The Adventures of John & Hill

We recently went on a trip out to the Alentejo, which is the wine country east of Lisbon - probably our favorite area of Portugal. We had bought a Groupon, which was good for 2 nights at a hotel, breakfast both days, and a dinner at the hotel's restaurant. We were pleasantly surprised at how nice the hotel (Solar Das Mascarenhas) was, and the location was great. It was in Vila Viçosa, which is a cute town home to a Ducal Palace and of course, a cool old castle.

We did an improptu photo shoot outside the palace and got a few decent shots:




The castle was neat to see; here is a photo we took while walking on top of the rampart walls.


View from the castle:


The huge moat surrounding the castle warranted a picture:


John on the drawbridge:


One more picture we got - this one looks out from inside the castle over the town at night


We've mentioned before how much we love the food in the Alentejo. We weren't expecting too much out of the dinner that was included, but we thoroughly enjoyed it. We got to order whatever we wanted from the menu, and everything we had was great. Check out the picture of the filet mignon I had - you can barely see it under all the cream sauce!


One of the things we wanted to do while we were there was go on a long bike ride. We brought our gear with us and on Saturday morning we set off. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and we had fun getting lost between picturesque towns as we rode through the countryside.

Here is what some of the roads looked like - it was as if we had our own private biking trails


Said hi to these guys:


And their friends:


That area of the Alentejo is known for its marble, and we passed quite a few quarries on our bike ride. The towns there use a ton of marble on their streets, doorsteps, everywhere. Here is the town fountain, in which a couple of dogs were playing around.


We took the slow roads on the way back to Lisbon, which made for a beautiful drive. I'm sure we'll do another bike trip soon!