Day 8: Today we left Lisbon and handed a bit more inland towards Castilo Branco. It was a pretty nice drive to get there through some hilly terrain with lots of nice little winding roads which are always fun to drive on. One thing we've noticed however is that the Portuguese drivers are pretty insane, particularly when it comes to overtaking. They don't seem to care what the speed limit is or if they're coming up to a blind corner, or hell, even if they're actually on a corner, they will overtake anyway. The landscape was dotted with lots of little houses around, most of which looked like they had probably been abandoned for a while though. But it made for some nice scenery.

I think Ness had seen some really nice pictures of a garden here on Pinterest which is why it was on the list. Unfortunately it ended up being not really that fantastic. It was a nice garden, but due to maintenance none of the fountains were working which was rather disappointing. There was also a castle in the town (a castilo), but it didn't look that amazing from a distance so we didn't even bother making the trek up.

We had a bit of fun this night though as the place we were staying had Monopoly. It was in Portuguese and was missing all the $10 and $20 notes, but we made do with what we had and a little help from Google translate. We played by the actual proper rules for the most part which I much prefer, but the girls still insisted on the free parking rule which I hate (even though it did help me win). We also turned it into a bit of a drinking game where you had to drink whenever you rolled a double. For dinner we went something nice and simple. Baked potatoes with bacon and cheese. Yum! Ness managed to burn herself on the thumb twice when opening the oven to check on them. That scar wouldn't heal for well over a month.

Day 9: Coimbra wasn't originally on our list, but we made a detour towards it anyway as Patricia insisted we had to go see it. I can't actually even remember the reason she gave, but it ended up to be nothing really amazing. The main attractions seem to be the gardens and the university. In particular the library at the university. Our day started of great when Ness with the map sent us in the complete opposite direction as we exit the hostel on foot. Frankly it's quite amazing we had managed to make it this far when we relied on her navigating most of the time. When we got to the university they were charging too much to see the library anyway so we didn't bother. The gardens were nice, and these ones at least had working fountains, but I'm not sure I'd say they were worth going to Coimbra for. Perhaps we should have just footed the bill for the library.

We did end up have a pretty good day though when we found a nice cafe in the sun and had a few drinks. Gabrielle had already had a half jug of wine before even doing anything when we got lunch and Ness and I had a couple of beers. So by the time we had sat down to actually just have some drinks we were getting a good buzz. After this I bought a hat made out of cork, mostly for use on the walk to Santiago. We had to change to another hostel that night, so before doing so we raided the kitchen of the place we were leaving for dinner that night and breakfast and lunch the next day.

Day 10: Gabrielle was driving today and I had her phone to navigate. Only I didn't actually know what our destination was and it turns out Gabrielle hadn't put the exact location in, but the place after it just expecting we would stop where we wanted as we passed through. As luck would have it we ended up taking a wrong turn which resulted in us ending up exactly where we wanted to be. We'd have driven right by it had we gone the right way. For once our getting lost worked out for the best. The place was a hotel in an old palace in Luso. Way out of our price range, but amazing to look at anyway.

After walking around the place for a while we continued on to a place called Aveiro. On the way we passed people selling strawberries on the side of the road, so we got some. 5 euros got us a huge crate of them. They were delicious. We were eating strawberries for the rest of the trip. The interesting thing about Aveiro however was that they had huge gondolas going up and down the river. The main reason for coming here though were to see the famous striped houses. It was a short drive from the main town. There's a whole neighbourhood where most of the houses are painting in stripes, usually some colour and white. It's quite picturesque.

Finally it was on to the last and most northern stop on the road trip. The Peneda Geres National Park where we planned to stay a few nights and do some hiking. We got there quite late at night and only had a very vague idea of where our accommodation actually was. In there end it turned out to be easy to find and was a great little place. The owners didn't really speak any English but they were super nice and friendly. We gave them some strawberries.