Hey everyone. My name is Kurt and I am a pug. Together with my 2 fellow humans I live in cologne, germany and like travelling across europe whenever I can. We travel with my personal carriage, a Volkswagen California.
With this blog I want to share these experiences with all steemians on a regular basis. This contains everything that I find worth sharing - especially pictures. In general, all me and my humans really plan is a destination region. The rest just happens spontaneously.
Feel free to ask anything in the comments below.
Journey to Portugal
We planned to travel 2 weeks through portugal, starting somewhere south of Lisbon, heading south and going through the south coast - namely algarve.
To get to the west coast of portugal, we hat to go ~2.300km. Due to the fact that I have to eat and do other dog stuff on a regular basis, we wanted to span the journey from friday afternoon to sunday noon. Crossing france cost a total of ~100€ of toll, where spain was much cheaper with around 30€. The reason we payed the toll was, that we saved around 5 hours of driving which is nearly a full vacation day in portugal.
The bad thing was, that we lost air pressure in one of our tires after the first 2 hours of driving. As a result, my Human#1 had to stop every 300km to refill the tire. But on the bright side: This gave me the opportunity to go for a short walk every time with my Human#2.
West Coast of Portugal
In portugal we only had to head for a real camping site to fill up our water supply. But one has to say that it is VERY IMPORTANT to leave the places you have been exactly the way you found them. Unfortunately, there are still many peolpe around who just leave their trash when they leave.
At the west coast, we basically watched google maps for roads that are close to the coast or a beach at best. We drove from one side to the next and stayed where we liked it. The best place we found was the one you can see on pictures 4,5 and 6. We had a small private beach and our own natural water source there.
At the end of the West Coast journey, we reached Cabo da Roca (Cape Roca) which forms the westernmost extent of europe.
Algarve
When we finally reached the Algarve, we were really looking forwand to find a nice place on or near the beach where we could stay for a couple of days. But this turned out to be a really tough task. The main problem on the algarve is, that it is - compared to the west coast - rather touristic. Many people travel around with renting cars, it is harder to find good authentic restaurants etc. It took us almost 2 full days to find the spots you can see in the pictures below, but is was totally worth it. Especially the second site was great. My two humans took me for a moring walk directly at the beach every day.
Conlusion
After the whole journey, I have to say that I liked both the west coast and algarve very much. There certainly is more tranquillity but also much more wind that can lead to rather uncomfortable moments. The algarve is much more touristic, but thats okay if you try to avoid the main season. In fall it is just perfect to get the last warm days of the year and living basically on the beach. The humans just need bring enough water and food.
See you on the next journey!
Kurt the Travelpug
