Travel The World With Maria: Portugal

I spent three beautiful sunny days in Portugal with Dad's cousin, Toin. I arrived in Porto and rented a car at the airport. After getting used to driving on the other side of the road, driving from the other side of the car, and getting lost a few times, I made it to Toin and Wim's beautiful property right on the edge of the Dão river. They have four friendly dogs who quickly became my new friends. Three rather big dogs and one little one. On my first night Toin made me a traditional Portuguese dish with dried salted cod, called Bacalhau. It was delicious! The fish has to be soaked, then Toin cooked it with potatoes in a béchamel sauce and breadcrumbs on the top. Toin took me into Visio to have a look around and have lunch. We ordered fish, which came out as a whole grilled fish. I get the impression that Portuguese love their fish. Most of my afternoons were spent lazing around the pool, which was quite nice. A bit of a change of pace in comparison to the rest of my trip, racing around Spain. The gardener's Steven and Vanessa kindly took my canoeing down the river. We saw some beautiful wildlife and landscape. The herons were really beautiful. We had to battle a strong headwind to get back, but the pool and bbq that were waiting for us back home made all the hard work worthwhile. On my last day I had to get the car back to the airport early in the day so I took the metro into Porto and took a tour on the hop on hop off bus, which was really good. I saw all the traditional old buildings covered in ceramic tiles, the beaches and the harbour with all the old port boats which were used to transport the port from the cellars in by the harbour. Later that night I flew to Stansted in England and am now staying with Rebecca, who stayed with our family in NZ when I was young. Her three young boys are very entertaining!