Preparation Day

Tomorrow we leave on the first leg of our trip with all of our gear, riding 100km down the coast to a campground to spend the night.

So today we spent a lot of time preparing our bikes, doing a tune up, packing our bags, adding reflective tape to our helmets, bike frame, and bags, replacing some things that had broken (Steve’s international power charger already broke off in the outlet… Made in China).

We then went to a traditional Portuguese seafood restaurant for lunch and I had an amazing salted cod dish cooked in olive oil (a little salty, but the cod was so tender and flavorful), and Steve had an omelet. We need to remember to start taking food photos, sorry. Then we walked around the city some more, taking a few last photos, trying some more pastries and cod fish cakes, and splitting a fancy bifana (sandwich) and cheesecake for dinner.

We’ve noticed a lot more graffiti around Portugal than we are used to seeing in the US, so I took some photos.

And… I tried the bidet finally, and… I like it 🙂 Steve has a photo, but, yeah, it’s not going online…

One thing I’ve noticed about Europeans is that when they hear you speak English, they assume you can’t understand what they’re saying so they’ll say anything they want about you in their native language right in earshot. I understand French and am slowly learning a few words in Portuguese. I think we got called “girls” (mulheres) by a group of young Portuguese kids walking behind us, and I overheard some French girls call our style bizarre (well our travel clothes were definitely chosen for function over style, I’ll give them that!). It’ll be interesting to use this assumption to our advantage, stay tuned for some fun stories hehe!

Not sure about cell connectivity the next few days, so don’t panic if you don’t hear from us. We will post when we can.