It requires time sorting out all the impressions affecting you when entering the Herdade da Matinha. Although, it starts harmless with a trivial drive over three kilometers of dirt road, which then all the sudden ends in a green part of the valley. Our first thought: it looks like Costa Rica, Guanacaste, dry north. Through …
The Casa da Dina is one of those mysterious insider’s tip about which you hardly can find anything in the Internet. Although there are a rather spare homepage, half a dozend enthusiastic comments on tripAdvisor as well as some mousy web pictures, but nothing more. However, the little you get to see is still teasing …
For the first time during this trip did our search procedure for the nightly spot not work out as expected: The “Monte Velho Resort” was fully booked for the whole week because of a yoga seminar and the “Monte da Vilharina” could only offer a room for a single night, and that was not what …
The Oitavos is quite a block. A monumental solitaire built of steel and glass; a monolith, thrown nonchalantly into the sand dune. As we navigated our little rental car towards this giant, we must have felt like Will Smith in “The Independence Day”; sitting in his ridiculous jet fighter, while approaching an intergalactic spaceship of …
One of the hardly explainable curiosities of travelling is the potential longing for places in which you feel like home. At first glance, this looks like a paradox contradicting any travel logic. But stronger than travel logic is still human nature itself: constantly feeling like a stranger is definitely an undesirable condition. All the more …
You often hear of such stories; stories of brave persons, who used to be successful and now risking all of what they achieved for a new beginning, leaving their predetermined path of career, preferring to re-define themselves as round-the-world yachtsmen, artists, wine growers or hoteliers, before they burn out. But these stories are often seen …
It hardly couldn’t go worse, back in June 2010, when we arrived here for the first time. National holiday, bridge day, long weekend, chilly and damp weather, full house and we got the smallest room. There came together a lot, and nothing good. After a cold and rainy winter the brick walls have been soaked …