***Flashing back in time… now you can help us experience our backlog of fotos and experiences***
Portugal – “they are more Spanish than the Spanish”. I can’t tell you who said this but it was a Spaniard. Portugal is where we cut our teeth as “couchsurfers” (not counting the couches of friends we already know) – more on that when we get to Faro.
First stop – LAGOS. It’s got a charming “old city”, walled, waterfront, subtropical. We felt surrounded by other visitors, so we got out fast – but not before we gawked at the truly amazing beach cliffs
…and some really gorgeous tiled buildings. In Spain there’s tons of tile indoors. In Portugal, they put it EVERYWHERE :
…AND – the FISH MARKET!!! Yum! Too bad we weren’t in town long enough to cook some up…
After the tourist-trap feel of Lagos, SAGRES provided a welcome breather… there is nuttin’ to do here but chill. 
We took a little bike ride and saw the southwesternmost point of continental Europe
Click here for a riviting 45 second clip featuring one of the ends of the earth.
More amazing cliffs over the sea:
A huge old earthen compass rose that, once again, proved my travel compass to be off a few degrees
CRAZY fishermen who taunt death. It doesn’t look so bad in the picture, but it’s a long way to the water, and this guy is close to the edge… SURELY some of them fall!
We stayed at the affordable and comfy Cuadros de Yvonne, highly recommended. She only speaks Portuguese, but she can understand our bad Spanish just fine. Her dog Snoopy is one well-dressed pooch. 
Then we went to FARO – time to try out couchsurfing.com!
Click here to check our couchsurfing profile, and add a nice comment about us to help us get free places to stay. You can read more about the couchsurfing project on that site, but basically it’s a way for travelers to link-up and host and be hosted all over the world…Fo’ free!!!!
We are happy to count our Faro hosts Vera and Daniel among our new friends. We only spent one night in Faro, but they showed us a bit of their town and introduced us to Portuguese-style bread soup with spinach, cheese, and egg. Yum!
We walked along the waterfront and saw folks collecting dinner from the tidal flats 
Vera was the lookout while I peeped 
This is the church with the Chapel of Bones – real monks built into the walls! 
Finally, on to LISBON, the favorite city of our friend Jaime in Seville. He’s a very sensitive guy, so I know he doesn’t say that lightly. I feel we got a small taste of what he means… 
In Lisbon we couchsurfed again, this time with Jorge. Thank you Jorge and thank you Couchsurfing! Again, things worked out beautifully.
Lisbon really is a gorgeous city, including architecture, graffiti, the sea, and the parks.
I learned to make fish stew and Jorge said it was a success.
Here’s a selection of cool graffiti I liked:
Bye bye Lisbon, until next time…
ANDREW SEZ: yes Portugal was nice. I really liked the tile buildings all over the place. Lots of old timers—im a bit concerned about the lack of young people but I guess I have to track down some stats on that before I get too concerned.
Back to the present, we are wrapping up a 3-week stint in Egypt—featuring a boat trip down the nile…
Lots of hieros and temples–more on that some other time…
We spent the last few days in Alexandria, with a view of the medeterranian sea from our balcony.
We fly out to Tunis tonight—plane flights were not on our original agenda, but we’ve had calendar and visa issues that forced our hand. En sha’allah this is our last flight for a while…Tunisia and Algeria await—Back to the heart of the maghreb!!!
