Portugal | Hole In The Donut Cultural Travel

On My Way Home

Published September 5, 2007 | By Barbara Weibel

I am sitting at the airport in Lisbon, Portugal, waiting to board my plane. This trip has been a wonderful adventure for me over the past six months. I don’t know why I was so driven to do it; I only know that it was extremely important for me. Perhaps I was feeling my mortality and wanted to make this trip while I thought I still was capable of doing so. Perhaps I just needed to go look for my true path in life. I can’t say that I’ve found my path along the way – yet. But I feel I am close.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I never made it back into Lisbon, nor did I get to the UNESCO World Heritage town of Sintra, just 30 minutes from where I was staying. Frankly, I needed a rest, so I gave myself permission to just lie on the beach for nine days instead of playing tourist right up to the last possible moment and wearing myself to a frazzle. I did, however, have an amazing experience in Portugal. Several days ago Continue reading →

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Tagged Around The World, Free Spirit, Gratitude, meaningful life, Portugal, Spirituality, Travel |

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Three Words For Portugal

Published September 4, 2007 | By Barbara Weibel

It may be unfair of me to pick three words that define all of Portugal, since I only visited a tiny part of the northern coast, so I’ll say that the following three words define the coastal resort areas of Portugal:

Sunny: Practically perfect weather, mid-eighties during the day with gentle breezes and in the 70′s at night. Sleeping with the doors and windows flung open. Continue reading →

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Tagged Around The World, Cascais, Free Spirit, Portugal, Three Words, Travel |

New Shoes And Walking – A Tough Combo

Published August 31, 2007 | By Barbara Weibel

I’ve got packing down to an exact science. For this six month trip I carried only a small backpack and a carry-on size (22″) rolling suitcase. So I had to choose every article with great care. One of the most difficult decisions when traveling light is what shoes to pack, simply because they take up so much room. I opted for two pair – one a really good (and really expensive) pair of Mephisto sandals that can even be worn into the water as well as my good old reliable tennis shoes. And when I say old, I mean really decrepit. These tennis shoes have seen better days – the laces are frayed and the soles were already cracked when I started this trip. With the amount of walking I’ve been doing, well, you can just imagine the condition they were in. But the plain and simple fact is that they are comfortable. They are well broken-in. They fit my feet like they were molded around them. For all those reasons I have been fighting the idea of new shoes but when I got to Pisa, Italy a week ago and it started to rain, I discovered that the seams between the soles and the upper fabric had come unglued and by the end of the day, my feet were soaking wet.

Still, I figured they would last to the end of this trip. And they would have, if not for the SMELL that erupted from them after they got thoroughly soaked, inside and out.

Dos Condes De Castro Guimares Museum and Library

At first I figured it was more the socks than the shoes, so I washed all my socks and continued to wear the shoes. By the time I got to Portugal I could smell them when they were on my feet. I was certain that people standing near me were wrinkling up their noses in disgust and looking around, trying to identify Continue reading →

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Tagged Around The World, Azulejo tiles, Boca De Inferno, Cascais, Da Guia Lighthouse, Dos Condes De Castro Guimares Museum and Library, Free Spirit, Guincho Beach, Humor, Jorge De Oitavos Fort, photos, Portugal, Travel |

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Lazy Days In Cascais, Portugal

Published August 30, 2007 | By Barbara Weibel

My incredible luck has not failed me as I near the end of my six month around-the-world journey. For my last ten days I have chosen Portugal because I have long wanted to come here, and Cascais specifically for its beaches. Somehow, I just knew I would be tired at this point and badly in need of a rest. And I was. Any one of a hundred beach destinations around Portugal would have provided me with the rest I needed before plunging headlong back into life in the States, but in Cascais I was fortunate to locate a family that has a studio apartment attached to their home, which they gladly rented to me, even though the family was out-of-town when I was scheduled to arrive, had never met me, and knew next to nothing about me. On the evening of my arrival, a family friend met me at the house, handed me a key, gave me a brief tour, and told me to make myself welcome.

Houses and cobblestone streets of Cascais

I slept until 10 AM the next morning (a luxury I have not allowed myself on this trip very often because there was always so much to see and do that I didn’t want to waste even ten minutes of daylight) and woke to delicious sunlight streaming into the courtyard between the main house and my apartment. I jumped into a bathing suit, shorts, and a top and headed out to explore. The street in front of the house leading down to the town square and beach was paved in chunks of white marble about three inches square, flat on top and rough on the sides, each piece laboriously hand-placed and butted up against its neighbor to create a relatively flat road surface. Thousands of cars and pedestrians over the years have polished Continue reading →

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Tagged Around The World, Azulejo tiles, Cascais, Estoril, Free Spirit, Guincho Beach, Pescaderos Beach, photos, Portugal, Ribeira Beach, Santa Maria lighthouse, Travel |

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Thoughts on Traveling and Italy Photo Library Available

Published August 28, 2007 | By Barbara Weibel

I arrived in Portugal following a nightmare 13 hour travel day where everything that could go wrong did go wrong, including nearly being throw off an Italian train over a seat assignment, a flight that was an hour late, and getting lost at night between the airport and the rail station in Lisbon because the woman at the information desk at the airport told me to take the wrong bus. But hey, my luggage made it though; gotta be grateful for the little things.

Anyway, I took a day and a half to regroup – get money from the ATM, get my laundry done (really, I was beginning to smell), shop for groceries (I am renting a studio apartment in Cascais, a suburb of Lisbon with a series of great little beaches), and write, write, write. I didn’t even go out to see Cascais the first day because I had to get the Cinque Terre, Italy stories out of my head before I saw a new place. So now I’m all caught up and have even uploaded all my Italy photos to the photo library. I hope you’ll want to look at them because I think they are incredible (especially the Venice and Cinque Terre photos). Just click on the above button labeled “Photos” and follow the directions on the resulting page.

My trip is winding down now – only 9 more days. I am sad (I really think I could stay on the road pretty much full time) but I’m also looking forward to getting home to the good old USA where everything is so familiar. There were times during this trip that were very stressful – never knowing what I was going to find from day to day, or even where I was going to be the next day was a constant challenge. In the beginning, I was often “mired in the muck” and had to MAKE myself Continue reading →