On on our first full day on Sao Miguel island, we were ambitious and tackled a couple of lengthy hikes sandwiched between visits to the hot springs in Furnas (See my post on the caldeiras of Sao Miguel). 

I was admittedly a bit nervous tackling double digit km hikes, since it had only been 8 months since I broke my ankle and had not done a hike with elevation since the surgery. Thankfully I had my pack mule/human GPS/boyfriend who was very aware of my limitations and basically carried all of my belongings.    (You the best!)

In terms of the trails, the paths on Sao Miguel island were extremely well documented with the clearest and simplest trail signage I've encountered. The weather and atmosphere was the epitome of moodiness, with the air getting mistier and colder as you approach the peaks, even though you have just left a sunshine filled road at the bottom of the trail.

Traveling through Portugal was a breeze, with the exception of getting from Coimbra to Conimbriga (which did not turn out too difficult but it was not the most obvious to us). Because we searched and failed to find useful references on how to get from downtown Coimbra to Conimbriga, I decided to document that here.

Conimbriga is the site of ancient Roman ruins that would make for a great half day trip from Coimbra. You can do a full day and tackle one of their long trails there but we did not have enough time. We took the earliest bus in the morning, spent a few hours wandering through the ruins and their small on-site museum, and returned on the early afternoon bus.

While walking from the Castle of Leiria to Sé de Leiria (Leiria Cathedral), we came across the most adorable cafe! This was unexpected as it was not on any tourist map that we had but was the most welcome surprise as it allowed us to continue our 2-a-day caffeine addiction (sometimes 3-a-day for Andrew).

The price was in line with what you would expect anywhere else in Portugal for um cafe expresso or um pingo (< 1 euro). To learn how to order coffee in Portugal, I had to... google it...ha... but found this handy website (http://www.portugaltraveltips.co.uk/food-and-drink/how-to-order-coffee-in-portugal/) describing the types of coffee one could order. Coming from the states, I was used to a simple black coffee (no milk or sugar) but this is not really an option in the rest of the world (we had similar lack of black coffee in Australia).

The seating consisted of a mix of short stools and benches! We saw a young teen couple sitting here and I had to refrain from taking a creeper photo of them.

While on the train to Sintra from downtown Lisbon, I wrote up some snippets on the fabulous days of food we had, specifically the decadent pasteis de nata. It was so good, I decided to do a review of the best egg tarts we found in Lisbon. I only have 3 listed here but trust me,  we went to bakeries every day...