Our mill

For the past two and half years Rita has been working on our not so secret plan to revive her former family estate in the south of Hungary into a an awesome eco lodge..

Now it is slowly becoming a reality. By end of summer next year we should have the main building ready for opening...We have started a new blog solely devoted to this new undertaking. Have a look here:
http://www.almalomb.com/

Oia to Vigo

Riding in Spain is a real pleasure - all respect, they have wonderful bike routes almost all the way so far and it goes along the coast which is beautiful. From A Guarda we went to Oia to spend the first night in Casa Puertas, which is an unbelievably beautiful and perfect place with 8 rooms in a renovated historic building on the coast. We had a private garden with a small but perfectly green fotball field where the owners kids were training to become football stars while eating chocolate sandwich - literally, imagine a full chocolate bar between 2 slices of toast bred!!! I just wonder why to spoil the chocholate with bread :) We event spent our first night out in the only restaurant in Oia next door to our room - thanks to a mobile phone app baby phone - and we enjoyed a glass of wine with pimientos de pedron. Only for that it is worth coming to Spain :) Today we planned to ride 16 km to Baiona but we were so fast this time that we decided to continue another 18 km to Vigo after a long lunch break. I think we are a true disaster for any restaurant with all the mess and noise we make with the kids and though they serve great daily offers these occasions are truly stressful and tiresome for us at least. So we chose this night - as several other times - to make a picknick in our room, which is the same fun but without the audiance to make us feel totally insane :)

Viva Espana!

And we are in Galicia! Today morning we crossed the river from Caminha to A Guarda with the Santa Rita ferry and we are very proud of ourselves to make it so far :) in the last few days we faced some challenges - how could you expect such things not to happen... We got a flat tire on the trolley, as it turned out a thorn pierced it. We were just on the way to find a repair service when i hailed some fellow bikers on the road, who were the knights from La Mancha, Spain on their pilgrim to Santiago and instead of showing us the way they fixed our tire on spot!!!
And before being able to leave Caminha Lulu got a fewer during the night so we decided to stay one more day in the camping, also to dry our clothes which again got washed by the rain, and to take our princess to the doctor. We were scared because of the suspected tick she had a few days before but the doctor diagnosed her with an ear infection and suggested to take a blood test if we want to be sure she has no other infection. So we left this lovely country behind with the promise that we will come back. Now there is no mercy, if we do not understand each other, it is my broken Spanish, without the excuse of Portuguese :)

Vila do Conde to Rio Alto

We headed North along the shore from Porto and we had as Tomek put it the best ride ever in his life :) it was flat, it was right next go the Atlantic and it was through sand dunes covered with beautiful flowers. It must be a consistent coast preservation development because for the whole day we were following a wooden plank path with cool restaurants and cafeterias in Scandinavian arcitecture style - which i admire and which took me by surprise in a hispanic mediterranian country. Along the way we stopped by a tiny beach restaurant with its own beach, hidden and not even listed on our map, so we were all to ourselves with the hosts 2 year old son. We spent the night in Vila do Conde, which could have been a pleasant experience, but it was not, due to the stinky and unclean room and the traffic, though the city is pretty and we managed to collect our caminho stamp in the local church. Riding through the small towns has the downside of bumpy cobble stone roads which our bikes and trolley does not take too well so sometimes we opt for the N13 national road which is uninspiring but flat and fast. So we reached the Orbitour camping in Rio Alto the next day, where we rented a mobile home of some 20 m2 with a small bathroom ang kitchenett, we even had our first night in separate bed from our kids:) they slept together sweetly till the morning squashing together on a big bed. We even made a big laundry as they had a machine and decorated our terrace with all the clotes only for the night storm to wash it all away. So instead of heading further North we stayed another day to dry things, to indulge in the pool and on the magnificent ocean coast. We made a ride to Fao; to see a doctor as we suspected Lulu having a tick, but the doctor did not see it and i think he thought we were crazy for such an idea. I guess they have no such problems in Portugal... Anyway Lulu is fine and we have the nicest watermark in our passports from the Fao; church. So after 2 days in the camping we continued further North, this time a bit inland and more to the mountains, so the ritde was not easy. We made almost 40 km and reached Casa da Reina, which was our heavenly accommodation last night, a real treasure with giant hortenzias, a lemon tree, a pool, 4 rooms and all kinds of wonders in the garden. I climbed an orange tree and made a lemonade from fruits right from the tree!!! No comments can describe it :)


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North Portugal

I think we lost track a bit of writing - this time because we were enjoying ourselves instead of writing about how we enjoy ourselves :) but also the fact is that our internet limit was reached so we were not connected. Anyway, arriving to Porto changed a lot - we relaxed a bit having less km to conquer and we decided to spend a day in The city. What we would not do without kids is to take a sight seeing city train tour, but this time it was the perfect choice given Leon's fascination with trains and our limitations to otherwise cover distances. So as the bargain was a wine cellar tour was included in the ride on the other side of the river in Gaia, which turned out to be one of the most fantastic things we saw so far. You can see the photos in the Flickr gallery so in short: the winery was established in the 18th century and has been producing wine ever since, but now as a private property with 3 million litres of wine being aged in the cellar at the time of our visit. And opposed to our visit to a winery in Italy these guys really do age and process the wine in oak barrels and harvest by hand. I cannot remember who asked me some time ago which wine can be stored for ever without being spoiled, but here comes the answer, hopefully not too late: the vintage port wine can be stored in bottle horizontally in normal temperature basically limitless, but once you open you ought to finish it the same day as the oxygen destroys it. And it tastes heaven! We tried a 10 years Tawny and a Ruby, hmmmm. And the cellar was beautiful!

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Photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mirmurr/

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Porto

So we thought we would have a relaxing day. Morning swim and a 2 hours train-ride to Porto and another dip in the pool in our hotel. All went to smoke when it appeared at the train station that it is not only not allowed to take bikes in the IC train but there is a strike. So we had the choice to take four regional trains - meaning 8!!! times taking on and off the bikes the trolley and the kids to and from the train, or to lose our 68 € hotel booking in Porto. Since the ride to the station in Santarem was a serious downhill ride - there was literally no way back. Actually the trip went very well, we had quite much fun you will see from our pics in Flickr. The kids fell asleep just before taking off the last train at 8 pm, so they did not have to witness the police taking away 2 surf-kids from the train for free-riding. It locked all passengers up on the train for a good 20 minutes, so we were in the right mood to get out and realise that we cannot get out of the station without massive exercise because the lift was too small and the stairs down and up the underground were too deep. So we had to chase some local muscles to carry everything down and up to face a 5 km ride to our hotel starting with a hill. Now i will not detail our ride just mention the main highlights: we had a walking navi on the phone which i had to hold in my left hand while steering with the right - i am no good at such tricks - and riding on cobble stone roads against traffic, as driving aspects were irrelevant for a walking navi. Second highlight: we went to the wrong hotel after an hour of such ride, but luckily the correct hotel was on the same road another half an hour ride away, so at least i had no further worries that the phone dies on me before we find the place. For a change i was holding a paper map :) at 9.30 kids are in bed without any complains and now we will have a Cairpirinha in our bathroom :)

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El Camino

So finally after some years being pregnant and nursing babies we r again on the road - this time 4 of us and so we r glad to continue posting about something fun! After all we got some minites to write about our caminho while the kids sleep and we r sitting in the bathroom doing the washing in the bide :) so we started from Lisbon on the 23rd of June - relatively smoothly. The bikes with the trolley and our bags arrived to our hotel, nothing broke and apart from being ripped of by the taxi driver - which is kind of usual on our first day in a new country - we really enjoyed being again on the road. We collected our caminho passport and accidentaly the cathedral was right next to our favorite cafeteria we new from our first visit to Portugal. So we headed to the park of the nation, which is as we think the expo area with amazing urban development along the river. We had some trouble to find our way but locals go out of their way to help us. I think we r more of a tourist attraction than the locals are for us :) by the way although almost everyehere we get by with English, i am trying my Spanish which is just so funny; i speak Spanish they speak Portuguese and we understand each other but as if there was a noise in the line so about 70% goes through - good enough for us :) so back to the park - we liked it so much that we stayed there and enjoyed a wonderful afternoon with the kids running in the park, looking at each other with locals like in the zoo and visiting the oceanarium. The next day we headed to Azambuja through Vila Franca de Xira, where we spent the night in a hotel right next to the rail tracks - for Leon's greatest amazement. He is out of his mind when a train comes, only boats are equally exciting as something new. We tried to beat the walking schedule for the camino, but after the 3rd day we had to surrender. We r barely able to keep up the plan with the pedestrians because we have a good hour and a half stretch a time to ride while the kids are asleep. This we can do once after breakfast and once after lunch, but it is so baking hot during the day that it is a torture for all. Now even if we can make about 10 km an hour it is a true killer with all the luggages on one bike and the 2 kiddies on the other. Our plan to cover 40 km a day just does not work unless we put all of us through hell - which is missing the point. After all we r on vacation... Today we made 25 km but the last stretch was such a torture uphill to the hotel that it made us reconsider our plan. We r 90 km from Lisbon - right on time with the walking plan, but with this speed we would need 20 more days to make it to Santiago de Compostela - and we have only 18 left. By the way the best question so far from our lovely waiter in Vila Franca when i asked him where to get the stamp to our passports, whether i know if Santiago is in Spain :) so tomorrow we take the train to Porto and continue our pilgrimage from there. We hope there are less hills along the ocean and we can see more from this lovely country by not killing ourselves on the road.... To be continued some other evening when we do not fall asleep together with the kids - who r by the way wonderfully cheerful companions!

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