The sun made a rare appearance a few days ago, allowing us a chance to get out and explore the little town of Belmonte, known for its enduring Jewish community. Jews here have kept their faith alive for many centuries, often in secret, and throughout various periods of intense persecution. I have noticed only maybe one other visible instance of Judaism elsewhere in Portugal, but you can barely walk a block here without seeing a menorah or a mezuzah.

We headed straight to the castle, a short walk from the very old little stone house where we stayed. We had the place almost entirely to ourselves, and the kids always love a good castle. With relatively warm air, sunshine on our faces, birdsong on the breeze, and beautiful views of the rolling countryside, our spirits felt revived. The weather held for wandering around town and getting in a good afternoon jog – a gift!

We booked this stone house ages ago, shortly before leaving home, and since it was a nonrefundable booking, we had no choice but to stick with our plans and stay. While charming a bit in its age, we quickly noticed that everything was old: mattresses, the sponge, towels, appliances that barely worked, etc. It made for our most uncomfortable lodging in Portugal.

One silver lining, for the first half of our stay while it worked, was watching the Olympics on TV. Nic and I have not had access to watching the Olympics since we got married, so having cable while traveling is awesome! Our kids have seen very little Olympics footage, and they are loving it now. Figure skating wins as crowd favorite, but they are happy to watch skiing, snowboarding, luge, speed skating, or hockey.

Persistent rain dampened the rest of our Belmonte stay after the one day of sun, so we didn’t get to do much other than school there.

We have moved ourselves south to historic Évora now, after a driving day that brought us back to barf territory. Jude got carsick partway through our drive, unfortunately preceded by a breakfast that included a full cup of Greek yogurt. He appears to be just fine now, and we’ve managed to clean the car seat up in our Airbnb shower.

We arrived in Évora in sunshine, on a vibrant early spring day. Driving south through central Portugal, we saw little other than endless green fields of grazing sheep and cows. The occasional whitewashed village with accompanying castle dotted the countryside. Eucalyptus and pine trees tilted east and had obviously received a tough thrashing in recent storms. We drove over one dam with crazy churning water on the low side. As Portugal continues to struggle with flooding, we continue to be grateful to be away from the problematic areas. All the water from the higher inland areas where we have been for over a week now is flowing down and still causing major problems by the coast.

The constant deluge of rain has sapped my inspiration to write a bit. Since leaving Porto we’ve had very limited opportunities to get outside. Other than a few short consecutive hours, it has rained to an almost unbelievable degree. Evidently they call this series of storms a storm train – not a train we’d like to ride again.

If you have been watching international news, perhaps you’ve seen footage of some terrible flooding in Portugal. Alcácer do Sal, a place we ate lunch en route to Sintra, is underwater. Many rivers have reached levels not seen for a number of decades. Powerful waves have scraped at beach cliffs along with enough rain to cause landslides. The windstorm we experienced only a small part of two weeks ago has led to over ten deaths and long term power outages. We have been fortunate to not be in the worst of the weather, and for this last storm system, we were on high ground with a big view. We suffered no more than boredom and a lack of exercise, but we are praying for those affected in the rest of the country.

We left Porto to drive north just past Viana do Castelo. For the most part, we were stuck inside our small beachside apartment. At least we had a front row seat to the powerful weather, as our front door looked right out on the churning ocean. For several days, the surging waves produced huge quantities of foam that piled up on the shore and were then blown a fair distance from the water, like snow. Cars driving past on the narrow road that separated us from the water looked like they had driven through a snowstorm!

Our kids love the little plastic Plus-Plus blocks we’ve seen all over Europe. We’ve collected quite a few colors now, and the big kids can easily spend an afternoon buildings designs they find on an app. A few new small LEGO sets have kept them busy as well on these rainy days.

We got lucky with a few hours of sunshine and explored Viana do Castelo on foot. We took the funicular uphill to see big views and a cathedral. Many, many stairs brought us back to town and sea level.

While Storm Leonardo rolled across the Iberian Peninsula, we traveled southeast to a rural property in Fagilde. In better weather the kids would have found loads to do outside, but their chances to interact with the animals and play on the property were quite limited by the heavy and persistent rain. We paid extra to use an inflatable hot tub, which was great for the nasty weather. (Just remember to turn the heater off before using the microwave, or you’ll flip the main breaker!) Booking the hot tub included two bottles of local wine from 2015 – delicious!

We traveled in the rain (fortunately, not snow) this morning to Belmonte. We’re deep in the center of Portugal now, with snowy mountains nearby. Among other things we’ve had our main credit card compromised now. Our back-up was compromised two months ago, and we don’t have the new ones with us yet. Oh, the joys of travel! With only about 1.5” of rain forecast in the next five days, we’re hoping we can get outside more!

On the four Porto days that were clear enough for us to attempt exploring, our odds were about 50% for dry sightseeing.

We got all dressed and ready for our first day in the city only to head home after getting soaked in the first twenty minutes of walking.

Learning from our first attempt, we took the metro straight to our destination the second time around. It started to sprinkle the moment we got off the metro, naturally. We have seen sprinkles turn quickly into torrential rain here many times, so it seemed inevitable that we would soon be rained out. We walked across the Ponte Luis I as the rain rolled in, enjoying the views of the Douro River and all the buildings and activity of the Ribeira.

As it began to rain in earnest we ducked into the cathedral and watched mass begin. It cleared up enough for us to leave our dry spot and get soaked walking down to the river’s edge. One funicular ride up and two metro rides later, we were back at home base, defeated again! This weather has inspired all sorts of superstitious talk: leaving sunglasses at home ensures sun, packing lunch equals rain, etc.

Our third attempt provided better results with enough sunshine to walk around town on a brisk but beautiful day.

We expected to be rained on yesterday but went out anyway to try to see a few more things before leaving Porto. We found some friendly faces and fun treats at the Mercado do Bolhão: fresh and colorful fruit smoothies and dates stuffed with fillings in the theme of many countries. It poured for about ten minutes while we stayed nice and dry at the market – what luck!

We absorbed a bit more of Porto’s colorful, creative vibe in the sunshine, grateful for the chance to sightsee under blue sky. Portugal’s second largest city is a wild mix of old and new. You can see ancient churches, shiny department stores, fine art, and graffiti in the same block.

We are about forty minutes south of the Spanish border now, at our northernmost point on the Iberian Peninsula. The crashing waves in our front yard remind us of the Oregon coast. As usual, it’s about to rain.

We spent a quiet handful of days in Salreu, Portugal, at the edge of a peaceful estuary. When the weather permitted, we took family walks and watched for wildlife, especially enjoying the enormous white storks we’ve seen around Portugal. On our one sunny day in Salreu, we drove out to the beach, and the kids ran up and down the dunes for as long as we let them. We like beach days in January!

Every Portugal lodging where we’ve stayed has had evidence of some form of water damage, and most of our lodgings have also had some smells associated with water damage. With such a damp climate, mold and mildew proliferate. I haven’t spoken to a native about it, but Google tells me that most Portuguese feel rather helpless and resigned to the decay plaguing their homes and don’t see it as a big problem. And while we personally don’t have any apparent respiratory issues with mold, we are a bit sensitive where the smells are concerned. We’ve had two lodgings where a room smelled bad enough to warrant closing the door and not using that space at all. Other places had less evident problems, but you can always find signs of mildew and green or black gunk somewhere. And that’s just indoors. Every building needs a good power wash here, but I don’t think anyone feels it’s necessary. We’re not staying in the most expensive places, but we’re not slumming it either, so I can only imagine the issues with the even more affordable options. After reading many, many reviews on Airbnb, it seems that plenty of people either don’t notice the mildew, think it’s perfectly normal, or are only slightly bothered by it. Gross!

Sometimes the mildew odors are masked briefly by cleaning products – another smell we can barely tolerate. It’s hard to find unscented anything in Portugal (as has been the case everywhere we’ve been south of Copenhagen), and we’ve often been overwhelmed by the laundry detergent, hand soaps, and any other cleaning products used on our lodgings. Proprietors will also add scent sticks (dubbed “stink sticks” by our family) to mask bad smells, and we have to take all these outside instantly upon arrival. Needless to say, we look forward to smelling the familiar (and unscented) smells of our home.

Now that we’ve been in a number of Portuguese grocery store chains, our menu has gotten just a little more creative. We don’t eat repeat meals all that often at home, since I get bored easily. But our menu while traveling has been more limited. I rarely have a chance to go to the same grocery store twice with our pace of travel, so it’s always hard work to translate the unknown ingredients, navigate an always-changing store layout, and to adjust on the fly as I see what I can find. If we can’t shop on foot individually, Nic will have the unfortunate task of entertaining our kids while I try to use my zapped brain to do the shopping. Our kids lack recent grocery store practice, as I have fully embraced pick-up orders at home. You can picture the circus, I’m sure. Even after figuring out what to cook and buying it all, there is at times the issue of how to cook given the wonky collection of cooking supplies we find at each Airbnb. This all requires more of me than I feel it should!

But since we have gotten more familiar with our options here, I’ve had just a little more brain power to send towards things like making homemade pancakes from the recipe I use at home. It took multiple trips to obtain baking soda, but all the other ingredients I use were easy to find. I haven’t seen a measuring cup in any of our lodgings, but I have figured out how to work without one. Laila is improving her pancake flipping skills since we added pancakes to the breakfast rotation, and everyone appreciates a familiar breakfast so far from home.

Another interesting difference about Portuguese grocery stores is the shelf space allotted to wine. You can buy a cheap bottle of wine for less than €2 here, and you will have literally hundreds of bottles of wine to choose from. I estimate even a small grocery store will give as much as 20% of the total shelf space to wine. We’ve received a few bottles of wine as welcome gifts, and that has kept us from shopping for it. We did recently buy some port wine, though, since we are in Porto. Port wine is produced exclusively in this part of Portugal and can’t legally be called port unless it originates in the Douro Valley of northern Portugal. Port is a fortified sweet wine typically served with dessert, and its high alcohol content runs around 20%! Nic found it drinkable, but I think it tastes exactly like the Robitussin of my childhood – blech!

The other reason we have little to report is that it has been rainy. We must have seen Montana’s annual rainfall in the last ten days. It’s easy to get caught in an unpredictable rain storm and to be instantly soaked and pretty chilly. Without a dryer, we have to be smart about how soaked we get and when. Rain has foiled our plans a few times, which can be so frustrating when we’ve done all the work to get the whole family out the door. Rainy days make for good school days, though, so we are staying on top of that.

The weather cooperated for a special hike on our last Coimbra day. We drove half an hour into the hills to Lousã, passing through beautiful rural scenery on the way.

In many ways, rural Portugal reminds us of Albania. The topography is similarly wrinkled, and the small towns here feel about the same size as many we drove through in Albania. Portugal and Albania are at a similar latitude, so some of the plant life and plenty of the weather overlaps. Both small countries contain everything from snow-capped mountains to sandy beaches. But where Albanian architecture seems blocky and utilitarian (and ugly), rural Portuguese towns are almost universally charming with their neutral and whitewashed buildings and terracotta tiled roofs. Albanian towns rest under a layer of scattered trash, and the Portuguese prefer to keep their small towns tidy with even construction debris piled very neatly. Portugal has invested money into road engineering that eliminates some of the curves the land could demand, whereas Albania just pours asphalt in a line along the hillsides, daring all to defy carsickness.

We hoped to reach at least one schist village on our hike. These tiny villages high in the hills of rural Portugal are built from schist, a local stone. The houses fade into the landscape seamlessly, and you could easily miss seeing a village if you aren’t looking for it. Many of the villages were mostly abandoned at some point in the 1900s, and efforts to restore the villages and bring tourism their way have made obvious progress.

Our hike began a mile early due to road construction. After admiring Lousã’s pretty little ancient castle, we set off on the trail through a deep gorge and up, up, up to the village of Talasnal.

The three big kids are champion hikers. We logged over four miles and at least 1100 feet of elevation gain. These kids tend to set off at a jog and would be quickly out of sight if we let them. We rarely hear complaints while hiking, and I’m not even feeding them candy or snacks to get that result! They just love a good trail, and I love that about them!

Walking into Talasnal truly did feel like walking back in time. Although you can drive to this village, it’s a place you wouldn’t imagine seeing cars. And anyone who does drive here has to park in a little area outside of town, since you can only walk on the narrow pathways between houses. I kept thinking I’d see an old man riding his donkey, or hear the bells of a flock of sheep, like in Albania. But in the off-season and on a weekday, Talasnal was almost completely deserted (and very decked out for Christmas).

Having added on the extra mileage at the beginning, we didn’t want to push it and visit another village – next time! There are several nearby villages that make for a nice hiking loop (if you think gaining a bunch of elevation is nice 😊). So we ate our lunch in Talasnal and headed down, down, down.

Rain threatened, but we made it back to the car dry. We had a small world moment when some Helena people parked by us and asked questions about the road construction and trail. The guy’s daughter even went to high school in Polson!

All in all, the day was an easy win for the Hendrychs family. We’re happy to know we have loads of good hiking waiting for us at home, but we are definitely enjoying the unique hikes we have experienced on our trip.

Continuing north, we left Sintra to drive to Coimbra, Portugal’s fourth largest city.

Nic had heard a podcast episode about a local hero who helped Portugal win the critical Battle of Aljubarrota against Spain in 1385. This battle safeguarded Portuguese independence and established a new dynasty. To commemorate the victory, John I of Portugal built a magnificent monastery and founded the town of Batalha. We stopped for lunch there and admired the soaring walls of the huge chapel. In an otherwise small and normal town, this huge ornate building really sticks out.

Coimbra has treated us well this week. We’re staying right next to an old convent and monastery with views across the river to historic downtown.

We walked into town a few days ago and visited the Igreja de Santa Cruz. We’ve seen churches decorated with oil paintings, tapestries, and stained glass, but this church has an azulejo-lined interior dating from the 1100s. I had seen the church first when taking a quick walk the night we arrived. I was walking through a charming pedestrianized shopping street, chatting with my mom on the phone and not paying much attention to my surroundings, and popping out at a pretty little plaza with this intricate church facade surprised me!

It has rained on and off here, so we’ve spent some time indoors doing school or shopping by car. We found one of the coolest playgrounds of the whole trip inside a mall. I haven’t been in an indoor mall since who knows when, but a few of us needed to replace some worn-out clothing items. We found much-needed socks and a shirt for Morgan, and the kids got to climb high above the mall floor!

As usual, the whole family also enjoyed a stroll in Coimbra’s botanical garden. All we really need is a free restroom, fish ponds, and a bamboo thicket. Sunshine helps too.

Our last hurrah in Sintra was the perfect cherry on top of our magical visit: a trip to the Quinta da Regaleira, one big piece of art in the form of an estate.

Situated on the side of a hill, the estate’s grounds feature a set of winding paths and staircases through the landscape. The plant life somehow appears simultaneously wild and perfectly manicured. Around each corner you discover a new and amazing tower or fountain, grotto or waterfall, chapel or palace. Every view seems more beautiful than the last. It’s enchanting and beguiling, the kind of place you could play hide and seek and literally never be found.

Although we didn’t see many other kids and had to keep reminding ours to stay close to us and keep the noise down, it was the ideal tourist attraction for our crew. The kids explored secret passages through dark caves and grottoes, climbed narrow steps to the tops of towers, and descended the spiral staircase to the bottom of the 88-foot deep Initiation Well. I can only imagine the fun they’d have on this property with unbridled freedom.

By the time we entered the palace building and had a chance to read some information, everyone was tired and ready for lunch. (Do you see the common theme in our travels? We see so much and never have time to read more than the bare minimum – oh well!) We would love to find a good coffee table book about this estate, as it certainly deserves a book of its own. I’m not sure what we are looking for exists, but it certainly should!

Our Sintra expeditions brought us into contact with only a fraction of the sights. Our guidebook recommends a day or two in Sintra, but we could easily spend a few weeks exploring it all in greater detail. We would love to come back here again and can heartily recommend a visit.

This rural-ish family doesn’t get many opportunities to go to museums, so we spent a big chunk of our Lisboa day indoors looking at aquatic creatures at the Oceanário de Lisboa. The eye-catching centerpiece of this awesome aquarium is the enormous two-story tank full of sharks, rays, and fish. The layout of the aquarium gives you many views into this tank as you move through exhibits from different oceans. The small amount of written information meant we could feast our eyes on the animals without feeling guilty for not reading everything or forcing our kids to listen to endless explanations they didn’t ask to hear. Family favs were the sea otters, Sunfish, bright tropical fish, sea horses, and penguins.

After the aquarium, we hopped on the nearby cable car for an aerial tour of the futuristic setting of the Expo ‘98.

I didn’t document it with pictures, but the girls and I got to visit a unique yarn store, Retrosaria Rosa Pomar. In a country full of sheep, this company is the only one to take Portuguese raw wool and transform it completely into yarn for consumer purchase. Their yarns are perhaps the ideal example of Portuguese yarn: toothy, rustic, and tough. I appreciated the chance to touch all the yarn (and to buy some too!) and to read labels and see yarn from less common breeds of sheep. The girls loved looking around and touching all the sample knits too. All three boys fell apart, so we made our way back to the train and to home base in Sintra.

We missed the most popular sights of Lisboa. There is a chance we’ll swing through again on our way back to the south coast, or we might just have to see it all next time.

We interrupt our regular programming to describe a magical, surreal land – a mysterious place covered in misty clouds that come and go without reason, defying the weather forecast on a daily basis and layering surfaces with moisture and moss and mildew. Here, the hilly environs shelter numerous majestic estates and castles, hidden by dense, jungle-like foliage of incredible variety. Palaces and ancient castle walls soar high above narrow cobbled streets. Intricate and colorful tiles adorn building facades and tiny benches, and you’ll find the street names stuck to the sides of walls in beautiful little groupings of hand-lettered tiles. Secret stairways transport you steeply from moss-covered path to narrow street, or garden, or viewpoint, or to another set of stairs. The woods issue forth mysterious sounds and smells – spicy eucalyptus, fierce wind, random opera singing, bells, the many languages of international visitors. This is Sintra, and I really do think it’s magical!

Originally a retreat for the wealthy from Lisboa’s heat and hustle, Sintra is now a 40-minute train ride from the middle of Lisboa. The pile of windy, hilly streets made us nervous driving in, but we managed to park by our place and haven’t had to use the car much.

We’ve had to dodge unpredictable rain, but when the skies cleared enough for a hike, we headed uphill to see the Palácio Nacional da Pena, a palace affectionately dubbed the “Ketchup and Mustard Castle” a few months back when our kids first saw a guidebook picture. We gained over a thousand feet as we hiked through parks, woods, narrow streets, and up stairways.

Rain rolled in and kept us from hanging out for long, but before heading down, our kids had a celebrity moment with some Koreans who started talking to us about our kids, saying they never get to see babies at home. They asked to take our picture and to then take a picture with us. Then we stood in the rain and airdropped pictures back and forth. From Danish scowls to Korean adoration, it’s always interesting to travel with four kids!

Hiking downhill became its own adventure when we sought shelter from the rain in an amazing little cave. And, never one to turn down a chance to interact with poultry, Laila caught a bewildered rooster in a park. I’m guessing the poor guy had never had a young American chicken lady grab him by the tail feathers, since he appeared quite confused by the incident. Thinking about the different types of terrain, history, human and animal interaction, and architecture we saw on this one hike makes a typical walk at home sound, well, very boring.

Laila’s rooster is a resident of the Parque da Liberdade that we cut through frequently in Sintra. We have seen some beautiful parks in Portugal, many of which are very old and thoughtfully designed. With the mild climate, we saw a few plants blooming even in the middle of winter, and we wonder what it would all look like at other times of the year. What a treat to see flowers in January!

Our last Airbnb, though short, reminded us of a few things we miss: conversation and freedom. We planned our stay by Zambujeira do Mar for two nights as a brief transition between hanging with my parents in Lagos and our next longer chunk of time in Sintra. We expected little more than a suitable place to stay, but we drove away refreshed in unexpected ways.

For the kids, it’s hard to travel without a few acres in tow. We turn our wild children outside regularly at home, and our quiet street means we can leave them to their own devices. They are loud and messy and get into all sorts of trouble. It’s frustrating at times and results in obscene amounts of laundry, but it also uses up a good bit of their endless energy and creativity.

While traveling, the kids have mostly been confined to apartment life. We are constantly asking them to stop stomping and yelling, trying our best (with middling results on a good day) to be conscientious neighbors. We occasionally have a terrace or small yard that helps a bit, but it doesn’t compare to our yard and field at home. We visit playgrounds when we can and log quite a few walking miles while sightseeing, but it’s not the same as freedom and space for the kids. I’ve been taking our space at home for granted, I think, and I feel for all the kids in the world (and their poor parents) who can’t run and play freely on a regular basis.

Now, I have to pause to say I do see a downside of raising our kids this way. I look at other European kids, though they be few in number, and see mostly compliant, quiet miniature adults. They appear to be considerate and so much more aware of the people around them compared to our little animals. Most of the time I hardly even notice them, whereas my children’s every act demands attention. There has to be some cultural osmosis going on here, because we have instructed and corrected our kids constantly on such topics for their entire lives without getting the same result. We raise them to not feel like they are the center of the universe, but these European children appear to understand that lesson innately. Even the babies scream less than ours!

Back to Portugal – our last lodging came with a few acres of space, lots of kid toys, and enough distance from a quiet road. And a big bonus: a few friendly kids who were happy to play outside. The kids romped and roamed, and everything felt right with the world. In the brief time we were there they were outside until bedtime and rushed through breakfast to get outdoors – beautiful!

Meanwhile, our kind expat Belgian hosts made time to chat with us. We stood in the warm sunshine for quite some time, talking about kids and Portugal and expat life and Airbnb hosting, the entire conversation made possible by the amazing language skills of so many Europeans.

We left the conversation feeling so refreshed, and we realized that it had been a long time since we had had an in-person conversation with anyone other than each other or my visiting family. We had meaningful talks with one of our Albanian volunteering contacts, but that was almost two months ago! And with young kids consuming our lives, we already run at a deficit where adult conversation is concerned.

So Montana friends, forgive us if we talk your heads off when we return. It’s going to be hard to show some restraint! And if you cross paths with someone who needs a chance to chat, give that person the gift of your time and attention!