What a hot day! We can’t believe we’re saying that, after all the cold, wet weather we had in the last 10 days. It just goes to show that we’re never happy with the weather! The hop-on, hop-off ride was very, very hot. We had to put on lotion and wear hats, and finally went to the lower level, once my camera battery died. Overall, our impression of this city is that it’s very old, quite run-down, with spectacular buildings and architecture. Everything is so old. I think they could have a reconstruction project for the next 25 years and never catch up. There was an earthquake here in 1755, for 6 minutes with a huge tsunami, which killed 40,000 people and wiped out the entire city centre. re wrong! Our knees are just getting used to walking again. We noticed immediately, that the prices are closer to Canadian prices here – coffee is only 1E, instead of 2.5E. That’s pretty much our gauge, coffee and water. So after sweating off a few cups of water on our city tour, we went back to the hotel to R & R, then went for a bite of supper and out to a movie: Larry Crowne. It was very good and LOL, it was in English with Portuguese subtitles. Once again, just about everyone speaks English, or at least enough to help us find or do anything we need.
Today it’s off to Beja. Why Beja? Well, it’s about ½ ways to Seville; so we decided to break up the train trip and stop there for a day or two. We’ve booked one night, but if we like it we’ll stay two nights. We went to trip advisor and found a hotel, #1 on its website for only 43E with breakfast, wi-fi included. The exchange rate is about 40-43% on the Euro. (I’ve taken that from what Visa is charging us). We’ll try to make some phone calls today from Beja, using Skype. We’re off shortly to take the Metro to our train station (20 min) and then a 4 hour train ride to Beja. The trains in Europe are very comfortable, and roomy!
Ps – you know you’re in Portugal when there are cooked baby pig heads in the deli counter!
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