Day 04: Tue 8 May

It was still raining heavily in the morning, but we decided to drive to the airport with our hired car to pick up the scooters and take them to the Yamaha dealer for minor repairs. The weather forecast predicted that the rain would stop later during the morning and we were relying on that. Upon arrival at the scooters we set up our helmet intercoms and were happy to find that the new helmet with its new speaker / microphone setup was working well. By that time the rain had indeed stopped and we were on our way to the Yamaha workshop. It took some getting used to driving around the heavy Lisbon traffic with scooters which both lacked the essential left rear view mirror. Anyway, our minor problems were fixed within an hour while we enjoyed some coffee in an adjacent coffee shop. Satisfied that the scooters were now fit for the trip, we proceeded back to the airport to return the hired car and pick up our luggage.

We departed the airport  at 12:30 and had decided on two destinations. The first destination was about 10 km outside Lisbon and served the purpose of getting us out of the city of Lisbon while still using motorways. Upon arrival at this interim destination, we changed the GPS parameters to exclude motorways and toll roads. We then proceeded towards  our second destination which Vero had picked based on observations she had made while we were on our flight to Lisbon. The destination was situated around 150 km north of Lisbon and it appeared to lie in an area of forest and lakes. We travelled along various country roads and noticed the decreasing traffic density. Taking it easy with several short stops in between, we arrived at our destination area late afternoon. The village did not offer much in the way of accommodation so we consulted a local person in a cafe as well as our navigator. The best option appeared to be the "Estalagem Lago Azul" which appeared to be a scenic hotel on a blue lake within hilly forest terrain. We travelled 7 km from the village to the hotel and found a very pleasant 4-star house presenting the charme of yesteryear. We decided to stay and were treated to an excellent in-house dinner with Bacalhau and very good local wine. While the hotel did not have internet facilities, the friendly staff made a plan by arranging for us to use the internet facilities of the "Apart Hotel" which was part of the group and situated just one kilometer further along the lake.

We covered 168 kms during the day.