alana goes away

Sam after testing the waters. Mash just loving life, me reliving my surfing pose. taken by Sam ministry of funny walks anyone? taken by Sam by the way. Sam making some buds in the water. SAD! We're driving to Faro the day before we fly back to London, and manage to stop at the most amazing beach. In  Portimão, 'Praia da Rocha' or Rock Beach, so picturesque. Mental. I manage to lose my bikini bottoms while walking along the beach, and no I wasn't wearing them at the time. The water is so nice, I didn't wanna get out. Alas. Time to walk from one end to the other. Novelty wore off for me after a mile. But we get to the end, there's a big cave with a hole in the top above, and Sam is making friends in the water, and a big old wave come in, heading straight for Mashs bag, with my camera sitting on top, and everyones important stuff sitting inside...me and Mash dash for it, but Mash gets there first juuuust as the wave gets it, and mos...

yep, just strolling through. my own photo. ah-huh. hyellow hello 1x old abandoned house please. and some overgrown garden too. thanks. yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay Mash loves his surf board in the wrong way Okokokok, so. Sleep in which is great. During Sonar we slept till 2 every day, but this day we hadn't been out till 6 am so it was better. Better better better. First things first, some swimming and beach laziness. Now, when we were in Barcelona, we were lying in the sun for hours and hours and not one bit of burn. Lagos? one beach session and I'm as red as a tomato. With one of them triangle white patches on my neck where the shadow of my chin was, and blimmin glasses whites on my face. Great. We went into town for lunch after a rather cold swim, and as we kept walking things just got redder and redder and redder. I'd catch my reflection in a window or mirror and j...

Sam and Mash trying out the outdoor gym.. how good is Vila Nova de Milfontes?  heck yeah! oh how bloody funny bit blurry, i was too slow Shall we? Well, we will try. We aaallllmost managed to book it the night before but ended up putting it off till a bit too late. So we try 3 places and nothing, eeeek, and then good old Europcar pulls through and has a nice little Renault Modus for us. Yuss. Deep breaths Alana, you've done it before, driving on the right hand side, sitting in the left ain't so bad. Easy. Funny going for the gear stick with your left hand, and hitting the door. Ah well. So we puzzle our way out of Lisbon over this insane bridge, the Vasco da Gama Bridge , which is "the  longest Cable-stayed bridge in Europe and one of the largest of its kind in the world" according to a quick google. So yeah. It was exciting to drive onto. Once we were certain we were heading in the right direction, time to figure out wher...

aww no NZ Hey holy hey how about that. So where was I...Lisbon. As the title suggests it wasn't quite as amazing as I was hoping. We only stayed two nights, but that was enough. I think it's the only place I've been that's made me feel unsafe, and I don't even know why. Probably something to do with a piles and piles and pile and mountains of trash and garbage and rank stuff everywhere, I'm not sure. Or maybe because every second person is trying sell you drugs in the open and on the streets and all I'm thinking is get the hell away from me I just want to walk down the road ok. But really, I didn't genuinely  fear for my safety, it was morely just an ick feeling. Besides that, it was a pretty pretty city. Has a bridge that looks like the Golden Gate. Wow. So me and Sam set off for our wee tour. Walked up to a castle, back down to the monastery of St Jeronimo and then along the waterfront to the tower of Belem. The weird castle t...

that is a cube of ice in there. you'll know what i'm on about shortly grr, arg colourful Tarragona ooh ahh  a few locals lurking around And then there are about 3 or 4 films worth of photos between this day and the last, which is why the photo log skips 4 days... Matt and Lucy up Monjuic Tibidabo in the distance there Sam making some serious food decisions, before we found out the kitchen was shut Spain! Wow, ok. Flew into Tarragona. If you remember I came to Tarragona one other time, >AT CHRISTMAS< , when I was driving down the coast on my Christmas holidays.  Well this time we managed to find the amphitheatre, which juts so happened to be about 4 minutes from where we were staying for the night. Handy. Checked out a few  more of the old Roman buildings and walls and decided to stop for a niceee iced coffee. You do iced coffee? Yeah? Cool, two of them thanks. And what ...