We had only been in Portugal a couple of hours when we were pulled over for a random check by the Police, they wanted my license and insurance papers, luckily we had them now and all was good. This was the first time in nearly 29,000Ks that we had been asked for any of this. One thing that struck us about Portugal, was how much the countryside is like Australia, in places it is very mountainous and in others it is flat or with rolling hills and it ranges from quite arid to very green areas and to our surprise there are large areas of Eucalyptus trees growing and it was lovely to ride along smelling the sent of the gums. We first stayed in the south near Faro where we had a storm come through and wipe out some of the airport, but we were fine and enjoyed the small seaside town. We then visited Lisboa and were not very impressed with the state of the city and all the graffiti. After Lisboa we went to Sintra where we saw two old palaces and a Moorish Castle ruin, it was more what we expected and liked, very interesting, even if we didn't like some of the architecture. The trip from Lisboa to Sintra was done by public transport which was quite good and efficient, but some of the people using it left me with worries for the future. We then headed east to a small town Evora, another nice small town with great history from the Romans and some nice architecture to look at. We then headed north trying to avoid the farming land and stay in the mountains, we did quite well and saw some great views and some large areas that had been logged, I guess they need wood from somewhere. When we arrived in Porto we decided it was time for some hard accommodation for a change, this proved to be most fortunate as in the morning it bucketed down with rain and we delayed our visit to the city for a day, but the next day it was raining again, so we went sight seeing in the rain. Porto appealed to us more than Lisboa, it has far less graffiti and is generally in better condition. We chose to walk around the city and take in one of the river cruises to see the six main bridges. While we enjoyed our day and preferred Porto to Lisboa, we have still found we like the smaller towns better than the cities of Portugal.