Formerly the capital of Portugal, its most important university was established here over 500 years ago. It would seem that back in the day, when a university was to be built, they spared no expense. It is a long walk up a hill, or steps, to the campus. Across the river are several convents, probably […]
Tomar will go down as one of our top ten places to visit. Perhaps it was the contrast of the hustle and bustle of Lisbon. Or maybe it’s because we missed the train by so little that we were on the platform as it was taking off. At any rate, it was like a little […]
If you are wondering about the choice of “Amazeballs” for use in this title, I was, until recently, just like you. Our travel buddy Lisa, whom you met in Evora, used the term occasionally. In Lisbon, we went out with Lisa and several of her colleagues from Cambridge, and she used the term. I asked, […]
So everyone said that you just had to go to Sintra if you visit Lisbon. Sintra is a day trip away, there are many buses, trains, and tours. We decided to go. It had been fairly warm in Lisbon, and the weather promised to continue in this manner. Even though we’d been told that Sintra […]
Évora is the capital of Portugal’s Alentejo region. I’d never heard of this region before, but having sampled a few Alentejo red wines, one can be sure that I will be seeing its name again. Unfortunately, Ellen was pretty knocked down with a cold when we arrived at this university town of about 56,000 residents. […]
We took the overnight from Madrid to Lisbon. It is the only train between the two cities, and runs on old, bumpy, slow, and uncomfortable track. One would think that Spain is not the largest trading partner of Portugal. As we arrived at 7:20 in the morning, we decided to head straight down to the […]
According to Wikipedia, “Spanish rain does not actually stay mainly in the plain. It falls mainly in the northern mountains. In Spanish, the phrase was translated as La lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla (The rain in Seville is marvellous). The lyric about Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire implies (but does not entail) that hurricanes ever occur […]
Nancy, Ellen, and I did a daytrip to Toledo. We took the high speed train, as it takes 30 minutes, vs. 90 on the bus. It was another whirlwind, but would like to go back sometime. We didn’t get to see many of the panoramas from a distance for which Toledo is famous. It’s also […]
1 Year Anniversary of the Blog! 7 Month Anniversary of Departing the Twin Cities! Last year on the 11th of May we made the first post on www.stevenellen.com. It was an exciting time as we were psyched about moving to South Africa to join the Peace Corps, preceded with a bit of travel to see friends […]
To be fair, we did Cordoba in a whirlwind. We drove from Sevilla along the impressive Spanish highways. It took maybe two hours. Nancy’s phone had Google GPS and it generally helped us find where we needed to go. We had rented another Airbnb and the map showed that is was located within the walls […]
How fun to hear about all of your travel buddies! It (...)
Do you have any door photos for my
Gorgeous! Thanks for sharing the
Beautiful set of
Greetings from MN where it is -20F! Such lovely photos (...)