One Week in Beautiful Portugal – Part 1 of our Anniversary Trip

When Lucy got accepted to this college prep program, Dave and I were pretty elated. For her because it seemed to be the perfect fit. But we were also elated for us. Because, you see, the dates of the program happened to land right at our 30th anniversary. And we were ready to celebrate that big thing. In the wake of Grace’s glowing reports of Portugal, we decided to follow her lead and spend one week there. Then we spent a week in Croatia which had been a bucket-list spot for both of us. I have to say, both places exceeded our expectations. Let’s start with documenting our one week in beautiful Portugal.

But first a little more background. In our world of hustle and bustle, there is something pretty special about getting the gift of time with your #1 person. Especially when you feel like you’ve been ships passing in the night. Life just tends to fill in all the gaps and sometimes it’s a struggle to prioritize what’s most important. Am I right? So I was so grateful for every single day we got together.

I love that our 30th anniversary arrived just as we’re getting ready to launch our very last child off into the world. Kind of the end of an era. And the beginning of a new one.

A Trip Overview

Our kids have been asking and asking to hear all about this trip, so here you go, kids!

We walked miles and miles of patterned cobblestones, and climbed thousands of steps.

We carried and rolled our bags to six different hotels over all of those cobblestones…

…as well as one stay with our niece and nephew on a layover in London. We love them!!

We saw so many incredible vistas:

Explored so much that has been there for hundreds of years.

Dave is more of a vacation on the beach kind of a guy and I am more of a see-everything-you-possibly-can-get-to kind of a girl, but we found beaches and I willed myself to take it slow and I think we found a pretty great balance.

We biked and climbed mountains:

We talked to Lucy, tucked safely at her camp. Every time we got to talk, we looked at each other with big eyes. Filled with amazement as we could almost FEEL the confidence through her voice spilling through the phone. Such salve to our worried hearts. And Claire was tucked safely in Hong Kong where she is also thriving and learning as an HXP leader for five weeks.

And of course, got to talk to Murph and Ada too, Max & Abby and our two girls who have been to Portugal before us.

We ate gelato every night we could. Our feet made their way over so many polished-through-thousands-of-years cobblestones, envisioning all the people who had gone there before.

We stayed up until like 2am every night and ate some pretty delicious food and saw SO much beauty. Also, I found my new latest “thin place.”

Our Itinerary

We flew from NYC –> London
London –> Lisbon, Portugal
Drove from Lisbon –> Faro, Portugal
Flew from Faro, connecting through London –> Dubrovnik, Croatia
Took a ferry from Dubrovnik –> Hvar Island, Croatia
Another ferry from Hvar –> Split, Croatia
Flew from Split –> London
London –> Dallas –> HOME

Phew!

But let’s start at the beginning.

A Layover in New York City

June 9, 2025
We met up in New York City, me fresh from dropping of Lu in St. Louis and Dave on a journey from home. We stored our luggage at a hole-in-the-wall pizza place of all places, through this company called “Bounce,” and took off to explore.

We had breakfast at “Friend of a Farmer,” biked through the Upper West side, with a stop at Levain Bakery, of course:

Biked through Central Park:

Then down to 5th Avenue.

We knelt down and offered up some special prayers for each of our kids and all they’re going through in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

We walked Times Square and had lunch at our favorite Los Tacos No. 1.

Then we took off for Portugal.

Sintra, Portugal

June 10, 2025
Portugal was beautiful, but the thing I loved the most about it was that we sort of got to follow Grace’s very recent footsteps there. She was pretty thrilled about this too. We got her on FaceTime whenever we could and she was just so exuberant about everything, which made it ten times better.

After some deliberation, we went out on a limb and decided to stay in Sintra (outside Lisbon). We used Ubers all over for the first few days and they were delightfully cheap. Our hotel was kind of secluded but so beautiful and such a good place to get some sleep after travel.

Pena Palace

We went straight to Pena Palace after checking in: this super eclectic palace initially built by Ferdinand the 2nd in 1839. It’s one of Sintra’s claims to fame. It had been a monastery before and King Ferdinand wanted to bring in ideas from Germany and all kinds of different architectural styles. It was all colorful and filled with our first dose of that famous Portuguese tile.

Pictures cannot do it justice. But look at this light!

We got a little tuk tuk to take us into the city when we were done…

…and loved our first introduction to all the patterned cobblestone streets EVERYWHERE in Portugal.

We had a true Portuguese dinner full of fish at a tiny little restaurant sitting together at a tiny little table.

June 11, 2025 – HIKING, BEACHES and CASCAIS

Praia da Ursa

Our first stop was Praia da Ursa, Ursa Beach, and man alive, it lived up to Grace’s praises.

How to get to Ursa Beach

Ursa Beach is this place with these huge rocks jutting out of the water lining a beach you can hike down to. We took an Uber to a random spot on the road, and started hiking:

And a few minutes later, BAM! We could see the beach:

We hiked down the hill amidst all that beauty…

…and reached the beach where we watched the waves smack into all those rocks.

Dave was a little miffed we didn’t bring swimsuits, and maybe we should have, but man, it was a little chilly!

After we enjoyed for a while, we hiked back out.

We hiked back out and along the ridgeline of Colares to the lighthouse, gorgeous scenery sweeping out from us in every direction.

Cascais, Portugal

At the lighthouse, we got an uber to Praia do Guincho beach and watched the surfers. Then we WALKED all the way to Cascais which took like an hour and a half.

Dave is seriously the best and there’s something about walking and talking together, especially through all that beauty, that is pretty awesome. Dave did save a lady who was in a car her husband had forgot to put into park when he got out to take a picture and she was rolling, completely unaware, into the main road.

We stopped to take in this cool cliff lookout:

And then headed into the darling little town of Cascais. Patterned cobblestones lining the hilly streets for as far as the eye could see.

We ate dinner out on a patio under the sunset and found a yummy crepe place while talking to exuberant Lucy at SOAR.

Lisbon, Portugal

June 12
We took an uber from our hotel in Sintra to Lisbon and checked into our hotel in the Belem District.

I LOVE LISBON! I didn’t know to expect that it was built on these steep hills all emptying in the bay, which was just so cool. It happened to be Dia de Santo António holiday the day we were there. Which was pretty cool which I’ll explain below. But it also meant Jerónimos Monastery, one spot Grace loved the most, was closed, darn it!

Jeronimos Monastery

But we got to walk around the outside and it was just so incredibly beautiful.

Castelo de São Jorge

Probably my favorite part of the day was our uber ride up to Castelo de São Jorge. I wish I had taken pictures or video, it was SO steep on those winding, tiny, cobblestoned streets, colorful tile surrounding us on all the buildings, the sun shining, a new city to explore stretched out in front of us.

We loved listening to our audio tour all about the ruins of that castle with such a great view over Lisbon and the ocean.

Picturesque Lisbon

Oh man this city didn’t disappoint.

Igreja de São Domingos

Two different churches below, the Igreja de São Domingos on the left was dedicated clear back in 1241 (!) and has survived a fire and two earthquakes.

Beautiful Portuguese tile plastered everywhere:

So many hills!

I thought it was so cool that some of the streets were so steep they needed stairs for sidewalks…and an escalator or two.

What is Dia de Santo António?

Santo António was a Franciscan priest born from the 12th century who is the patron saint of lost things, and also love and marriage. So on Dia de Santo António, the day we happened to be in Lisbon, there’s some sort of lottery for brides and grooms to be part of the celebration. The ones who are chosen get married in a joint ceremony at Lisbon’s Sé Cathedral and then parade through the streets.

As luck would have it, we happened to come across the wedding procession while we were checking things out, complete with a little marching band filled with trombones and I loved it. Can you see all those brides and grooms on the right below?

Of course we had to go see the chapel where they were just married:

Sé Cathedral

Praça do Comércio

We wandered over to the Praça do Comércio (Square of Commerce) right on the harbor looking out to sea:

Because of the holiday there were all kinds of street performers out and it was a pretty fun atmosphere.

We then proceeded to kind of walk in another huge circle (not our intention but kind of going by serendipity).

Graça

We took one of those “sidewalk escalators” up one steep hill, tiles lining all the houses, and went all the way up to the Graça district, fighting through the celebrating crowds on that holiday evening:

…to see another view of the city down below.

On this holiday there is a big traditional parade/show with floats and dancing representing all the districts of Lisbon at night, but by that time Dave was done following me around trying to see everything, Ha! And the whole city seemed to be headed to a drunken party, so we found a yummy Indian restaurant:

Indian is my favorite and there were SO many Indian restarurants there!

And I sweet-talked Dave into one more stop:

Pink Street

Pink Street is a street actually painted pink lined with colorful umbrellas hanging in the sky above, and I loved it.

Then we ubered back to the hotel and watched the traditional dancing on the local news channel. I hated to leave that city I had fallen in love with, but I have to admit, it felt nice to be cozy in our hotel room.

June 13 – Road trip to Algarve
I took a little walk/run to see Torre de Belém, this ancient fortification tower, which was right close to our hotel.

It happened to be all covered with scaffolding, darn it, but fun to see.

The Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument of the Discoveries) was also right next to our hotel:

A Road Trip to The Algarve Region of Portugal

We ubered to the airport, rented a car, and took a little road trip to the Algarve area in the south of Portugal. Goodbye Lisbon!

We checked into our hotel in Albufiera and scrambled to get to a cave boat tour taking off from Carvoeiro. It was already around 4, but the sun wasn’t setting until 9pm so we could make it, right??

Boating to the Caves from Carvoeiro

Southern Portugal is filled with the most beautiful rock formations all along the coast.

We got a boat with an incredible driver from the beach in Carvoeiro that took us right into so many caves, some of them with tiny openings that seemed impossible we’d be able to make it.

Carvoeiro Tours was the tour company we used:

And here are some of the caves we squeezed right into along the Algarve:

Benagil Cave

The most famous of which was Benagil, sun streaming in from a round hole in the top.

Carvoeiro

Back to Carvoeiro Beach:

Other Iconic Beaches

Oh man, there are so many picturesque spots along that coastline! Praia da Marinha, Praia do Camilo, and Praia de São Rafael, just to name a few.

The Town of Lagos

Then we drove to a whole slew of other beaches to catch all the different iconic ones en route to the town of Lagos. More teensy-tinsy steep streets to find a parking place.

Then walked around that most darling little town, ate a very chewy octopus sandwich, walked around with our gelato listening to such beautiful cello street music.

Things Happening at Home

MEANWHILE BACK AT HOME…
That night found Claire at a hospital in Hong Kong so stressed out because her ankle was swollen up so horribly. As I mentioned, she is a trip leader for two different groups of HXP kids, and within the first couple days of arrival, as you can imagine, wasn’t an opportune time to have your ankle swell up!

We were on a group text with Carson, our podiatrist, convincing her to get to a hospital to check it out. It was the middle of the night there in Hong Kong, I imagined her texting us under her blanket so she wouldn’t wake anyone up in a room full of newly arrived from the States girls ready for Hong Kong adventure. It was a whole saga but she emerged from the hospital with antibiotics and finally getting some pain relief.

At the same time we were getting all those texts from Claire, Lucy sent a miserable text from Missouri, I got an email from my blog host that my blog had some malicious activity detected. When it rains, it pours! But Lagos was so beautiful and as of 2:37am we knew Claire was in good care, the blog thing may be fixed and Lucy sent me all kinds of happy emojis. So may prayers up to heaven!

An Island on the South End of Portugal

June 14
After so much scurrying around trying to get to all the places, Dave was in charge of this day. We drove down the coast, took a ferry to an island, then turned around and came right back (not the best island, and crowded!).

It was fun to see a few more little Portuguese towns but we were pretty happy to get back and relax a little before we headed to Croatia the next day.

I loved our late-night sushi for dinner on this little patio.

Travel to Croatia

June 15- Father’s Day
Traveled all day from Lagos airport, connecting through London, and on to Dubrovnik.

We LUCKED out to get those two connecting flights on British Airways (we were the last seats on both flights). We got in late and checked into our tiny room at our hotel.

Father’s Day FaceTime

We got all our kids (except Lucy) on FaceTime while I gave Dave foot and hand rubs, our little hotel room filling up with so much adoration for Dave from those kids.

Each talked about such specific things they loved about him and it was such a good night.

Gosh I sure love this man.

PHEW!! If you made it to this point, CONGRATS. We covered a lot of ground I’ll tell you that.

As much as I loved Portugal, Croatia outdid itself and I’m excited to document that part soon!

For now, Happy Wednesday!