Off to Portugal to a small town called Tomar and to do some camping for the first time, we found a campsite listed in Lonely Planet so off we went in search of it. Well as we mentioned before our GPS is great in getting us to our destination however sometimes the route is a little out of the way and this was no exception, we left the tarmac road surface and were on gravel, it looked really dodgy so we stopped and ask some people and they said “yah yah, keep going”, so we did well it was a goat trail and up hill with big ruts, I wanted to get off and walk but Trev was up for the challenge, we did finally arrive to a great little spot with lovely hosts, one Scottish lady and one dutch guy complete with their son and a English volunteer worker. It ended up being lots of fun, they invited us to a village luncheon that is held once a month for 6euros each you get, 2 pig cheeks, im not kidding complete with teeth still in, nothing like eating your meal while being smiled at! You had to have two, for some reason, Im not sure why but we didn’t question it, followed down with salad, potatoes and a lot of Portuguese wine, it was a laugh and we were happy to be finally chatting in English again.
The next evening we went into Serra for dinner, the next village over, we stopped at one of the two restaurants and sat down and he said, “you want dinner come back in an hour, your choice is fish or “and he rubbed his tummy” so we thought ok fish or belly of pork, so i had the fish and trev had the belly of pork or so we thought. An hour later we came back and he took us into his restaurant and sat us at a very nice table and I got the fish and trev got a very large plate of liver with potatoes, so glad i didn’t order that, he said it was very good. In Portugal in the small towns you have to pre order your dinner, a little odd. Then as we were eating a guy came in with his wife and kids and chatted to us, he was so intrieged by our trip he invited us the next night to his place for a bbq, unfortunately we didn’t end up going as we were too sloshed after the large beers by the poolside that day! Its so great we get invites all the time, some we can do and some we, believe it or not, just don’t have time to do.
One night we had a picnic beside our tent under the stars, it was so relaxing and romantic, red wine, bread and cheese and no light pollution or any other kind for that matter, surrounded by fruit trees of all kinds, oranges, lemons, kiwi, grapes, figs, apples you could just pick them right from the trees.
The young girl we met at the campsite was from England and she was on a volunteer program where you volunteer in a place and they feed you and put you up in exchange for you helping out a little bit, she had just come from a B & B and Olive Plantation in Italy and she said she had a blast and they showed her all around, I think the website is workaway.com anyone wanting a work away experience should check it out, apparently you have to join and pay a small fee and then you get to see where you could go around the world, she said in 3 months she only spend $300 euros of her own money
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