water was so unbelievably cold. However, my entire body certainly felt cooled down as a result. The sand was nicer than in Figuera; it was finer and less dirty looking. Again, there were some people walking around and lying around topless. Linda and I walked back up some stairs to the main street that overlooked the beach and sat down on a concrete banister, where we also found Mandy there. We saw others in our group sitting at a table at a restaurant just beside where we were. We just sat there, feeling completely burned out from the events of the past few week. Linda walked off with a group of others while Mandy and I went down to the beach. She wanted to stick her feet in the water as I did earlier. The expression on her face was priceless as she put her feet into the freezing cold water. Feeling slightly masochistic, I did the same, again to cool down from the heat. I just couldn't believe that here I was, sick with a cold, blowing my nose, while everywhere we go, it was in the mid-30º's. But I suppose walking in sub-freezing water doesn't help...

We made it back to our rendezvous point to get on our bus for the drive back to Lisbon. Several people had purchased a compilation CD of much of the music we had been hearing in all of the clubs we had been to on the trip. This found its way into the bus stereo system for the drive back. Despite the music being upbeat, most people on the bus just passed out into slumber.

An included dinner at the hotel was to be served soon after we got back. It was a buffet-style dinner and definitely one of our better included dinners, which further convinced many of us that the food in Portugal really was better than in Spain. Many people had decided to head back down to the Docks for even more late evening/early morning dancing. It was still early at around 8:30PM, so various groups had decided to meet at various times between 10:30PM and midnight to take taxis back down to the riverfront. I went back up to my hotel room and had a short nap before coming back down at 11:00PM to meet with some others to head out to the Docks. The lobby ended up to be as far as we got. We were all dressed up with the intention of going out, but everybody looked so completely beat that we ended up just walking over to the hotel bar to have a drink or two there. We found some Contiki people were already there, well into the drinks. There were some people who did end up going back down to the Docks, but they had told us later that it just wasn't the same fun they had the night before because so little people from our big group actually ended up going. As for me, by midnight, I was back upstairs and into bed.

> DAY 10: Lisbon to Salamanca >