Can you believe its already been one year

This weekend Javier and I celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary in Portugal. I can't believe its already been one year, but it has. And thanks to the Ladies of 15th St. (and their other halves), we celebrated in style. The greatest friends a girl could ask for, they got us a gift certificate for Relais & Chateaux. Its an amazing collection of hotels and restaurants that are far beyond the ordinary. It took us almost the whole year just to narrow down our choice to one. And the winner was Fortaleza do Guincho. An old fortress in Cascais, Portugal right along the coast. The hotel was exquisite and the views were amazing.

We decided that this would be a great place to spend a quiet weekend but to get to do a bit of site seeing too. Our first night we visited the towns of Estoril and Cascais. Small coastal towns with quaint scenery and amazing coastal areas. We had dinner along the coast and enjoyed the most amazing seafood ever.

On Saturday we spent the day wandering around Sintra. Its an small town just north of Cascais. The known for its city palace and its Moorish castles on the hillside. There's not enough to see to really spend the day, but the castle is worth the trip itself.

It is so different than all the castles you see in Germany. It has wide thick walls that you can climb on with lots and lots of stairs. From within the castle walls I really felt like it was Portugal's great wall of china. And of course the views were amazing from there. The picture on the left is the view of the palace from the Moorish castle.


On Saturday night we had an amazing anniversary dinner on my parents. We found a small restaurant in Cascais that served lots of seafood. Living in Germany, we have taken every opportunity outside of Germany to enjoy some seafood and this was no different. Take a look at our dinner choice:


Thanks for a memorable anniversary dinner!




One last things to see before we headed to Lisbon: Boca do Inferno (mouth of the Devil). Its a natural rock formation in Cascais. Worth the 10 minute stop. (You can see the pictures of this in our web album below)

We finished off our trip with a visit to Lisbon on Sunday before taking off. We only had a few hours and we had slept in, missing the walking tour, so we did a walking tour of our own. We saw the Elevador do Santa Justa which is a pedestrian elevator that takes you to a different level of the city. We had to ride it and it was worth it for the views. The Castle de San Jorge, Rossio Square, and Alfama were also on our lists. The Alfama was the most disappointing, not for its beauty but because when described as a labrinyth, I really expected a big bushy maze. Javier is still laughing at me about that one. All our Lisbon pictures are in the album so yet another reason to check it out.

20080516 - Portugal 1st anniversary