06-08/06/2019: Fnideq
Km travelled today/sum: 48km / 5560km
Sun shine, 25 degrees, country road

We booked a ferry at 10AM so we would not have to start too early or too late. The morning passed efficiently, so we were at the port a bit before our scheduled time and had to wait. I preferred to have time instead of rushing though!

 

The ferry was nearly on time and we boarded without any problems. We didn’t need any tie downs, they were provided and the ship worker guy even said he will fasten them for us.  Definitely a weight of our shoulders 🙂

 

So we went up to do the paper work. The official police desk was only open after the ferry has left, meaning we had to get a visa for our bikes (a sort of bike passport) and then we got a visa with a unique number stamped into our passport. This unique number will be required when checking into hotels. We spent the rest of the short journey on the upper deck taking pictures.

 

We got out of the habour without any problems. At the customs booth we had to wait for 15 min, but apart from that short delay it worked like a charm. We drove off slowly, since we’d heard a couple of times that in Morocco there is a policeman with a speed gun behind each palm tree. We think that is exaggerated, most likely they are hiding behind every 5th … 😂

The landscape was nice, mountain roads were meandering along and the roads were good at the maximum allowed speed too. So everything was fine. At the first petrol station we stopped to fill the bikes up, since the petrol in Morocco is much cheaper than in Spain.

When we arrived at our destination we didn’t had any means to call our host, since our Vodafone connection wouldn’t work in Morocco. We didn’t have Moroccan currency either, so our next stop was an ATM. To our surprise it worked! Of course, we had to pay a bank fee, which we didn’t mind at this stage. Then off we went to a nearby shop to buy one prepaid SIM card. With the help of the very friendly shop owner got the SIM card into the phone and working.

So now we went to a restaurant, ordered a mint tea and called our host. We were not too far away, so our host walked to the restaurant and showed us the way. There was only one small hiccup, the ramp to the safe parking space had been removed…. Our host offered a self made ramp with metal rods. At the beginning I was very reluctant to get up there, but in the end I did and both bikes ended up in a luxury garage. Check out those nice mosaic tiles in the picture!  We settled in our room and went for a stroll around the block organising a prepaid card for Sigrid as well.

 

 

Our host we recommended an authentic local restaurant, so we went there. Sigrid ordered a Tajin and I ordered something I didn’t recognise. Turns out I got meat balls – could be worse! 😁

Since we’re now setup with money and mobile phone, we’ll continue to Chefchaouen (the blue town) as planned tomorrow.

03-05/06/2019: Huerta Grande (close to Gibraltar)
Km travelled today/sum: 168km / 5112km
Sun shine, 25 degrees, country roads, ferry

From Seville we were heading south and according to the weather forecast, the temperature would drop by 10 degrees. And so it did. When we arrived in Traifa the temperature was around 20 degrees, which was a really nice cool change. We parked the bikes close to the most southern point of Europe and walked the rest.

 

Just as we got ready to ride off again, a woman approached us and we got to talking. She had driven her car from Germany to here and was on the way to visit a friend. Eventually we exchanged addresses and said good bye.

Off we went to the Isla de las Paloma, which was fortified.

When we arrived there, it was closed. The island was not accesible for tourists. Turns out that it’s now used as a camp for Migrants from Africa, sounds quite bad and sad… We took a picture from in front of the gate and went back. Bjoen was hoping to see a sign that mentioned the most Southern Point of mainland Europe, but there was nothing!



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So we went back over the bridge and had a coffee, watching the kite surfer flying impressively through the air.

 

From here it was not far to our accommodation, which turned out to be a small house in a national park

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After breakfast we hopped onto one bike and drove around the bay to Gibraltar, or the Rock, as the Spanish call it. We read in Lonely Planet that there is a long queue when trying to enter Gibraltar, which is an English enclave. Not sure, why there is a border crossing, since Spain and England are part of the EU (at least now, at the time when we were here). Anyway, I marked a carpark in Spain, where we would park the bike and walk through the border, no queues here. Unfortunately I missed the turn and got caught in the car queue. Lucky there was a pedestrian crossing which we used to get out. Here we parked the bike on the footpath, got rid of our riding gear, covered the bike and off we went to visit Gibraltar.

We got a stamp into our passport on the English side, we have jet to figure why. After passing the English border control, we spotted an English telephone booth J

 

From here we caught the public bus to the cable car, which we needed to reach the top of the rock. Here we joined a queue, luckily it didn’t take as long as we thought and we were on our way. We got to around 400m high, the view was fantastic!

 

And of course there were the monkeys (Barbary macaques).

The youngster examined the wind screen wiper J

We walked to the sky walk, which apparently was opened by Luke Skywalker J. It was not as impressive as I thought but the hanging bridge was!

We bought a ticket to use the cable car down, but to get to the hanging bridge we were already half way down anyway. The stairs back up were steep and plentiful, so walking down was easier 😁

On the stairs there was a monkey – he didn’t mind that we stepped over him J. After I took the photo and showed it to Sigrid, she laughed and said, it reminds her of me. I can’t see any resemblance.

On this plaque, we showed Diddl where Morocco is, so that he’s prepared. On the right picture are the Mountains in Morocco.

 

Tomorrow is a rest, clean, print, preparation day and then we are off to Morocco, also called ‘Africa for beginners’. J

31/05-02/06/2019: Seville

The next day we went back to the city using the public transport, since it was cheap and fast and we didn’t have to bother with our motorcycle gear. When we arrived at the ‘Catedral de Sevilla’, there was a long queue at the ticket office. So we decided to follow a lonely planet tip, and walk to the ‘Divino Salvador’, another church which would sell the ticket for the Catedral as well and there were no queues. Being technologically savvy, we used google maps to find our way. Did I mention that Google maps doesn’t work very well in tiny alleys, since the GPS signal is really weak? Yeah… so it took a while to find the right way. When we arrived at the ‘Divino Salvador’, there really was no queue and the reason was obvious: the ticket office was closed for the next 4 hours…. Bummer!
We walked back to the cathedral and joined the queue. To be honest, the queue was progressing fast, so we would have been in the cathedral before we even got to the other church. It was not too bad in the queue as today was only 34 degrees J. As soon we entered the Cathedral, the heat was gone. It was nice and cool in there. The catherdral is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and every thing in there seems to be huge. The ceiling, the chapels, the organs, the paintings…….

 

And Christopher Columbus is as well buried here. This is a picture of his tomb.

This is the main altar, the biggest one I have seen. It would have been a lifetime project for a single craftsman. We counted over 40 scenes there. Apparently each of these squares represents a scene of Christ’s live. 

 

And then there was the tower! We walked up around 35 set of stairs, well it took a while, but the view from here was worth it.

We could see the bullring not far from here and the orange trees in the cathedrals garden.

Some fun on the windows on the way down.

The ceiling and some beautiful inlay work at the floor.

 

By the time we got out it was late and we decide to get the train home. Tomorrow we will visit the most southern point of Europe in Tarifa and then travel to a small town close to Algeciras, where we will visit ‘the rock’ (Gibraltar) and leave Europe a day later.

31/05-02/06/2019: Seville
Km travelled today/sum: 227km / 5280km
Hot, mostly highway

Today we were aiming for Seville, which was just a 2 hour ride from Albufeira. So we had a slow start with a nice breakfast.

The border crossing went without any problems… well, there was no border crossing so that’s probably why there were no problems 😉 . After 100km, we had a petrol stop and thought we would give our host a call. As it turned out, he had to go to the hospital to have his dialysis done – which takes 3 hours – so he would be back home around 19:00. This was a bit of a surprise. Since it was really warm (~ 35 degrees), we decided to stay at the petrol stations restaurant a bit longer, which had good WiFi. After an hour we decided to ride to the accommodation and wait there. When we arrived we explored the area ’till close to 19:00 then our host turned up. We were able to park the bikes in his front yard, which was really convenient.

He also told us that this weekend there would be a military show and that the Spanish king comes to Seville on Saturday. So we planned to have a look at the army exhibition and maybe get a glimps of the king. Well, as usual we started the day slowly and when we arrived at the train station we realised that it was pretty packed. As we found out, that was nothing compared to how packed the train was. In the end, the carriage was so crowded that nobody could get in anymore. We got off the train one station earlier (we may have remembered the wrong station name…), but that was not bad, since we left the crowd behind for a short while.

A short walk later we had a look at the ‘Plaza de España’. This was huge place, there were even small channels with bridges and boats on them.The Palaza was in front of a nice park. When we strolled through the park, Sigrid found a orange tree with plenty of oranges. So Sigrid had a go at one, but it was really dry. I guess they don’t water the trees regularly.

 

 

When we left the park, we saw the crowd. We waited a bit and then we could hear some tanks coming. Unfortunately, this was the moment where we realised that we were waiting at the wrong spot. I tried to take some pictures above the crowd with very limited success.

 

A bit frustrated we tried reach the channel, but there was no way we could get there. So instead, we used a back road to get to the main street from there. That was when two young ladies approached us, asking if we would like to be part of a tasting group for olive oil and beer. This was organised from the University of Seville and it would be free… Cool! we’ll have that instead! A guy came to us and translated the proceedings from Portuguese to English. Now we could understand what it was all about. We learned that when tasting olive oil, you are looking for defects, and there were a couple of oils which were emphasising these defects so you could work out what it was all about. Anyway, the olive oil was ok. Now it was onto the beers – there however they tried a couple of new strange things. Some of them they shouldn’t waste the nice beer on (my opinion) but one other was quite nice, it was a mixture of Guinness with a hint of coffee. I liked it, Sigrid didn’t.

 

 

Anyway, when the tasting was finished, so was the parade. The streets were nearly empty. We walked along the river and it was really hot. Sigrid had some water from a nice fountain.

 

Our next idea was to hop on a boat and take a river cruise. The boats were leaving from the ‘Torre del Oro” (tower of gold), which was not far from us. So we walked there and hopped on the boat. On the left is the ‘Torre del Oro” and on the right the the building for the ‘Ministry of Education and Sport’.

The bridge on the left was built by the French architect Alexandre Gustave Eifel. It replaced a pontoon bridge build by the Moors in the 12th century – really-this floating bridge exists seven centuries! On the right, there is the Schindler tower, which is just an observation tower build for the Exposition of Seville 1992.

After the boat trip, we decided to have a look at the ‘Torre del Oro’, which is also a nautical museum. From the top of the tower, we had a great view over the ‘Canal de Alfonso XIII‘ one of the arms of the River Guadalquivir. We also had a glimpse of the ‘Catedral de Sevilla’, which we would visit tomorrow.

On our way back to the train station, we came across some nice arabic houses, and when we walked into the archway we found some beautiful tranquile court jards. In one court jard we found a reminance of the town wall and a water fountain.

 

This was enough for one day, so we caught the train back. This time the train was empty 😁

26-30/05/2019: Albufeira
Km travelled today/sum: 198km / 5053 km
Sun shine, 29 degrees, country road, highway

Our first stop was the ‘Lighthouse of Cabo de São Vicente’ the place where Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic ocean meet.

Oh, and there is this sausage stall which sells “The last bratwurst before America” (Die letzte Bratwurst vor America). We thought we should definitely give it a try.

 

 

On our way to the light house we saw a large fortress, so on the way back we stopped to have a look. This fortress was not a standard one, it was just a wall that divided the mainland from the headland. The headland itself was protected by 3 steep cliff sides. Left is the entrance to the fortress, on the right is the gate from the inside.

After we explored most of the building and walked along the cliffs, we hopped on our bikes and drove to our accommodation in Albufeira. We got a room on the top floor and could park our bikes just in front of the stair case. This was our view J

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sigrid couldn’t resist and hopped immediately into the pool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next couple of days we relaxed on the pool, tried some different restaurants, walked along the beaches, found some sleeping Snoralex (Poekmon), ate some more creepy crawlers and enjoyed the sunsets.

During our stay it turned out that the aircon was not working and the internet was very slow. The aircon couldn’t be fixed, so we got a fan and a free nights stay, we didn’t complain J. The stay here was over in no time. The next stop will be Seville, where we would like to have a look at the ‘Catedral de Sevilla’. Looking at the temperature, Seville will be 10 degrees hotter than the Algarve!

24-25/05/2019: Villa Nova de Milfontes

Km travelled today/sum: 218km / 4855km
Sun shine, 25 degrees, highway and nice country roads

We left Lisboa over the ‘Ponte 25 de Abril‘, a huge hanging bridge which didn’t allow motorcycle rider to use the left lane. Not long after, we turned off the highway to follow some of the more scenic roads through a national park. At one point, we saw a lot of stork nests on any imaginable place with height.

So we stopped and took some pictures.

 

We continued through the national park on the curvy roads meandering through the green hills. It was just enjoyable. Our next planned stop was ‘Die letzte Wurst vor America’ and then to Albufeira, but that would have been a long day. Instead, during a petrol stop, we looked around and found something close by, on the side of the national park. So we booked it and when we arrived, we got a room on the first floor with a nice balcony. Since we would like to call Germany to congratulate my mum for her birthday, we would be up late/early, so we decided to stay a day longer.

Since we still had time before sunset, we explored the village close by. There was an old castle and the river mouth leading to the ocean and a nice beach.

The next morning we slept in and started to walk around after lunch time. We went back to the beach, this time walked up to the ocean. At the end of the road was an extraordinary sculpture. As we found out, it was the ‘Arcanjo Statue’ symbolising a cry, an alert to the planet that melts.

From this point we could see the Atlantic beaches as well as back to the castle in town and the bridge, spanning over the Mira River.

When we were passing the restaurants, we noticed that people were eating something like peanuts, but with a snail shell. The items in this dish looked too small for snails. So we got adventurous in the next restaurant and ordered one serve. Well, it turned out that this are snails, Portuguese snails (Há Caracois) but much smaller than the French once. I must admit, they didn’t taste bad.

After all the hard work so far, we thought we need a holiday. So we looked for accommodation in Albufeira, which has a kitchen, is close to the beach, doesn’t cost the world, has free Wi-Fi and secure motorcycle parking. To our surprise, Sigrid found some accommodation ticking all these boxes. So tomorrow, we will have a look at the point where the Atlantic and the Mediterranean sea meet and then set off to Albufeira.

21/5 Tue Lisbon

This morning we jogged to the supermarket to get bread rolls. Then more site seeing, this time on Björn’s bike only, because Sigrid’s chain makes lots of noise now

We visited the Jesus stature (Cristo Rei)


 

and took the elevator to the top. What a view!

After that we went past the campground. Joy! We got the 2 parcels we were waiting for, especially the chain and sprocket. But not all was well… Björn’s visa wasn’t there. It now has only one more day time to arrive. Ou to frustration we had a big lunch at the campground, cheap and nice though! 

Out of curiosity we visited the restaurant around the corner at night, a surprisingly cool and quirky place. We only had a glass of wine, since we were still filled up from lunch that cost us only 1 Euro, so we promised that we would be back tomorrow. We’ll take some pictures then!

We finished the day with looking at all the pictures we has this far taken.

22/5 Wed Lisbon

After another jog to the supermarket we made our way to the chain and sprocket place on both bikes.

After dropping Sigrids bike off, we agreed to be back in about an hour or so.  We decided to go to the shopping centre nearby where we printed some pictures to use them as postcards, organized a pen and envelopes to write our cards and the message-in-a-bottle we still had from Sylt, Germany.

After lunch, we wrote the cards and bottle message and brought them to the postoffice after we had finally worked out that Post in Portugal is called Correo.

At the post office we had a long discussion with the clerks about the posting of a bottle-letter. According to them the bottle should be in an envelope. Fine, we gave in and put everything in an envelope, even adding picture cards. Hopefully it will arrive in time for Caspian’s birthday. When we finally walked back to the motor cycle shop it was closed for a Siesta…

Oh, well back we went to the centre for another coffee, then the bike was ready.. In the ensuing conversation with the head mechanic we ended up mentioning that we would travel to Morocco. He suggested that we talked to his boss, as he often visits Morocco. So we did, and it turned into an hour long conversation. Carlos translated a trip layout he had done earlier into English for us and told us lots of small tricks, for example take cigarettes for trading. He even gave us an address from a mechanic in Morocco, just in case. What a great guy!

Carlos, the champion who gave us travel advice for Morocco

Next we drove to the tyre place. There it took only 20 min and the new tyre was on.

Riccardo and Happy Sigrid

After taking pictures with Riccardo, the shop owner we went home. When we arrived two cars had blocked our parking spot. The owner of the local pub came out after a short while and asked if we would like to park there, When we said yes, his wife came out and moved one of the cars allowing us to park there. After parking we went to the pub and had a beer with the locals which was nice. As promised, at night we went to the restaurant around the corner and had a great dinner.

I had a big steak and Sigrid a skewer filled with meat and vegetables.

 

 

23/5 Thu Lisbon

After our jog to the supermarket we moved rooms once again. We had extended our stay to allow for Björns visa for to arrive

The new room was much smaller, but cheaper as well.


We used the time for a last sight-seeing tour, this time with public transport, the bus.

Due to Sigrid opting for the first available bus, we didn’t quite take the right bus and ended up on top of the old town. This was a blessing in disguise as we now only had to walk down. We took a small detour to a castle, but because they were asking for 10 Euro entrance fee, we skipped it.


In the street they played music from a balcony, what a nice atmosphere!

We stumbled over a restaurant with a great view where we had a coffee.


Sigrid called the campground; they still didn’t have Björn’s Visa. Darn!

We walked down to the commercial square and went up onto the arc. Nice views. Sigrid couldn’t resist ringing the bell of the tower clock… We even have it on Video.  It was loud! 

 

 

This concluded our visit of Lisbon

Tomorrow we’ll move out and take our chances going past the campground, hoping the visa arrive just before we leave Lisbon… if it’s not there we will need to camp at the campground until it arrives 🥺

18-23/05/2019: Lisbon

Saturday

This morning Sigrid convinced Bjoern, who was totally enthusiastic, to start with sport.

 

Because of the traffic noise throughout the night, we decided that this was enough camping and looked for cheap accommodation in Lisbon.

We found an Airbnb place where we could move to today. Before that we had to let the receptionist at the campground know that we would come back and pick up anything that would be delivered via post in the coming days.

So we packed up and were off to our new place of residence,

Darn.. when we arrived we found that it was a steep street and parking the bikes could be a problem. At the bottom of the hill however there was a space which we promptly occupied with our bikes.

 

That meant we had to carry our luggage up the hill, then up the stars into our temporary room… The explanation from our host was that someone broke the bed in the other room and he would get it fixed today so we could have that room tomorrow. After that let down we tried to make the room as comfortable to us as possible. To its credit the room had a great view!

Nice view from a very small window

Nice view from a very small window

Unfortunately the bathrooms smelled as well.. They were clean but still smelled. We tried to air them out with very limited success. Eventually we closed the doors and let the fans run continuously.

One good thing came out of this, we got to meet Carlo from Italy, a fellow traveller who’s been travelling since 14 years. Amazing!
His details are below if you want to look him up

Vagamondo 2.0: Centro America via terra e tre anni di Esperienza (Italian Edition) (Italian) Paperback – April 7, 2017


We exchanged stories and had a nice conversation.

He suggested a few places for us to visit while we are in Lisbon. So after settling in we went off to explore more of Lisbon.

Walking past some homeless people setting up tents under a bridge, then along a container harbour, we got to the old city in approx. 40 mins. We ended up at the ‘plaza de comercio’.

A band was playing on the river side and the plaza looked great. We made our way to the tourist office, but it was too full so we left and walked through the pedestrian strip instead.

At a street crossing we heard a loud bang. There was an accident with a scooter rider. Sigrid saw him flying through the air and was completely overwhelmed. Police and another scooter rider were there and assisted. The guy got up and was moving, and luckily someone had called the ambulance anyway…

This made it clear to us again – you can’t take anything for granted, especially when travelling on two wheels.

On a lighter note, a short while later we met Carlo on the way, he was on the way to meet someone special. We finished the excursion with some typical Portuguese dinner at a small shop.


The people at the restaurant were really nice, they explained everything to us about the people with red flags and shawls. Turns out a a soccer final was held today, but unfortunately their favourite lost… 

Along a nicer way home we found a Lidl and stocked up on supplies for next morning’s breakfast.

19/5 Sun Lisbon

This morning after breakfast we moved into our better room with a balcony. We used the day to catch up on blogs and reading

 

 

20/5 Mon Lisbon

Since it was Monday we started with sport again and decided that today would be a diet day again too.

We attempted to organize a place for the chain and sprocket fitting. That worked, however, we were unsuccessful in trying to buy tires online, troubles with our Australian credit card as it was tagged for fraud suspicion… Grand!

Our next idea was to ride to the fitting place and try to convince the guy in the shop to buy the tyre for us. That didn’t work either, looks like we don’t look trustworthy enough, what a bummer! By chance we passed a Triumph shop and asked for help in there. The shop assistant couldn’t help us directly but he called a friend. With his help we got the tyre organised within a day, so we could rock up at another tyre shop on Wednesday and get the tyre fitted, bingo!

Now more site seeing was in order, so we went to the most western point of Europe, then along the coast off to the Belem tower.

The first part was great, but then the traffic jam started. Finally we arrived at the tower, took some pictures with us and the diddle

After some a coffee and a tee we went home and had our diet meal – lettuce, carrots and salmon, yum!

15/05/2019: Lisbon

Km travelled today/sum: 313km / 4080km
Sun shine, 28 degrees, mostly highway/city-traffic jam
Today we were going to travel to Lisbon, but first we had some sport to do. We decided on the 15 min routine to strengthen our core. As well after the excess of yesterday it was time again for a diet day.
We still managed to get away quite early, around 9:30. It was a bit foggy. Along the way we had to fill up and just to make the day a bit more adventurous Sigrid dropped her bike. People helped to pick it up again too quick though, so I didn’t even have time for a photo.

And apart from bruised ego there was luckily no injuries! So on we went, all the way to the Australian embassy in Lisbon. Big town – big traffic jam…. and a GPS with Alzheimer’s. Oh, and rising temperatures. As you can imagine, we were both in a suitably great mood… Not.
On our first way past the embassy we missed a motorcycle parking spot, so we got to go around the place a second time. Not the short way, mind you. No, the long way around of course! Eventually we got there and
Bjoern parked his bike in the motorbike park, only to find that there wasn’t enough room for Sigrids bike.


We decided to park Sigrid’s bike on the footpath. The curb was a bit higher, so Bjoern, being the gentleman he is even when in a not-totally-perfect mood, offered to park it for her. However he misjudged the angle a tiny bit and Sigrid’s bike was down for the second time today – even on the same site! Sigrid wanted to take a photo, but the camera was in her bike, so she helped him pick the bike up instead. Again apart from bruised ego, this time man-sized, there were no serious injuries. The bike didn’t take much damage either just showing a bit more of the rubber seal from the box. This photo is from straight after 😁


Sweaty as we were after spending 20 mins in 34 degree heated traffic, we did what we came for: We went voting in the Australian election!


Then we were off to the camp ground we had selected for our stay here.

Did I mention that our GPS has Alzheimer’s? We ended up somewhere completely different. Luckily there was a coffee shop and relaxing there Bjoern sorted the directional dilemma with Google’s help, meaning we eventually got where we wanted to go.

After some discussion about an additional fees to park 2 bikes next to the tent, we finally booked in for 3 days, selected our tent site amongst the gum trees and put up the tent.

Dinner was salmon with lettuce, carrots and mushrooms.

Just to make sure the day kept being annoying, the showers were cold. Exhausted we crawled into our sleeping bags ready to sleep, but the noise from the motorway made that hard. Eventually we remembered our earplugs and using them we finally fell asleep…  What a day! 

16/05/2019: Lisbon camping

Surprisingly we slept ok. Now that the diet day was done we were looking forward to a nice breakfast. First we went to the office and to our surprise we had Mail from Freya! Since it was before 11:30 it must’ve been there yesterday already… oh well…

The breakfast was nice and we really enjoyed it – did I mention we had a diet day yesterday?

WiFi was good as well, so Bjoern attempted to get Sigrid’s bike an appointment to have the new chain fitted and new tyre organised, but without success..

The shops did not want to just fit the chain, they wanted to get more money by selling us the chain and sprocket set at quite a high price. Eventually Bjoern wrote to the horizon unlimited website asking for suggestions.

Meanwhile Sigrid fought through the paperwork required for the European Parliament vote. When she finally finished her postal vote, everything was put into the different required envelopes. Next she had to try out the most important facilities at the campground: namely the pool. Verdict? Nice but still quite cool. No pictures though…

During the afternoon the wind picked up and managed to dislodge a small branch from the eucalyptus trees we were camping under. We come from Australia, so we really should’ve known better! Eucalypt trees just drop branches sometimes!

Oh well. The shade was what we wanted, the branch is what we got. It tore a triangle into the vestibule of our tent. We fixed that with gaffa tape. At night we walked to the nearest shopping centre getting some supplies, dropping off the voting papers and Bjoern organised some surprises for Sigrid for tomorrow.

Back at the campground, we went to the restaurant, had dinner, beer and red wine.

Bjoern got 4 mails from the Lisbon HU community with some suggestions where to get the chain fixed and new tires…light at the end of the tunnel!

17/05/2019


Today was Sigrid’s Birthday.

Bjoern printed a picture yesterday and made it into a birthday card. He had organized candles, chocolate and sweets and made a cute birthday table on one of the camping chairs

The gift however was a couple massage he had organised for the day!

The day started with WhatsApp messages and well-wishes from Australia and Germany and was followed by a nice breakfast in the campground restaurant.. after some more web surfing Bjorn finally found a shop that had our sort of tyres.

 

One happy Birthday Lady!

Then we were off to the massage, which was very nice. Similar to our favourite Endota spa in Australia.

Sigrid after the massage under a jacaranda tree

A special excursion to a nice garden followed

and the day was topped by a visit to a garden restaurant for an early dinner.

Back at the campground Bjoern fixed that luggage box that had lost its rubber due to the two times it was dropped on the same side…see earlier blogs 😉

After the first night where we had trouble sleeping due to the traffic noise we decided that this was enough camping and looked for cheap accommodation in Lisbon.

We found a Airbnb place where we will move to tomorrow.

06-07/05/2019: Bilbao
Km travelled today/sum: 423 km / 3273 km
Sun shine, 20 degrees, highway

The temperature this morning was back into the single digits (9 degrees). During the day it got warmer and warmer. The ride to Bilbao was mostly on highways, but the highway in Spain was really enjoyable. There were nice curves and with the beginning of the Pyrenees, the landscape just looked awesome. When we arrived in Bilbao, we had 20 degrees…. summer after all!

We had booked an Airbnb and found it…. after some trials and tribulations.

After we settled in our accommodation, we decided to have a short stroll through the area close by. We found that there were fancy new buildings side by side to really old ones

 

In the pedestrian zone we found an old water fountain and, to our surprise, it was still functional!

The next day we went to the Guggenheim Museum. The building itself is very impressive, and I don’t think I can do justice on a picture.

Before entering the museum, there was plenty of art at the outside. I liked the huge spider, just in front.

 

At the balcony there were some colourful methal Tulips, which looked really nice.

It was fun to try to take pictures with the reflection of ourselves in it.

The balcony was surrounded by water, and every hour fog was generated all around.

I tried to capture the interior in some pictures, but that didn’t work out too well. It is hard to capture it, since there is no regularity in the shape or forms of the walls.

 

Anyway, there was an exhibition which had shaped huge pieces of iron into walkways, with the height and curves ever changing. It made me feel weird walking along these walls. The art was explained a bit later with a model, and on a model it was easier to understand what the artist was trying to achieve with it and why it felt so weird!

 

Anyway, most of the exhibitions were not my kettle of fish, but it is interesting to see with what type of ideas people can come up with.