Claire and Taylor's European Odyssey

The night train.....ok, so we boarded the train in San Sebastian at 1030pm, luckily with a couple other Canadians and Americans, onto an unmarked train with no carriage numbers. We walked around and finally found our seats in a sort of room within a carriage that has about 8 seats in it. There was one other Spanish guy in there for a bit, but otherwise we had the place to ourselves. The seats were super uncomfortable and there were people smoking in the hallways....we got woken up at 12 by a guy gettting on, apparently on crack and really wacked, but friendly, then at 3 by a couple of drunk Portugese guys. Let´s just say it was quite the night.

We arrived in Lisbon at 11 the next morning where we had lunch (Lisbon was nice, but we decided not to stay long), then caught a train to Faro (in the Algarve, south Portugal - see the map), then another little train to Tavira. Tavira is a small town, but it still took forever to walk out to this little dock where we caught a little boat over to Tavira Island, which is essentially a campground and a beach. It would have been an island paradise if it weren´t for the poor welcome we recieved from the other (mostly Portugese) campers. Let´s just say no one said hi, and we totally felt like we were invading a private party. But the beaches were gorgeous, complete with palm umbrellas

We camped and spent the next day on the beach, then left the next morning because we felt a little uncomfortable. Getting out of Portugal the next day was a freaking mission....let´s just say the Portugese and the Spanish don´t communicate much and travelling between the two is not easy!