Cuidad Rodrigo and Leon

The route back to the ferry was planned as a bit of a treat. Two Parador hotels on the way to Santander, both of which were reported to have good food and be "different". The first, at Cuidad Rodrigo was certainly that, and in a good way too.

Driving there, the half-Dutch crew felt very at home when she spotted a bunch of windmills (or Molen for the Language nerds):

Not at all what you would expect heading through rural Portugal.  This one was a kind of experiment, built to lure tourists to stay in them. The area is a national park and pretty lovely anyway. Not sure it needed fake windmills to enhance it but each to their own as they say.

Back in Spain, Cuidad Rodrigo town is nothing that special, apart from the walled old town area up on the hill. The wall is still in place with tiny entrance arched gates, so narrow we had to fold in the door mirrors just in case. Then a twisty turning route to the hotel followed through almost deserted little alleyways. The hotel building is an old castle. You know it is old as it had a re-build in 1372. Luckily the Parador hotel conversion added some more mod-cons to that work:

We had a great corner room, looking over the river:

Some of the staff were a little bit stiff in their behaviour:

but the rest were ultra-friendly and helpful. The waitress at dinner time spoke less English than we do Spanish so Google translate was our friend. Glad we persevered though, it was excellent. Sadly our itinerary only allowed one night there. Again, somewhere we will happily return to.

We'd visited Leon before and liked the city. We particularly liked the look of the Parador hotel there and so we went big and treated ourselves to a couple of nights in the place. We were spoiled rotten, given an upgraded room at the front of the building, looking over the square and river:

The transformation of the interior was quite something too:

with oodles of space, lovely cloister areas to walk and sit in:

all wrapped up in this gorgeous exterior:

Yes, an impressive place to stay. We did some man-maths and rationalised the cost as very good value since car parking was free! 

In the city, things started badly. An excellent coffee shop that we'd visited on our last trip here was shut for a couple of days. Horror. So, after checking Mr Google we found another and were surprised to be offered some free Tapas to go with the two Cafe con Leche. In Leon it is customary to have some free food item given with a drink. Our favourite cafe had slices of home-made cake. This place had tapas. Oh, the coffee was really cheap too.

Luckily, on our second day, the top rated cafe was open again and we enjoyed their excellent coffee, free cake and were way happier than the miserable folks seen in this picture:

Not sure why they looked so gloomy - perhaps there was bad news on the phones that they were addicted to.  Or maybe they had just filled up their cars and were contemplating the Iran / USA / Israel war fuel prices. Whatever, we were way happier.

We'd been told to go and visit the cathedral and being obedient types, we did so:

Yet another impressive demonstration of the power and wealth the church had / has here:

The stained glass was very very old and very very beautiful indeed:

We felt suitably regal, returning to our rather lavish upgraded room for the evening and contemplated the next move, to Santander and the ferry home.

Lisbon and Cascais by train

Heading away from Lagos felt quite sad really. We'd enjoyed our time there and got into the local "groove" quite well, enjoying chatting to the many Americans that had moved in for 10 years and the local folks who tended to the many visitors. However, the wonderful 90 day Brexit limit forced us to head on, and prepare to get the ferry back.

On the way up towards Lisbon, we enjoyed seeing the storks who were busy nesting in the power transmission line pylons. This one only had a few, many were way busier:

We had booked a hotel to the west of Lisbon but on the train line into the city. We needed to cross the big toll bridge so we joined the queue to pay:

and then got promptly confused / lost in the many exits, despite the built in nav system and Google maps on the phone. We ended up going back across the bridge....  Luckily, the toll fee was small so we headed north again, carefully picked the exit and made it to the Hotel Solar Palmerios to find it was wonderfully quiet, despite being next to the main road.  The room was big if a bit tired, the staff and breakfast were excellent as was the parking. Happy to use it again. See their website link for more information.

In need of sustenance, we wandered into the nearby village, gawped at the the lovely tiled buildings:

and enjoyed great food in a newly opened restaurant. Just what was needed after the bridge escapades.

We'd purposefully booked a place close to the Cascais to Lisbon train line. Our first proper excursion was to Lisbon where we happily wandered around enjoying the views:

only to discover we were already running a "straight up" store in the city:

The local shop keepers had a great English sense of humour though:

and the city, bathed in sunlight, showed off all of the beautiful buildings and plazas to their best:

Yes, it is a beautiful place:

even if some of the sales advertising is seriously strange:

One of the iconic things about Lisbon are the trams. they have some old ones to trap the tourists:

and plenty of slightly newer ones that are the backbone of the service:

After a very happy day walking around Lisbon, we opted to head west the following day, to Cascais. We boarded the train and were amazed to find that Donald Trump (only looking a bit less orange) was sitting opposite us:

The expression gave him away although during the train trip he managed to stay awake. Cascais was lovely. Great weather, great place:

In the park, the little lake had one or two turtles that were fighting for space on the rocks to get out of the water:

They sometimes looked like a synchronised not-swimming team:

The local two legged wildlife was unimpressed:

but we found that we had yet another business enterprise here. Our cannabis empire was doing well:

The wander around the town and marina was great. Lovely buildings, lovely weather:

lovely place. We will come back sometime. Has to be done.