Kathleen Goes to Scotland: Post-Portugal: Scotland has snow!

Hello!

I'm just home from my first trampoline competition, which was really fun! But I realize that I haven't updated this blog since my first real traveling experience.

Portugal was really nice. It wasn't quite the weather we were hoping for but it was still infinitely warmer than here. Overall it went without major problems, apart from some unwelcome rain. How to sum up a week...

Faro. We flew here because we were flying RyanAir (which went without a hitch). Don't go to Faro unless you have to, and if you have to don't plan to stay there any longer than you must. The old town is nice, but there are much much nicer places to spend your time.

Lagos. Lagos is on the Algarve, the coast between Faro and Lisbon. It's a cute tourist-friendly town with a palm-lined main walk and beaches with "grottoes". The weather was fairly uncooperative, but we managed to avoid the rain long enough to put our toes in the ocean. We stayed in a wonderful and cheap hostel/guesthouse here, basically like a nice apartment with kitchen, bathroom, balcony, comfy beds. We got 11 hours of sleep that night...

Lisbon. At the urging of our Portuguese friend, Francisca, we hopped a [four hour] train to Lisbon and spent most of the rest of our trip exploring this vibrant and diverse city. We did a range of things from sight-seeing to a dinner party to an all-nighter to a road trip around the surrounding towns to eating the best pastries in the world. It was really nice.

Now scotland... has a lot of snow. And ice. Not up to Canada's standard version of a snowstorm, but it's sent everyone here into a bit of a tizzy. And I didn't really bring snowstorm gear, so I'm parka-less and proper snowboot-less. I have two essays and a writing assignment due next week so I'm taking every opportunity to procrastinate! Thus, this overdue blog entry. Okay, picture time. Enjoy (and sorry for the random order)!