The first in Lisbon was spent at the Expo, which reminded me a lot of Disneyland. The buildings are neat, and walking around rewarding. However, admission is very pricey, the lines to get in anywhere are very long (over an hour) of standing behind families, and the exhibits we got to see were mostly only marginal. There is a concert in the evening which is nice, and a restored 18th century Portuguese ship is impressive to walk on board.

The day after Expo, we head north to a little royal retreat town of Sintra. This is the highlight of Portugal for me - wonderful castles on top of a hill with nice views of the ocean below and a variety of palaces sprinkled about. We explore the castle, the palace, the hills, the park, and the town before heading back to Lisbon.

Friday, July 24 is our only day of exploring Lisbon itself. Another day in Lisbon would have been very nice, but due to time constrains we had to move on. That night we took a train to Evora where there is an evening concert in the central square in town that we have a picnic dinner at. Next day, we explore the city of Evora, a walled town of small streets popular with Spanish tourists. The main attraction is a Capella dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones) in the Church of Saint Francisco, which is constructed from human bones of 4000 or so loyal monks.

From Evora, the train carried us back to Lisbon for a quick dinner, and then a long and tedious night transferring from trains to other trains to busses and back to trains to finally arrive at Coimbra in central Portugal by 5:30 am. Coimbra is the college city of Portugal, the equivalent of Oxford for England, and we spent the morning exploring the university, and churches of the city. In the afternoon we took the train to Porto where we spent three hours seeing a few sights and learning about and sampling Port wine. Then it was time to continue north to Campagna and then to Vigo in Spain where we arrived rather late.