Age of Discovery

Portugal’s exploration of the world is quite astounding, as is its eventual control and influence over such a high percentage of the planet, especially for such a small place. Its slavery history is repugnant, and coincidentally while in Porto I watched the movie Woman King, where much of the film revolves around the Portuguese slavers […]

Lisboa

Lisbon is not my favorite Portuguese city. Certainly there are some cool attractions and interesting history and beautiful viewpoints. But I much preferred Porto and Sintra, and now that I’ve been in Portugal for over 1.5 weeks, I’m mostly seeing the same Portuguese things again like azulejos, pastel de nata, cod, canned fish, port wines, […]

Vamos à Praia

On a beautiful sunny Saturday with mid-60s (F) temps, I took a cheap Uber ride out to the ocean, where I visited Praia Grande (big beach) and then walked up and over to Praia das Maçãs, another nice beach. Both were strangely empty on such a nice Saturday afternoon. I guess the Portuguese are like […]

Sintra, Portugal

Colleen and I visited Sintra, a truly magical fairy tale town, way back in 1999. I recall snippets of exploring the one-of-a-kind Pena Palace and then descending down to the Moorish Castle. That’s all. I don’t remember anything else, like how we got up the hill or what the town itself was like. Give yourself […]

That Sounds Fishy

Seafood is very popular in Portugal, unsurprisingly given its long coastline. For historical reasons from 500 years ago and a connection to Newfoundland in Canada, the Portuguese love cod, which they have to import. Grocery stores sell huge salted and dried codfish fillets called Bacalhau, which are rehydrated before preparation for eating. Apparently these could […]

The Best Country to Visit?

Happy Halloween! 🎃 Conde Nast Traveler readers voted Portugal the best country in the world to visit for the second year in a row. I can see why – it’s got a lot going for it. What’s even more interesting to me is to see that the rest of the top five countries are all […]

Azulejos

Azulejos are the tiles which decorate many structures around Portugal, including on and in dozens of buildings in Porto. Some examples are shown below. They help brighten up this otherwise grey granite-heavy city. While there are plenty of majestic buildings in Porto, many structures are worn down and look as if they are from a […]

Porto, Portugal

First I should say that Porto is a very different place than all those eastern and central European cities I visited earlier on this trip! Architecture, people, climate, and more are all notably different, as would be expected. It feels quite unique and very old. It’s been raining off and on continuously since I’ve been […]

Koreans Love Zagreb

When visiting Zagreb in the past year, Colleen and I saw very few Asian tourists, but on this trip there are clearly many more. Our tour guide says that they are mostly Koreans! The reason is that there have been very popular Korean TV shows filmed in Zagreb, and as such there is a direct […]