We arrived in Lisbon on Sunday afternoon to find Liberty Avenue—a wide, tree-filled avenue extending along several historical squares and to the river front— populated with the pop-up shops and music of a street festival. We walked the length of the avenue, winding as well onto several smaller side streets, to the riverfront square. Life in the Iberian Peninsula starts late in the evening (some restaurants do not open for dinner until 9:00), so the streets were somewhat quiet and empty when we started our journey, but by the time we completed dinner, delicious fresh fish at a small sidewalk café, the streets were coming alive and the cafes which lined the avenues were filled with people.

Monday morning we toured Lisbon both by bus and by foot, seeing several historical buildings and getting a sense of the history of the city. We ended our morning with a stroll along the river to visit several monuments, and then headed north out of the city, stopping along the coast for lunch in Cascais, a beach-front community where several of our friends tried fresh sardines, a local in-season specialty, before driving through rural hillsides of the Cascais-Sintra natural parks to Sintra, home of the ancient summer palace, which we were able to tour throughout.

Tuesday, we headed south, stopping in Albufeira, another ocean-side town for lunch, before arriving in our next destination, Lagos, on the southern coast of Portugal, facing the Atlantic. Wednesday morning, we toured the area, traveling to an overlook area with views of many rock outcroppings and caves, and to Sagres, the town at the tip of Portugal, the most southwestern point in continental Europe. That afternoon, we took a boat tour of the coast, seeing the rocks, islands, and caves from the water, and then did a little souvenir shopping before another wonderful dinner of fresh, local seafood. After dinner, we stopped in one shop where we had a good conversation with the couple who ran the shop. Our quote of the week came from the woman running the shop: “When America coughs, Europe gets the flu.”