I traveled from... Funchal (capital of Madeira where I'm staying) to Porto by plane, took the bus to Braga, took the bus to Guimares, took the bus back to Porto, took the train to Evora, took the bus to Portalgre, took the taxi to Castelo de Vide, took the taxi to Marvao, took the bus back to Lisbon, and flew back to Madeira.
My roommate and I did this all in just 7 days, 6 nights!
Some patterns that I noticed, people seemed to ask if we were Japanese a lot, strange since all the asian tourists we did see were Chinese. All the food we ate contained was accompanied with bread. The bread was good, but by the end of the trip, both my roommate and I were craving rice. Also, since its the winter, there were very few tourists. Some of the hostels we stayed at were empty except for us (for one of them we got a free upgrade to a very nice room!). Let me tell you some highlights from our trip :) we ran into some very nice people, and also some not so nice people, but mostly nice people!
Cork Farm Tour
Our guide for our farm tour was very knowledgeable and super nice. He taught us all about cork trees including how to strip the cork bark from the tree without hurting the tree. He was also really knowledgeable about the current industry of cork and that it is unfortunately dwindling :( Here's a recap. Cork trees need to be close to fifty years old before they can be stripped from their cork the first time. After that, cork strippers wait nine years which is marked by a number painted onto the bark. Nine year is quite a long time to wait... Also, the cork strippers no longer train newbies, because traditionally, newbies had to trim cork trees for a couple of years before they would be trained how to properly strip cork. Nowadays, all the trimming is done by machines, but cork stripping is still done manually because machines can't do the job without harming the trees. Cork bark varies in width around the tree, so its a very exact skill. Hopefully cork strippers will pass on the trade or else it may become a lost skill. At the end of the tour, our guide was kind enough to recommend a bifana (traditional Portuguese pork sandwich) place for us to try since... we had tried one at McDonald's one day and he told us that is pretty much the worst place to get one.Free Tour
For our taxi ride to Castelo de Vide, our taxi driver pretty much gave us a free tour in addition to the ride. He let us choose a detour route through the mountains to see some beautiful views. At one vista point he stopped and let us take in the view. To the side there was a fountain where he said some of the freshest spring water comes! And sure enough, there was an older couple there drinking some of the water. We tried it and it was very fresh! He also pulled off some bark off a cork tree to give to use a souvenir (this may have hurt the tree... but it was a tiny piece!) Our free tour went for so long that he ended up being late to his next appointment. (Whoops!)Olive Mishap
This was pretty much my fault and I deserved it completely. When we were leaving the castle in Castelo de Vide, we saw an olive tree with olives pretty much within reach. We just had to step over this bush... So I decided to do it. I stepped over the bush, and then my jacket got caught up in some thorns and it ripped my jacket! :( My awesome Uniqlo jacket! I'll be forever sad and never step over a bush again. The olives didn't taste that great either. I don't think they were ripe :( And I realized later that there were olive trees galore in the backyard of the hostel we were staying at... Could have just tried the olives there.. On a different note, purple juice came out of it! I've never seen a fresh olive before.Check out the rest of my trip here (there are captions! I may or may not have spent a long time on them): https://goo.gl/photos/ee34UAz45etbPqMc7
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