We chose to take our time for Ancient Olympia and stayed another night at the same campground. Both kids walked like champions and we rewarded them with ice cream, a dip in the pool and a feast at dinner time.
Today we moved further in our Greek adventures, down the coast to the small town of Parga. We decided to do our loop of Greece anti-clock-wise. From Parga we continue onto the only Iodian island that you can drive onto via a pier. We made it around to the south to Poros Beach. The campground there was closed but the owner allowed us to stay anyway…and for free on top of it all.
Finally in Greece!
We call every day where we don’t move camp a rest day on our trips. Most of them end up being everything but. So if you imagine a quiet afternoon with a good book on the beach … not quite us. We move at a brisk pace, especially for a family of four. So we always have 5 more things to do on a rest day, because you know: We got time, right? That is on top of everything that made us stay in the first place.
I tried to be smart though and venture a bit into multitasking. So after our breakfast, we packed a few essentials and moved to the lakeshore. I was able to finish up the two blog posts in our back-log while Number 3 (and, to the extent that we let her, the Agent, too) enjoyed the lake. We were the first ones out and had the lake all to ourselves. Small mistakes were made, but overall this was a great success. In hindsight, we just should have told Number 3 to take off his clothes all at once rather than waiting for him to get first his pants and then the undies wet. He had a blast, though, and even made new friends with the 5 and 8 year olds kids of the campers two lots down from us.
This is why we went on this trip. We get to spend so much time with our little ones – who are ever so slowly turning into remarkable little characters. Many times a day, I get this flush of emotion when realising just how much I love them and how blessed we are to get to knowing them.
We somehow managed to squeeze another load of washing into our lunchtime window, although naptime was a bit of a challenge, probably because of the heat. Oh, and Number 3’s digger addictions. There was a sit-on toy digger on the camp’s playground and he found it. Getting him off that playground took a serious bit of convincing.
So naptime dragged on a bit, organically transitioned into coffee time – all the while, promises about things we can do started piling up for Number 3. For the first time on this trip, we decided to split up. I am not much of a water nut, so Nina and the big brother decided to go for another (real) swim, while I took the Agent of Entropy out for a shopping run. I had added “cooking risotto from scratch” to get rid of our remaining fresh zucchini to the long list of to-dos for the day. Oh, and it was finally time for ice in our icebox – the butter demanded so, or at least that was my excuse.
A brief stroll along the lake later, it was now 4.50 pm, we all joined up again. Number 3 had turned slightly blue from an hour in the water while I was a bit hot from my walk in the sun. We equalized things by a minute or two of cuddle time 😀
I got to work on the risotto – and it was around that time that things turned south a bit. Our hero up to this point lied to his Mum about me having approved it and walked away from his sous-chef duties to play with the damn digger again, all on his own. When dinner was ready, tantrum ensued and he outright refused to join in the meal. Slightly soured by that turn of events, I maybe were not the most patient dad at bed time – and it had maybe 35°C in the tent – so that took almost exactly until it was time for us to hop in the car, start up discord and play our regular Friday night game.
Rest day, eh?
Side note:
– to avoid another disappointing take off, I religiously forced the car into “drive” mode every few hours to force it to charge the 12v battery. That works fine while it is charging the main or when the charger is disconnected, but leads to weird behaviour when the main is at 100% but the charger not disconnected. It seems like some software optimisation is still required. We’ll find out if all that at least had the desired effect, tomorrow –
My plan was, to say it mildly, not well liked. It better work like a charm, or I would have gone to the dog house for a very long time. I suggested to add about 50km to the trip to our campground to go back to Germany for our mandatory rapid covid test (needed for entry to Italy). The main reason: 140€ less for the two of us. Germans get their tests for free in Germany. Secondly, it was way less hassle to get an appointment in Konstanz compared to Wil – it is a major border town and has about 10 full-time testing sites to choose from.
The kids were a bit over eager and were up an hour ahead of schedule, but overall the morning went according to plan. Nothing was left, that we could tell, and the heartfelt goodbyes were made easier by knowing that we will see each other again fairly soon. I did forget my car key fob in my other pants, but we only lost 15 minutes.
And so, in time for our 10.27am test appointment we rolled into the car park in Konstanz. It was all pretty orderly, so within 15 minutes we were out again with an electronic results form to be delivered within 20 minutes. I was even able to add a bonus stop to remedy a previous fail on my part: MediaMarkt had both a generic charger for Nina’s laptop to replace the one I forgot in Germany for just 27€ and a cheap usb hard drive replacement since ours died the previous night after 10 years of hard travel.
Next up DM (a kind of drug store, minus the real pharmaceuticals) – I also forgot to take any charger for our three identical electric toothbrushes. Good thing Phoebe still needed one, since they come with a charger. Better still, DM also offers printing on demand, so we could commit our fresh (negative) rapid tests down to paper – just in case. I must admit, time has crept up on us a bit, so at 11.20 am already, we also stocked up on some sandwiches for lunch in the car.
[Nina: It was here that I made the colossal mistake of letting Number 3 ride on a coin-operated train for ONE SINGLE COIN while waiting on Flo to finish all his tasks. Such a huge mistake. Though, at the time I thought Number 3 was really good as he got off the toy train without any complaints.]
The eating part was fine, but 10 minutes into the actual 229km drive to our campsite we realised we forgot to check on the Agent of Entropy. The diaper was, of course, full. Alright, another brief pit stop in some sort of quiet office park. Diaper changed, consolatory feed given … just in time for Number 3 to announce he would definitively and 100% certainly need another potty break. In the car, to the supermarket and the kid rushed inside … and it turned out it was a lie, since he was expecting another coin-operated toy train thingy ride after the business was done. Nina was not amused … 30 minutes for 3 km.
But that was our last hiccup … almost. Next stop was a rest stop with a few fast chargers for Puru Hiko. She was doing excellent, anyways. But then, 9 km before the exit, Number 3 decided it was time to play around and pull the emergency eject (i.e. the door lever going 110km/h on the motorway). Car started a panic inducing beep, wind rushed, Nina half jumped and pulled the door mostly shut again. I know, I could have set the child lock on the door – but this way, he has learned his lesson for life, I am quite sure of it …
Fast charging was uneventful – I mean, this is Switzerland after all. The toilets were clean enough I almost wouldn’t hesitate dining off them. Complete with coin-operated Heidi animatronics … that kind of thing. I restrained myself from buying a 10€ plant based whopper (try it though, really good … just not in Switzerland).
This left us well prepared for the last leg of the trip – 2 hours for 113 km. We did have to come up to 2114m to go over the Splügen Pass, after all. This was SO MUCH FUN! At least for me – the other three got rather motionsick, with the Agent of Entropy actually giving in on our way down from the saddle. Nina and I realised that we had done this exact same pass on the motorcycle before, roughly 10 years ago and coming from the other direction. That was then our second long-distance trip on the bike – or in other words, 70.000 km ago. Something to chew on 😀
Driving an EV on this road is second only to our bike, I would say. Blue George was fun because it was so nimble, and I think the electric version with only 2 passengers would be even cooler than our fully loaded 3 ton family car, just for that go-cart feel. But the sheer amount of torque without any interruptions for gear changes makes going uphill in an EV just a smile-fest. And going down, recuperation takes a huge amount of load off the breaks, so that you can be quite aggressive without risking break damage.
The others disagreed a bit – so with three white-faced passengers, we turned into a great and friendly campsite in a stunning location deep down in the Mera valley. The place is called after the adjacent waterfall: Acquafraggio. And even though we had our fill of waterfalls, this one is a real stunner, visible from the campground. We had absolutely no hesitation locking in a 3 night stay – quite unusual for us in most places.
Time to let it sink in – we are here. We are travelling. On the road again, at last!
When we got up in the morning, it became clear: The trailer right behind us wasn’t abandoned. Oh no, we had camped right in someone’s “frontyard”. No wonder the voices seemed so close and also so amused last night. So far, nothing moved inside. We decided to pack up and have breakfast somewhere else, feeling very uncomfortable with staying in the spot we were in.
It took us until 8.15am to get ready to go…when we were halted by a closed gate, a closed reception and no one around. Flo suggested to leave 10€ as payment and then just go but the gate turned out to be locked. We couldn’t get the car out. A door for pedestrians was open however so we decided to wander around, looking for a café to have breakfast in. “Pastelaria da Ponte” was exactly the kind of thing we were looking for. It provided much needed coffee, treats and some space to get over the embarrassment that we invaded someone else’s sphere with camping last night.
We were back at 9am, sure that now we definitely could leave. The reception was still closed but miraculously, the gate was now open. Plus, a lady arrived at the same time as we did and she offered to take our payment. So we left. Having at least paid someone.
It was our last day in Portugal. Flo had picked a route through the mountains of the National park as our last bit of route and a pastelaria at the end as well. The drive was scenic and full of surprises. Suddenly everything seemed wetter, lots of green plants and waterfalls around. Number 3 slept through all of it so we just enjoyed the ride.
He woke up when we stopped at the pastelaria. I think, he’s got a motion sensor in his bum or something stupid like that. As soon as we stop, he wakes up. Flo had made sure that it was a decent bakery where we would buy our last pastel de nata but everything looked so good that we ended up buying a little extra as well as bread for our picnic lunch.
It felt like lunch time already so we had an eye out for a good spot. Flo then found a sign pointing to a picnic area. Following the road which turned into a dirt road and then into a rugged dirt road…we decided we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. But the landscape was beautiful just maybe a bit of shade would be nice for our break. Finally, we arrived at the picnic area which was by a stream with patches of birch trees and…cows. Well, young steers. Luckily, they were a bit away from the benches. I am not sure how interested they’d gotten into our lunch otherwise. We thoroughly enjoyed lunch, ending with an orange as dessert. Number 3 had a language update and does now repeat words. Oranges in particular seem to be to his liking so he often asks for them. For some reason he has decided that they are called “ayah” and cannot be dissuaded despite Flo’s and my best efforts of telling Baby that this is an orange.
Soon after, we crossed the border back into Spain. The border was ridiculous. Just a tiny, single lane bridge with the letter “E” carved into it. We are officially on our way back. It feels weird and also appropriate at the same time. Seriously going to miss pastel de nata though.
The camp ground of choice was close to a National park, not too far from Santiago de Compostela which we want to visit tomorrow. We arrived there at 3pm and looked forward to some planning of what to do on our way back. The camp ground was closed down. Not closed just now, not for the season, no just permanently closed down. The forest was very pretty though and a little river ran next to the road. We shortly discussed what to do and looked up the city camp ground in Santiago de Compostela which was the only other reasonable option. So we drove on for another 50 meters and then Flo turned around. It was 3.30pm now, the optimal time for coffee and tea and we even still had the last pastel de nata with us. So we stopped and had the best coffee break in a prime location just for ourselves. An hour passed, then nearly two. We kept finding reasons why we needed to stay a bit longer: It was so nice here, Number 3 needed to run around and explore a bit longer, the city camp ground was probably ugly and loud so it is better to spend some time here…
Finally, I stated the obvious thing. If we ever wanted to wild camp on this trip, this was probably it. We wouldn’t find a more convenient place or time to do it. It was one of Flo’s not so secret wishes that he wanted to wild camp as we had done on Home to Home. Here was the chance. Probably the only one I would grant him, so he leaped on it.
While exploring the track with Number 3, he came upon the picture perfect camp spot, next to a little waterfall. Other people had used it as a camp spot in the past as there was a little fire pit made of stones and a tiny play hut made out of dry branches.
So we stayed there. For one night off the record.
Sleep was good – I think. Given our itinerary for today, I shall be excused if I get some of the details wrong. I had the presence of mind to make a reservation for our port wine lodge of choice last night, and the confirmation arrived this morning: 4:15 pm at Graham’s Lodge, English guided tour and tasting. We will get to that …
We got off for a really late start – first some catching up on the blog. Then, we had to wait 20 minutes for the bus (going every 15 minute …). At least it was really quick getting into town. Our starting point was right behind the train station. We figured we could use this to explore further out and up, away from the river, compared to our downward stroll of yesterday.
But first, pastries! We passed a set of the cutest shops, one with great mini versions of some of our favourite pastries. Nina went with mini-pastel de nata and mini-éclair de chocolat. Oh, and given the late start we decided to go straight from here to lunch! The stroll was once again pretty captivating – coming from the Sé (cathedral) down through the narrow winding lanes of Ribeira. There is a lot of construction, mostly renovations, going on all around. But decay is still a dominate feature of this part of town. Empty, half torn down houses and dwellings that evoke Cuba and other former colonial subjects. Ten or twenty years ago, this kind of neighbourhood would probably have been considered a slum. The pressure of money is palpable, but so is the spirit of an active neighbourhood resisting. For now it seems that a balance is struck, resisting total Disney- and gentrification.
Which leads nicely into our lunch spot: A super hip vegan buffet restaurant where the plate & drink combo costs roughly as much as the weekly rent of one of the places two streets over. Sue us, it was still pretty good and super kid friendly to boot. We appreciate a good vegetarian / vegan meal. If there was something to nag on then it would be the slightly too preachy vibe that too often comes with vegan food (the word cleansing was mentioned in the menu).
After lunch, we headed for a triple combo of hipster-geek-history charm. Ticket number 2 on the Lonely Planet for Porto is this neo-gothic bookshop in a very hip part of town. Ever since its rise to next level fame by inspiring J. K. Rowling with its eye-catching twisting staircase and taking some inspiration for the Harry Potter books while working as an English teacher between ‘91 and ’93. Nowadays, it is mostly a tourist attraction, although the 5€ entrance fee are still a valid voucher for any purchase from the solid inventory. We almost did not go due to the line, but once again were singled out with a triple insurance of “baby first” and strict instructions to skip the line. We even met our power-bank helpers from the campground and were able to pass that secret handshake on to them (i.e. use baby to skip line).
Finding a coffee and pastry stop before the tour proved to be a bit more of an obstacle, afterwards. We did however find a hipster enough place to finally get me that haircut that was overdue since probably a month before we left. It was the real deal, complete with other twisted-mustachioed patrons and two guys collapsing in to clean up after walking the whole camino. We also, kind of last minute, find a place where Nina could replenish on much needed sugar and black tea.
It almost got stressful then when we took the bus to get over to the port lodge, with the bus sitting in traffic for a long time. We started early enough though, and made it with 3 minutes to spare. In that excitement, picking the selection for the tasting was done pretty much shooting from the hip. Since I already tried my way all the way up to 30 year old tawny from Graham’s, I felt a change of pace was in order and went with the super premium vintage collection – and Nina with the considerably cheaper premium vintage collection. 60 € for six “shots” – this better be good.
Graham’s was recommended by the Lonely Planet and we noticed why. The whole Lodge was done up recently and just had the perfect feel to it. It was interesting and somewhat strange in a nice kind of way. It looked almost staged, but this was the place where Graham’s branded port is stored to age. 7 million litres of it, actually. I could touch a 100 year old barrel with 30 year old port in it. We were led through the vault, with the oldest bottle in there being from 1864! The guide was great as well. Our worries for going with the brand we knew best were quickly forgotten – and it turned out that most port brands are owned by the same family anyway.
We even managed to not get shamed into feeling too impostery by the well-dressed American tourists occasionally sneering at our hobo-with-baby look. Well, my bills are as green as yours, it turned out and we left half of them behind in the tasting room for the plebs. See, the choice of tasting menu decides the venue. We bought ourselves into the vintage room, sporting as the website says a “feel of a fine private club”. Not even Number 3 had the potential to bring that down all the way. I don’t care – we had an absolute blast, with a detailed introduction of each of or tastings. With the rest of our group sitting with us, we had almost all the offerings on the table. Ultimately, we were really happy with our selection. We would never have bought a bottle of one of these, but being able to sample them was great. The vintage ports are much more like rubys in their character. They are not aged in oak barrels like tawnys and thus retain a lot of their freshness. Yet one could clearly make out the effect of aging in the bottle between the lot we had (I had vintages from 1983, 2000 and 2016, Nina had an LBV, crusted and a vintage 2005). Maybe someday we will go for the ultimate decadence of vintage tawnys (single year oak barrel aged).
We had to buy at least one bottle then – given the extra 10% discount we got from our Porto card to boot. I went with a straight table wine from one of the owners’ vineyards while Nina struck a bargain with a 1982 vintage bottled last year. See, Graham’s is official supplier for the Queen and whenever there is a merry occasion they get a request to bottle some certain vintage. So the 1982 was bottled in 2018 in celebration of Prince Harry’s marriage. What a bloody weird thing to come from simple Portuguese grapes on bad soil.
Is anything after this really still relevant? We had a blast … (ok, one more thing – took the wrong bus and we had to walk off some of our buzz for 2 km to get back to camp).
Today was one of those days that we are craving for on our trips. It started a bit low – even though our camp was very nice. But Number 3’s newest software upgrade is a bit labour intense. Him running away without thought or fear made for a rather slapstick packing time. He felt perfectly comfortable walking alone all the way to reception some 100m and 20 stairs up and then be escorted back by the owners when he fell. Somehow, we still managed to cram in a shower for both of us.
The route for today was another matter: There is a recommendation far east which would add at least a day before going to Porto. We are already on our final 10 days in Portugal, based on our rough outline. Will it be worth it? Weather was supposed to get a bit worse again. At the very last minute, I made the call to go east.
Our day improved steadily from there. After crossing over the reservoir lake near Tomar, we drove for about two hours along mostly windy backcountry roads. Good choice to avoid toll roads once more. The weather got better and the landscape wider and dryer the higher we got. We re-upped at a supermarket along the way. That allowed us to have a picnic lunch somewhere off the highway down a lovely track through a pasture.
The sight we’re aiming for was a fortress and village named Monsanto. In my mind, the last 50 km drive through Beira Beixa were a sight of their own already. Gently rolling hills strewn with granite boulders and fieldstones of all sizes. Very rural, with lots of open spaces dotted with eucalyptus, olive, orange and cork trees. There was a campground in the area, but if something would come up – this would probably be the best area for wild camping on our trip so far.
As the steep hill with Monsanto flowing over its side came into view, we got really excited. We could drive almost all the way up, got a good parking spot and were ready to explore soon. Our goal was to find a nice café and chill with a coffee and pastries and take in the village atmosphere.
It did not work out like that in the best way possible. We started exploring along the excellent signposts and felt like up first would be a good plan. Signs with “touching boulders” and “castle” started to show up. We climbed through the village build organically into the hill and the huge granite boulders strewn about when we sort of popped out on top. From here, it became a little hike through a magnificent granite boulder field. We continued on all the way to the very top. Ruins of previous settlement and the “creative restauration” of a Templar castle waited for us there. The view from the highest point were splendid. This granite hill stands out in an otherwise rather flat landscape. One can see other peaks like this in the distance – used back in the day to build up a defensive chain of fortifications against first Moorish, then Spanish intrusion.
It was getting right time for coffee by the time we were back in the village. We popped into the first place we found inviting and were lead out to one of the coolest terraces we have ever been on. The restaurant was built into a boulder, and the terrace was on the side of another one. Only about 10 seats here, but we got the best spot (in our opinion) overlooking the village and down into the surrounding lands. But the positive surprises did not end here: We ordered our usual, but got interrupted after “pastel” … when they arrived, it turned out that the local speciality is a pastry similar to pastel de nata, but filled with a cherry flavoured custard instead! There were ripe growing cherries right next to our seats as well. It was magnificent!
With spirits soaring, we got back to our car and made our way to the campground nearby. It was a municipal camp, but almost deserted at the moment. We enjoyed the stiff spiel from the civil servant at the reception and were positively surprised one final time when the price came in at 8.90€ – the cheapest stay yet. That made not wild camping go down a bit better for me. We even managed to get a load of washing done before bed time (and before running out of critical … bits).
Flo didn’t catch on to my cliffhanger there. The spare part arrived safe and sound in the morning of our rest day so that we were relaxed and free to make more plans from thereon out.
Unfortunately, the night brought rather disrupted sleep for us. More crying because of teeth and more applying pain relief gel in the middle of the night.
Thus, we were rather tired in the morning…and unmotivated to pack. Since we had two options today, we chose the lazy one: Just pack the tent so we have a car to explore Tomar and then come back to the lovely camp ground for one more night. If you like it somewhere, just stay longer. 🙂
We were in Tomar at about 11 o’clock. The sight to see here is the Convento de Cristo, the headquarters of the knights Templar. On the way in, it didn’t seem too busy but there still was a queue for tickets. In sunshine, making it rather hot. Flo decided that we wouldn’t try the “cut the line because of baby” card here as it would be maybe half an hour until we got tickets anyway. I grumbled a bit but ok.
Just when I thought that we might get into trouble with our timing “we will be too late for lunch”, “did we put enough money into our parking ticket, this might take a while”, a member of staff put his head out of the window and yelled “Baby first!” when he saw Flo, followed by a wave of the hand that we should come to the front desk and get tickets. It was quite funny actually. And while my thoughts were still in the queue, we were actually already in the headquarters.
I thoroughly enjoyed our visit there. However, my knowledge about the knights Templar is limited and it felt a bit like visiting a pirate ship. The knights are so prominent in media (movies, games) that I had trouble not imagining it as a set. XD
A bit more than an hour later, we moved on into the city to find a place for lunch. Tomar is a pretty small town and Number 3 enjoyed walking along the cobblestone lanes, charming everyone we passed. He had a “courage upgrade” some time ago and would now roam further away from us and around corners and out of line of sight. Despite being great, it is exhausting as it means, we now have to follow our baby rather than the other way around.
Lunch was lovely. We had a great waiter who entertained Number 3 quite a bit as well as fellow patrons who waved and smiled and played hide and seek with him.
A short stroll through the park later, we went back to the camp ground. A little bit more rest for us before we had another evening of games via skype with our German friends.
