Sardines
I didn’t know we were arriving in Lisbon for one of their biggest festivals of the year, the Santo Antonio festival. Our flight got on pretty late, but for the locals this was still pretty early in the evening. The 12th is meant to be the biggest day of the month long festival, and activities were mainly eating sardines, pork sandwiches, drinking Super Bock and generally having it large in the streets. I’m still not sure what Saint Tony did but he must have been some bloke to deserve a month like this.
For the next day, Aaron had a hyper-optimised itinerary of A) Playing padel B) Drinking beer in park kiosks. It was perfect. We were warmed up nicely for day 2 of the festival. I’m very jealous of his life.


Fisherman’s trail
I don’t really know why I was surprised there were so many fishermen on the trail.
We walked for four days along cliffs – the view around every spit of land was breathtaking. We were able to climb down the cliffs some days to stop in wild secluded cliffs.
We stayed in tiny Portuguese towns. The food was great, and it was mainly very chill.
We did manage to watch England beat Croatia in a kebab shop. Three bottles of kebab shop wine and a few beers kept us humble for the final day of walking. Overall the hike hadn’t been too taxing, but some stretches of trudging through sand dunes in the heat kept us humble.
Highlights
- Lisbon parks that ensure you’re never more than a few feet from a kiosk serving beer on draft.
- Sitting in a beach side bar after our first big day, then snoozing in the courtyard of our hostel after
- The final day, wading through a river to a pristine beach to say we’d made it, and catching up with a 74 year old(!) French bloke who’d been shadowing us the whole four days





Leave a comment