Portugal - 2023

[Mark]

We’re heading to Portugal for a Discourse meetup…and it so happens a bunch of friends will be in Lisbon the week prior. So Loretta & I will be heading over a week early to take in some sights and get some rest…before my very hard work trip begins.

[Kjj]

Enjoy the food and wine it’s totally outstanding. When I was there over 25 years ago there were lots of Brazilian style grill houses eat as much as you like

[Mark]

So…we spent a week in Lisbon with friends, celebrating Narendra’s birthday.

The beginning - the Chiado District

We spent the first few days in Chiado; taking a sunset cruise, a Pastel de Nata baking class, having dinner at a Michelin (adjacent) restaurant, checking out St. George’s Castle and generally just hanging with our pals. It was fantastic.

The Alfama District

When our pals all left town, we had a couple days to ourselves prior to my heading down to Algarve for my company meetup. We moved over to the Alfama District, the oldest of Lisbon. Our hotel was beautiful, a converted apartment, with a ‘rooftop’ garden and pool.

Food & Drink

Figured it would be easier to drop the pix of food & drink into their own section.

Sintra

We took a day trip to Sintra on Friday to check out some of the palaces. It was amazing. Although…I wouldn’t necessarily suggest people hike back down to the Historic Center of town. We went along the road and I hadn’t really thought about the fact that cars/buses would be running by us the whole time. Not much fun to breathe all that in. Still…there were some great views so…I guess it wasn’t too terrible.

Hanging with some of my Discourse pals

A few of my co-workers also hit Lisbon in the days before we were all set to go to Algarve. Loretta & I got a chance to share some meals with them and enjoy a light show at their hotel.

And who doesn’t love a good hotel light show?

Lumen Light Show

So that’s the first dump of photos.

I’ll be dumping some of the pix from Algarve in the coming days. I hope. Takes me a while to decide what to post and clean them up.

[Mark]

Algarve

After spending the week in Lisbon, I headed down to Algarve for our annual company world meetup. I was surprised by how much like SoCal it was, the landscape, the weather. It’s a lovely area, the food was great, and I got to see my friends again. We stayed at the W Algarve…which was very, very nice.

What follows are some of the photos I took of that week.

Hopefully these pix give you a bit of an idea of how much fun I had that week as well.

I’m not always good about taking pix…and many of my co-workers are…and they share…so I’ll be posting some of theirs next.

[Mark]

Ok then. Here’s a bunch of pictures that my pals took that were fun so I thought I’d share them. Yeah…I should definitely credit the snapper but at this point I can’t recall who took what. If they jump in and let me know, I’ll add that info.