Γενέθλια στην Πορτογαλία 🥳

From "Nazaré" we continued to drive to the peninsula "Peniche" and for four days now we have been staying at a campsite about 50 km north of Lisbon, in the holiday resort "Ericeira", which we really like!

Since we have been here, the weather has also improved significantly. Since "Nazaré" it has been extremely stormy at times, with occasional rain. Even when the sun has shown, it has been cool due to the cold wind. We felt like we were at home in northern Germany in terms of weather, even though we are about 2,700 km away from Hamburg in southern Europe. 🥴

We had imagined "Peniche" differently, because it has a lot of industry and little "pretty" or outstanding features. However, there are beautiful beaches around the peninsula. We spent about two days in the motorhome during continuous rain and made use of every moment when it might have cleared up briefly to get out (the change from heavy rain & storm to sunshine and back was sometimes extreme or surprisingly quick).

As always in such weather, Triene did not want to accept it and blamed us with her gaze. She doesn't want to go out in the rain either, but she also finds spending the whole day in the motorhome stupid or boring. 😉

Fortunately, the weather has improved in the last 3-4 days, so that the bad weather days are almost forgotten and the mood has increased by at least 100%. 😄

We have also explored the area in the last few days and discovered beautiful bays for walks. We didn't really like the north of Portugal, but here we find it really beautiful and we are curious to see how it will continue towards the south.

As the Foreign Office states, Spain has closed the borders to many regions!

"For Andalusia (which is the southern tip of Spain, adjacent to Portugal, so that we would actually continue our journey there), the existing entry and exit ban that has been in place since 30 October 2020 was extended until 24 November 2020, 0.00 hrs. There must be valid reasons for entry, tourist reasons are not included ... The remaining autonomous communities on the mainland - except Galicia and Extremadura - have also imposed entry and exit bans. This means that entry or exit is only permitted for valid reasons, but not for tourist reasons..."

Since it is hardly expected that this situation will change in the near future, we will try to spend as much time as possible in Portugal, where there have been only a few corona restrictions so far, and wait to see what happens in Europe in the coming weeks. At the moment, we wouldn't even be able to return to Germany, as there is a ban on accommodation there and, as you know, we no longer have a home 😉

For Portugal, curfews from 1 pm to 5 am have been announced for the next two weekends (14-15 November and 21-22 November 2020) (as a tourist, you will be informed by SMS and the Foreign Office has also provided this information). So we will spend this time at the campsite with the motorhome, which is not so bad for two days a week!

In Portugal, too, there is a state of emergency and it is generally advised to leave your home as little as possible, and there are also the typical/well-known corona rules here.

You can especially notice that the seniors are adhering to them. You never see groups. If ever, they are always at a great distance from each other and of course always wearing a mask! Often you can see older people sitting in their car at a bay and reading a newspaper or the like. Even students wear a mask on the schoolyard.

This morning (11 November 2020) we started off with a leisurely birthday breakfast. 🥳

Actually, we had thought about going to Lisbon today, but on the one hand we are still uncertain whether we even feel like going to a big city (besides, it's not so much fun with the corona measures, without being able to stroll through shops without stress, take the tram, go out to eat, etc., and it is also not clear whether stricter corona measures still apply in Lisbon, as the infection numbers there were/are the highest) and then Thomas had so many birthday messages, etc. that the morning quickly passed 😊 Since Lisbon is still about an hour away from here, it wouldn't have been worth it anyway, especially since it starts to get dark quickly here around 5.00 pm.

So we continued to explore the area here and once again saw beautiful bays + beaches, including great waves, where we could watch surfers. As I have often written before, their grandeur doesn't come across so well in photos.

There are a lot of young people here, with semi-long hair, living in old VW vans, carrying surfboards under their arms, from many European nationalities. If they weren't here, we would probably be quite lonely here. But now Thomas is certainly the oldest one here at 49 years old. 😁

Since we are reluctant to eat out because of Corona, today there was an extra large portion of self-fried shrimp with lots of garlic for Thomas 😋 and for dessert an old James Bond movie. 😄

Thomas was very happy about all your birthday messages and calls 🤗

As always, we thank you for your interest and send you all warm greetings. 🤗

P.S.: If you have already been following our journey on Polarstepps (which we feed daily with information + pictures), you will not learn much new with this blog post, as it is a summary of the last few days and the photos will already be familiar to you. However, I cannot judge how many of you use one or the other or both, so I will continue to occasionally post an update summary on Vakantio.