That Wasn't There Last Time We Looked!
As some of you will know, Amanda and I started seeing each other towards the end of 1987, but our first proper foreign holiday wasn't until September 1989, when we drove through France making it up as we went along, with the sunroof open and singing along to Heart's Bad Animals. [Here, listen on YouTube. (Oh, and I've learned something new (which is part of the reason that FatSlowCow exists in the first place) so these external links will now open in a new tab by default.)]
A year later, we went to Bali, because we were going to go to Italy until we learned that Bali would work out cheaper! That was definitely something completely different, and we had another fine time.
Our third September away, in 1991, we went to Portugal. Sadly, this was not so great. Amanda reckons she thought at the time that it could be the end of our relationship. I don't remember it quite like that, but it certainly was a bit of a disappointment.
Why? Well the food was too salty and greasy, the wine wasn't a patch on French, the "just find a place to stay when we get there" method that had served us well in France and Bali was several times a dismal failure and we ended up in some grotty dives...
But still, we survived the experience and obviously we're still together.
Time passed, we got better at having holidays and went from one a year to two, three, even four by 2004 (Sweden in January; Spain in May; France in September; and Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand in December-January).
We travelled near and far, and while we returned to Spain on many occasions, we never quite felt like heading next door and repeating Portugal.
But then...
We had done a number of river and canal boat holidays in France, and were thinking it was about time for another, but fancied the idea of somewhere different. Spain was the obvious first choice, but that didn't seem to have anything.
Portugal, though... Not rivers or canals as such, but the "Grande Lago" - Great Lake - (formed by a dam that was built in 2002) looked promising. We could spend a week boaring on the largest artificial lake in Western Europe!
But Portugal?
Well, it was clear that Portuguese wine had improved substantially...
And a few years ago, Amanda found a recipe for pasteis de nata and I made some and they were damn yummy! I made far too many for just the two of us, so I took a batch in to work and a Portuguese co-worker gave them the thumbs-up as the real deal. And suddenly pasteis de nata were everywhere...
Nowadays we can find nice places to stay via the Internet, and we can afford to pay a lot more than we could back then...
So casting aside a mere 33 years of prejudice, we made a plan!
So the plan is this: fly in to Lisbon, spend a couple of days there; hire a car, drive to the lake, take to the water for a week; then drive to Évora and spend a couple of days in this old mediaeval city before driving back to Lisbon for the flight home.
To refine our plan a little, it would be nice to know what is to be seen around the lake, so a map would be good. That seems to be a bit of a problem, though. Online maps - Google and OSM - are fine, but a decent paper map for our area appears not to exist. I contact a specialist map shop and even they are not entirely sure what would best fit our needs: there are official Portuguese maps at 1:25,000 scale which would be perfect in principle, but they aren't kept in stock and the index is extremely unclear as to exactly what areas they cover.
Oh well, hopefully the boat company will provide us with something useful when we get there.
Our tale now commences the night before we leave...
We will start in the luxurious surroundings of the Heathrow T2/T3 Premier Inn, where we drink vintage champagne from elegant glass mugs. Our flight departs at 8am, so leaving home in good time tomorrow morning would be way too much hassle.
And now, let the plan unfold!
Day 1 ~ 15 May ~ London to Lisbon
Day 2 ~ 16 May ~ Lisbon
Day 3 ~ 17 May ~ Lisbon to Amiera
Day 4 ~ 18 May ~ Alqueva Lake
Day 5 ~ 19 May ~ Alqueva Lake
Day 6 ~ 20 May ~ Alqueva Lake
Day 7 ~ 21 May ~ Alqueva Lake
Day 8 ~ 22 May ~ Alqueva Lake
Day 9 ~ 23 May ~ Alqueva Lake
Day 10 ~ 24 May ~ Amiera to Évora
Day 11 ~ 25 May ~ Évora
Day 12 ~ 26 May ~ Évora to London
year index