De Madrid al cielo

After leaving Nottingham, which I'll get to in the next blog post, one of the big plans was a trip with my two brothers, Max and Jasper, so from Edinburgh I flew out to Spain to begin a two week exploration of even more of Europe.

My first stop was Madrid, where Jasper and I spent 3 nights. Our days mostly involved a lot of walking, which had me pretty exhausted quickly, but we did get to see a lot of the city. Our first day we took a walking tour, which started in the Plaza Mayor and took us to a myriad of places, including the Royal Palace and gardens, the world's oldest restaurant, and the ruins of a Moorish city wall. Our second day we went to the Prado art gallery, and then took a walk through the beautiful Parque Retiro. We were lucky enough to have beautiful weather for most of our stay, although there were a few showers. Our evenings in Madrid were spent exploring further, watching the all important FIFA world cup, and enjoying the cuisine. While the Spanish food was pretty good there was a serious lack of fresh fruit and vegetables, and seemingly everything was deep-fried. We did stumble upon some seriously amazing frozen yoghurt though, which was a much needed refreshment.

From Madrid we flew to Lisbon, Portugal to meet up with Max. I fell in love with Lisbon immediately, as it was brilliantly sunny and felt great to be back at the seaside after so long inland. Our first full day in Lisbon was spent at one of the beaches just south of the city, and this was probably one of my favourite days of the trip. We got to relax, lying out on the sand in the sun, with a refreshing (and freezing!) dip in the bright blue sea. We also enjoyed some amazing fish! That night we experienced the Lisbon nightlife in the popular Bairro Alto area. It was crazy, with the bars not opening until late, well after 10pm, and the clubs even later. By the time we were leaving the revellers were filling the streets, it was like a massive street party. Definitely haven't experienced much like it. The rest of our time in Lisbon was spent exploring the city itself. We took another walking tour, with a great local guide. Apparently Lisbon (and Portugal in general) is tile central, with ceramic tiles covering many of the buildings we saw. We also got to enjoy some local cuisine, again heavy on the meat, and plenty of sangria which was just as popular here as it was in Spain. On the last night we had dinner at restaurant featuring live Fado music, a classic style of Portugal. From there we took the 3 hour drive up to Porto in our fancy rental convertible.

Porto was to be the last part of our trip, with just a couple of nights. As usual, our exploration of the city began with a walking tour. There were lots of similarities with Lisbon, the tiling, churches and numerous statues. We got a great view of the city climbing to the top of Clerigos tower. We also got some great views on our second day when we headed out across the Luis bridge, a metal arch bridge which crosses the Duoro river separating the city. From the bridge we could see both sides of Porto, as well as the river below. Aside from walking through the city we spent our evenings watching some very exciting football matches, as was seemingly unavoidable in Europe. We also tried a Porto speciality the Franceshina. Basically, this is a massive croque madame, with bread, steak, sausage, chorizo, ham, bacon, cheese, egg, beer sauce and a healthy serving of fries. I promise you, I could not make this up, people really ate this. Having eaten the worlds craziest sandwich, there wasn't much more Europe could offer us, so the three of us hopped on a plane back across the channel to end our trip in London. For Jasper and I the journey wasn't over, with plans to explore more of England with the parents. Come back later to hear all about it, but for now goodbye!!