travel photography portugal

Goodbye summer…

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This is pretty much my summer in a nutshell… there was lots of beach and delicious sunsets, quite a bit of sangria, an enormous amount of figs, Lisbon festivals in June, quite a bit of camping, seafood, more figs, more beach, Serra da Estrela, Algarve, Alentejo, more sangria and lots and lots of dogwalking. In between all of this there were 21 weddings and countless other shoots and  things… and the fact that the rain in Spain does NOT stay mainly on the plain, but you already heard about that… It was a good summer, but now it´s almost over. But that´s…

Lisbon

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Every time we come into Lisbon, for whatever reason, I always end up finding something new, discovering a side I hadn´t seen before or stumbling across a neigbourhood that we´d walked past a thousand times without ever really SEEING it. I love this city and I hope that I never stop being blown away by her changing faces, the subtle nuances, the play of light and shadow, old and new, silence and chaos. Lisboa, you have my heart.

Serra da estrela, travelling in portugal, central portugal

Serra da Estrela

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August is the month is which literally the whole country goes on holiday. And because we live in a seaside town which also happens to be one of the most fabulous place in the country, it means that everybody comes here for the holidays… August in Ericeira is to be avoided, as much as possible. So when the crowds descend upon our beaches with screaming children and pressure cookers full of garlicky bean stew for lunch, stinking up everything in a 30 meter radius, we head inland to the mountains and the rivers… less pressure cookers, more relaxation. We camped…

Portugals south west wild coast, costa vicentina

Costa Vicentina – Portugal´s south west coast.

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So it seems everyone in the Northern Hemisphere is getting ready for autumn, my Instagram and Pinterest feeds are suddenly full of various pumpkin related recipes and warm woolly jerseys… but summer hasn´t yet left our part of the world and I, for one, am not in a rush for boots and jackets. So what if the days are getting shorter? It´s still warm enough to swim in the ocean and I´m quite happy being in denial, thank you very much. Here´s to summer, may you last at least another month… or two…

travel photography spain

Spanish North Coast road trip – Day 8

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Click here for Day 7: San Sebastian This was the last day of our rainy Spanish adventure and we didn´t really explore much since we had loads of ground to cover and not much time for anything except driving. We stopped briefly in Salamanca, which is packed with tourists in spite of the fact that it´s pretty much in the middle of nowhere… and also a tiny little town called Palenzuela where it appears they have more sheep than people… like New Zealand then, only much hotter. And so the story ends… we had a great time on this trip…

Spanish North Coast road trip – Day 7: San Sebastian

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Click HERE for Day 6: Mundaka to Zarautz San Sebastian! Known within the Basque country as Donostia, this city was the reason for our trip and it was great to finally be here and see that it was all worth the effort. This is definitely a place to spend a few days exploring… it´s quite a bit more expensive than the cities we visited on the previous 6 days but there´s loads to see and amazing food at every turn. This is without a doubt a foodie´s paradise.

Spanish North Coast Road trip – Day 6: Mundaka to Zarautz

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Click HERE for Day 5: Bilbao to Mundaka Day 6. Almost a week of being on the road and just as many days of rain. This was the day that we finally cracked. Up until this point we had been cheerful and optimistic… “tomorrow will be better” “there´s nothing we can do about it so we might as well just embrace the rain” and all manner of positive phrases that we bounced about between the 2 of us. But then, when trying to visit San Juan de Gaztelugatxe (which is supposed to look like THIS) we encountered mist and rain…

Spanish North Coast Road trip – Day 5: Bilbao to Mundaka

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Click HERE for day 4: Perlora to Bilbao The main reason for this road trip had been to spend some time exploring the Basque Country, as I have long been intrigued by this completely different culture tucked away on the mountains of north-eastern Spain and western France. The Basques are an ancient race of people, with a language completely unlike any other found in Europe. Their strong sense of cultural identity combined, perhaps, with their geographical isolation in the mountains means that since the Neolithic Era (Stone Age) this culture and language has evolved along it´s own path, with minimal…

Picos da Europa, Asturias, Spain

Spanish North Coast Roadtrip – Day 4: Perlora to Bilbao.

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Click here for day 3: Valdoviño to Perlora. Day 4 found us in the Asturias region, the rainy Asturias region as I have it on good authority that the Asturias just wouldn´t be the same without the rain. *sigh. Are you getting sick of hearing me complain about the rain? You must be, because I am too… but you need to know that we tried really hard to be positive about it. We were all “embrace the rain” “it´s still beautiful…” yada yada… We had our game faces on, I promise. Our plan had been to follow the coast as…

travel photography spain north coast

Spanish north coast road-trip: Day 3 – Valdoviño to Perlora

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Click here for Day 2: Portonovo to Valdoviño Day 3 took us via the town of Cedeira up to  Porto do Barqueiro, a colourful little fishing village perched on the edge of the cliffs that we figured was the northern-most town in Spain, although I could stand corrected, but it certainly looked like it was on the map. We stopped and explored whenever the rain stopped long enough for us not to ruin our camera gear, but after Viveiro, with the rain still beating down, we decided to hit the highway again and push on to the Asturias region, where…