Time to Clean the Cobwebs - Less Than 2 Months til Portugal!

As usual, this place has been sorely neglected since I last got off a plane from a vacation. But, it's time to dust it off and get it ready for some action!! A few months ago, I told my dear friend Liza, whose dream has been to go to Portugal, the following: I'm going to Europe in May; come with me to Portugal, or I'll go somewhere else (France? Denmark? Somewhere else in Italy? The options were endless).

Since the four or so people who read this blog are definitely very smart and have already read the title of this post, you already know what happened next.

So, Liza and I are going to Portugal in May! itinerary as follows:

• Lisbon - 5 days with some day trips thrown in
• Porto - 5 days with a tour of the Douro wine valley and another day tour of some small cities
• Coimbra - 1 day
• Leiria - 3 days (to use as a base to see a number of other places)
• Evora
• and one final night in Lisbon

I recall from my 2007 trip that Lisbon was cheaper than basically anywhere else I went on that trip. And it appears to still be the case. We've booked an amazing looking 2-bedroom apartment on airbnb right in a perfect location in Lisbon for just over $100 a night. I mean, it has a bathtub. That's like the European equivalent of a unicorn. In fact, my average accommodation cost is going to be under $60 a night for the whole trip.

Planning this trip is a little more challenging than other previous trips. First, they say Portuguese is a Romance language and considering I've studied both French and Italian, and live in a city where a lot of Spanish is spoken, you'd think that Portuguese wouldn't seem that foreign to me. Well, I think they lie because I can't understand a damn thing. I may actually buy a phrasebook for the first time since that 2007 trip. Also, their train system appears......bad. And that means there will be a lot of bus trips involved. And that hasn't always worked out very well for me (see: my nightmare of a day trip to Cadiz in 2013). So this will be an adventure. Luckily one of the bus systems has an app.

Now, it's time to research!