Welcome to Portugal - São Martinho do Porto and Caldas da Rainha

After have almost 2 weeks of rain, the sun came out and blessed us as we travelled southwest to São Martinho (pronounced Sow Martinyo) do Porto for a brief stop to see some of the silver coast and meet some expats. The city is lovely. Around 3-5,000 permanent residents live here and it is a hotspot for Portuguese vacations. It has a bay area so the roiling Atlantic sounds are not as active here as in Faz do Duoro. It's flat, has some services, an active art community and a beach vibe.

Sandee and Lloyd, the expat artist couple we met, showed us a lovely cafe for brunch. It was very delicious and I had two cups of  Garoto. They shared their experience of moving to Portugal and life in a small town. It was a wonderful morning.  Fortified with information on Caldas, caffeine and a tummy full of yummy food, we set out for Caldas.

São Martinho is about 10 miles away from Caldas da Rainha, so we called an Uber rather than wait for a train/bus as being Saturday, the schedule was reduced. The ride, including tip, was €10.

Caldas is a small town of about 60,000 people near the Silver Coast. It's quaint Old Town area is adorned with Christmas decorations, art installations and murals. They also have a mall where in we stopped for a snack and some beer. There's also at least one large park and multiple green areas.

Although Caldas has a train station, the bus station is the hub of travel. You can get to pretty much anywhere you need via clean, sturdy, new buses.

There is a history of birds/swallows here and they have several art installations paying homage.  They also have a several installations of different sculptures.  My favorite is this black cat.

One of the restaurants had converted the front of a Vespa into a menu/host stand and it was super cute.

Caldas is a nice town with services albeit a bit closed down - even the restaurants - on Sundays. It has quite the personality.

Caldas also affords the opportunity to take a less than an hour bus ride to Lisbon. It hadn't been on our radar, but we did talk to some expats who live there (friends of friends) and they thought we should check it out.

Our hotel had a wonderful breakfast included. What we did find a little interesting was the decoration that included the dead field animals on a plate that hung over the bread section. At least they weren't field dressed?

Since we took a cab in, we hadn't seen this adorable frog water fountain until later in the day. It adorns traffic circle outside the train station .

Next Up: Lisbon