It seemed strange as we were looking for lodging how booked up everything in Porto was. We now understand. This was the weekend of the Porto leg of the Rally de Portugal, an auto race that takes place on public roads and streets (blocked to the public during the races of course). The 1.85 km […]
Formerly the capital of Portugal, its most important university was established here over 500 years ago. It would seem that back in the day, when a university was to be built, they spared no expense. It is a long walk up a hill, or steps, to the campus. Across the river are several convents, probably […]
Tomar will go down as one of our top ten places to visit. Perhaps it was the contrast of the hustle and bustle of Lisbon. Or maybe it’s because we missed the train by so little that we were on the platform as it was taking off. At any rate, it was like a little […]
If you are wondering about the choice of “Amazeballs” for use in this title, I was, until recently, just like you. Our travel buddy Lisa, whom you met in Evora, used the term occasionally. In Lisbon, we went out with Lisa and several of her colleagues from Cambridge, and she used the term. I asked, […]
So everyone said that you just had to go to Sintra if you visit Lisbon. Sintra is a day trip away, there are many buses, trains, and tours. We decided to go. It had been fairly warm in Lisbon, and the weather promised to continue in this manner. Even though we’d been told that Sintra […]
Évora is the capital of Portugal’s Alentejo region. I’d never heard of this region before, but having sampled a few Alentejo red wines, one can be sure that I will be seeing its name again. Unfortunately, Ellen was pretty knocked down with a cold when we arrived at this university town of about 56,000 residents. […]
We took the overnight from Madrid to Lisbon. It is the only train between the two cities, and runs on old, bumpy, slow, and uncomfortable track. One would think that Spain is not the largest trading partner of Portugal. As we arrived at 7:20 in the morning, we decided to head straight down to the […]
1 Year Anniversary of the Blog! 7 Month Anniversary of Departing the Twin Cities! Last year on the 11th of May we made the first post on www.stevenellen.com. It was an exciting time as we were psyched about moving to South Africa to join the Peace Corps, preceded with a bit of travel to see friends […]
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