Farewell Portugal and our European daughter

Today we packed up our bags, did some last minute shopping, double checked the flights and said good-bye to Erin. We walked Erin to the train this afternoon and made sure she was settled in for her 20 some hour train ride before heading back to do our own last minute stuff. Erin is heading to France for a week before her/our other friend comes to meet her. We were not even to the end of the train before Miranda said "I miss Erin" in her sad voice. Then as we headed out for supper she said "oh, where's Erin"and then quickly remembered she had left. We will miss her. As we have travelled together with Erin the last 4 weeks she has been asked by many people if we are her parents. She ends up explaining that no, we are just friends. Then it became easier to just not explain it any more so we decided that for this trip she would be our European daughter. We almost traded her for 2000 camels to a very nice boy in the Sahara. But he ended up not having quite as many camels as we wanted.

Last night Erin talked of needing a bit of a trim. All I had was a leg shaver. But in a pinch it worked really well. We had some great laughs while I took a bit off here and a lot off there. She looked great in the end.

This evening we went for our last European supper. We went to a Fado restaurant. Fado is the Portugees traditional music played during a meal. We sat outside and the music was inside which was probably best. Dean and Colton had a seafood meal called Cataplanta. It is salmon, cod, shrimp, clams, potatoes, red pepper and onions all cooked in a round copper roaster that gets clamed together and rotated over the fire to evenly cook the food inside. Dean also had the traditional vegi soup which was made with cabbage and was a bit creamy. Miranda and I shared a beef steak and potatoes all cooked in a really sumptious mushroom gravy.

* Erin, the restaurant was the one on the corner just down from the tart place.

Portugal is famous for its tarts. So we had to have tarts everyday. The only problem with finding a really great tart place is finding it for the second time. The first day as we walked along in the evening. Erin bought a tart from this little shop down a path up the hill and around the corner from this other place. Well.....thats easy to say unless you really want another tart from the same place. A few days later we were in the same area and tryed to find it. After all NOT agreeing on the direction we did acually find it and the tarts were as good as we had remembered. Then today we decided we had to have one last tart to remember Lisboa with. Of course we couldn't find it. Dean thought it was up there Colton thought is was around the corner, Miranda though she recognized something, Erin thought she could find it if we went back to the other street and I of course was not arguing at all that I knew where it was. LOL.

So Dean took off up the hill and the rest of us took off back down the hill and we yelled to meet back at the church. Guess who got the tarts.

Yup, the girls and Colton. Yes! It was very fun and the store owners were laughing as we ran up and down talking fast and in the end holding up the tarts in victory.

Well, that's all. Tonight we wake up at 3:30am and start the long day travelling back to Manitoba to begin the rest of our journey.