Kisa left for Portugal! We thought that it was going to be 5 weeks apart but we ultimately cut this down to 3 weeks as we couldn’t wait to start our European adventure together. Portugal catching up with the Okra crew was awesome. We spent a ton of quality time living with Nithya and Markus, hanging out in the cafes and Miradouros (city viewpoints), and eating delicious Portuguese seafood.
Lisbon is hilly, colorful, nata-filled, big clear blue skies, and welcoming. We fell in love with our corner cafe and gelato place and with the narrow cobblestoned streets.
Lison also has an amazing variety of climbing. After a month in Lisbon, we moved into Sintra for another 3 weeks which is a beautiful castle town an hour away by train. We climbed the mossy granite cliffs around a Moorish castle that was constructed in the 1300s. We never ultimately found the ‘best 7a in Lisbon’ even though everyone we met told us it was an easy 5-minute hike away (we searched for hours) – but we got up to some belly-dropping slab climbing and found a few routes with handholds.
In Sintra, we enjoyed the local pastries daily (our winning combination was a traditional almond travesseiro and a nutella travesseiro which was the patented creation of the Casa Piriquita which was opened in 1862 and named by the king at the time).
When it was too wet to climb, we went on some spectacular foggy runs around Sintra’s hills – with the ancient stone structures and the towering mossy trees, it felt like we were running through a forest from Lord of the Rings. It helped that Sintra has lots of beautiful buildings, from the Moorish Castle to the National Palace to the Initiation Well.
When we got tired of bold slab climbs (fairly often) we headed to the coast where there was short, powerful limestone climbing. We got to climb with big ocean waves crashing just beneath us on some of the first routes established in Lisbon. It was polished, pumpy, and super fun!
A lot of climbing is getting established in Sesimbra, a short drive south of Lisbon. We spent a day checking out some super 3-D cave climbing, with stalactites behind us and more roof than vertical climbing. The coastline here was beautiful and seemed untouched compared to the bustling Lisboan seaside.
We wrapped up our time in Europe by heading up to France – we spent a few days in Paris, sampling the delicious restaurants and museums before going North to visit Gabi’s family in Normandy. With Covid cases skyrocketing, we spent lots of time eating delicious food at home and helping out in the garden.
We also went on lots of long runs, exploring Normandy’s (muddy) countryside and an enormous bridge.
We’re now back in Montreal, where we will get very comfortable with winter running (and winter everything else too).
