Portugal in Spring

We spent a week and a half in Portugal this spring. Traveling together is something we do well with the three of us, and something I find healing. Although I found it hard at times to be in the moment, and to not let myself get irritated over small things. It was Y’s first ever flight. Coincidentally my first flight was to Portugal too, albeit to Porto, and when I was 19, not 9 as Y is. It was as uneventful as it should be. After picking up our rental car we drove north to Caldas da Rainha for the first leg of our trip. My sister and her husband moved there for retirement after the pandemic, and this was the first time we visited them in their new habitat. I had planned to do so already a long time ago, but I never got around to planning a trip in time. This time we used Y’s two weeks of spring vacation, and actually planned ahead. We stayed in a nice AirBnB just outside Caldas, in the green hills, where we had a full floor of a much larger residence to ourselves, including the use of…