inside Rhodes

I’ve officially decided to keep my feet on the ground for a while. My flight experiences from Portugal and back were (for lack of a better descriptor) miserable. It was never actually the flight itself– rather it was a specific airline who won’t be named but told us on the way there, “we can’t help you.” and on the way back, “you need to make alternate arrangements.”– essentially we were told that we were screwed. Luckily other airlines exist and they were able to get us to Portugal and then home from Portugal at hours notice.

Anyway, enough about the travel woes and more about Portugal.

What can I say? Portugal was great. While one would expect a 20 something year old to backpack across the country side, I took a more relaxing approach to my break spending all of my time in three places Morgado Lusitano, Lisboa and Sintra.

Morgado was the estate/ riding school where we stayed. The estate was built in 1775 overlooking the Tejo river. Needless to say, it is beautiful. And the people working at Morgado were fantastic. All meals were served on the grounds and if the weather was nice they set up a table outside. Though I am no expert on dressage, I can say that the stables and riding arena were incredible– as were the instructors Charlotte and Rodrigo.

Morgado was nestled just 10 minutes from Lisbon (or Lisboa as the locals call it– pronounced leesh-boa). Side note- while Portuguese and Spanish read very similarly they are very different in pronunciation making communication possible but slightly difficult! Though thanks to Pat and Sue ( two other Americans who were taking lessons at Morgado) I learned many essential words over some red wine after dinner one night. Anyway– back on track– Lisboa was nice, but too much of a city for me. We visited a castle and a cathedral and Lisbon and spent some time walking the streets.

My absolute favorite place was Sintra where I spent two days exploring visiting a palace and two castles. One of the castles was around 2000 years old. There is something very surreal about walking around in a place that has so much history. I am going to go ahead and post some pictures now and then get back to the whole school thing…. .   I will write more about specific places in the coming weeks!

Enjoy the photos!

–Sarah