Adventure 5 // Lisbon (area), Portugal
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Length of stay: Five nights + 2 nights (we explain the +2 in the Lisbon post)
Accommodations: H10 Duque de Loule + Camper Van
Oh, messy life. It got so crazy for a while there between renovating a compound and taking care of my dad, we totally forgot we promised a video of Portugal almost a year ago! We went over Lisbon pretty thoroughly in this post, but we wanted to share our camper van adventure and some less tourist-saturated areas we fell in love with. Portugal is so unique and complex. I can't wait to see how even more dramatically different the North is from the South we explored.
We picked up our camper at West Coast Campers outside of Lisbon and first headed to Cascais. We found the van via Glamping Hub, which we highly recommend. We passed some nature stops along the way and found the coolest playground and camping area, so we set up for lunch and let Atlas play with all the local kids for the afternoon. Once we got to Cascais, which was only about 35 minutes away, we were amazed! We found it to be the cutest little beach town with an enormous Ferris wheel in the center. It was like we stepped into a movie. The ground was crafted of the typical Portuguese stones, but for some reason it seemed even more elaborate. We found a vegan place to eat and wondered around. We immediately started looking up property prices and began daydreaming about what we could manage and what we would do with it.
We ventured out to Sintra in search of this Pena Palace, a place I found while doing research before we left for our trip. Somehow we never found this massive castle, but wound up at Sintra National Palace. We took a train ride and weaved through the streets and enjoyed some espresso. It was obviously a tad touristy, but also interesting and beautiful
We then made our way to Obidos to explore Parque Cinegetico de Obidos, which lead us to the epic, Vila Natal. Before entering the Christmas festivities, we wandered through a village that was so quaint and amazing, it teared me up. The treats and book shops were my favorite. We just explored and explored and wandered around the castle grounds until we hit the end. There, the amazing Christmas fair happening, so we entered and it was magic. Atlas went ice skating for the first time, under the stars and the moon, alongside a castle older than our country. He ate bon bons from a cart, played games with local kids, and rode some of the rides. It was basically perfect. Not over crowded or fussy. No pushing or cutting in the lines. No affluenza. It was wonderful to blend in peacefully.
That night we drove back to Lisbon in our tricked out camper van high off the magical night we had. Here is a little video which captures 1/1,000,000 of it's amazingness.