Surfing

Now we get to the most important part of the trip: the surfing.

Peniche is a famous place for surfing but this turned out to be a bad thing because we arrived during a major girls' surfing competition which meant it was nearly impossible to find boards to hire. (And when we tried to meet some Portuguese surfer girls at the end-of-competition party they had all gone home! Doubly un-stoked!)

So after one decent surf in Peniche we headed south to Sagres in the Algarve. We found a really cheap place right on the south-west corner of Portugal (literally a few minutes walk to either the west or the south coast).

The surf was perfect: clean, warm, and not too crowded. It was my first time going stand-up and while I reckon I did pretty good I would get no points for style...

Surfistas! (This is the only word I remember in Portuguese)
Per, Florian, Phil, Me and Sam.

Message in a bottle

One evening in Sagres we went to the very tip of Portugal to have lunch including the porto we had been given (see episode 1). After we had lunch we decided to put a message in the porto bottle and send it to Africa.

We wrote the message in our different languages including our email addresses and sealed up the bottle but it was a long way from where we were standing to the bottom of the cliff. Sam reckoned he could throw it far enough (okay, so we could have just walked to the bottom of the cliff but how much fun would that have been?). We made him prove it by throwing some rocks. Sometimes they made it and sometimes they didn't so we let him try anyway.

At first it looked good and we were pretty confident that it would make it, but as it got closer to the bottom it looked more and more dubious. Finally this glass bottle--falling really quickly--hit the rocks just before the water.... and.... bounced in! I can't explain it unless it was a fake rock which was actually disguising the hidden lair of an eccentric and devious villain.

We haven't heard about anyone finding the bottle yet. I think it's because we forgot to write in Arabic and it has been found by a poor shepherd-boy in Morocco who can't read English and has no internet access. It's the only possible explanation!

The big event.

Lisboa

I don't really know the story behind Lisbon but I think it goes something like: one day someone decided it would be a good idea to build a major city on top of seven big hills. Some people think this makes it really annoying to walk around the city (which is true) but I like his style, it gives the city a lot of charm.

I wish I took more photos of the city. As you walk up the hills nearly every street looks like this, often much steeper and narrower. And the trams run so close to the buildings that at times you can nearly reach out and take the food from the kitchen windows as you pass by. Nearly.

Lunch time again. Today we are very early--only 4pm--but we soon adjusted to Portuguese time.

Well I have to go. Tonight there's an Italian dinner, a leaving party for one of the American students and then the Danish tradition of Sankt Hans Aften where everyone goes to the parks and beaches to burn witches!

Stay tuned for stories from my first super-fun-happy-bike-adventure around Denmark!

Hej-hej!

Brian.