Where have you been this year?

I just returned from Portugal, busy, busy, busy tour but very worthwhile, I am still trying to sort out all the places we saw, for such small country it sure has lots of places to discover.  I am not going to be able to write a tale, there is one exceptional tale from Tiffany, so I won't even try.  The tour name is Trafalgar Best of Portugal.

Thank you Tiffany, I have been reading the updates regarding your health and I am glad you are receiving the treatments and also that the doctor told you it would had been OK for you to travel; at least you know that he is confident your health was not in jeopardy, very important for your frame of mind, I wish you a very quick recovery.  The tour was very good, as you have said; the tour director was probably not as good a Miguel, Trent Payne (original from Australia but living in the UK for 5 years) recently was "promoted" to Trafalgar, have been with Contiki in the past, he recognized the big difference between both groups. In the beginning he made a couple of errors, changing the order of the optional tours, but quickly recovered and made it right when a few people complained. After that he was fine, but I still think maybe a little short of experience on Portugal.  Amazing country, one tour is not enough for me; most of the time I was confused about what we were seeing!  Didn't help me that my brother (in Argentina) got severely ill and I was all the time pending of messages and emails (sadly he passed away last Sunday).  I would certainly recommend this tour, the shopping of cork goods was great, didn't get wines or Porto, didn't want to deal with bottles, but a lot of people, including my daughter did.  The cork industry is so prominent and unique that was impossible to pass on, got purses, necklaces, pretty glasses cases for everyone I know!  So light and inexpensive!  Some people got boots and shoes.

Maybe later, when I collect my thoughts I write a short tale and post some pictures of some of the unique places, as the Stock Exchange in Porto, and the monasteries.  Keep well Tiffany and thank you for your tale.

Was Sandman the place that sold the filigrees?  I thought it was a little bit of scam, the local guide took us there and waited and waited for the people shopping....similar to Tangier and people buying rugs... I was a little upset at her because she didn't let us use the facilities at the Stock exchange, where there were several perfectly clean stalls and then pointed out to the public WC at the Ribiera, I put my foot down and told her I was not going to a public WC ( she said they might be not too clean) and she asked the owner of Sandman to let me use theirs.  I was probably a little bit out of line, but she could have waited 10 minutes for us to use the nice toilets at the Exchange, I think she was a little late for the "appointment" with the jeweler.  At least it was my impression, I said to myself I was not going to tip her but I did later anyway.  The cork goods varied in prices, I think the best prices were in Evora y Obidos.  My granddaugher loves her small purse and necklace, I wore a necklace yesterday and people complimented me, especially when I explained that was made out of cork, very unusual in these parts of the world.  

Thank you for your condolences. 

Yes, Tiffany, now I remember!  we didn't go to Sandman, we went  to Ferreyra, almost next door and had a nice tour and Port testing there.  My daughter bought two bottles. I liked the white Port more than the ruby.  I looked at the filigree jewelry, very. very nice and I think the gold is 22K or so?  You were smart on buying it.  I normally don't care if the guide gets a kickback or not, is totally OK by me, I was just upset because of the toilet situation, not sure if it's a common occurrence, but denying us the use of the good toilets in favor the public by the river was a bad move! I think Portugal is more or less now getting more and more tourists and the guides certainly need to learn how to work with Trafalgar's (and others) clientele , another complaints that many had were the local guides in Batalha,  Tomar and Evora, beautiful churches and monasteries, but the guide kept throwing dates and more dates, and kings and more kings at us, and kept going on and on...TMI if you ask me.  Trent was just perfect, he would tell us in 10-15 minutes all we needed to know to get the idea.  Same with the guide (a Faculty member) of the University of Coimbria, he was concise and very good.  (Sadly we could not see the Library which apparently is a must see, there was some exams taking place).   I liked Cascais, Sintra and the Algarve coast very much, we didn't do to optional tour to Farro, which we heard was nice.  Little by little I am starting to remember more, I am going to read your tale again; my head is still all cloudy and foggy...