European Vacation – Lisbon to Ciudad Ridrigo

We got up early this morning to head back to Spain.

We had one stop we wanted to make in Portugal and we started off for Fatima.  The roads we traveled on today were in horrible shape – the worst we had seen since coming to Europe.  Again we were seeing red painted swastikas on everything – the roads – the signs – and buildings along the way. Looking past the roads and the defacing, we could see how beautiful the countryside was.

We were stopped at a road block this morning, but they  let us through without too much delay when they saw that we were  Canadian.

We thought about just passing right by Fatima and getting out of Portugal faster, but decided to continue.  It was a fairly quick stop though and then we were on our way.

It was getting late as we approached the border and we knew we would loose an hour so considered staying in Portugal for the night at a small town near the border.  Once we drove into the town though, all we could hear were sirens – so we thought it would be better to continue on.

Crossing into Spain was much like our experience of coming into Portugal, but they seemed a little friendlier this time – even though one of them had to leave his television show to look at our green card.

The first town we came to was Ciudad Ridrigo so we checked into a hotel here for the night.  It was pretty late by then and we just fell into bed.

Today was Sunday July 20th, 1975 and we traveled 340 km.

I have no pictures today.