Some more days in Portugal and driving, driving and driving!

Fatima (more in the text)

Candles and people could leave letters to the Lady of the Fatima

Porto and an original mailbox!

On the left pictures you can see all Port supplier houses and the right is opposite side of the port houses

Porto town

Port wine barrels and tasting glasses

Sampling :=)

What is this??? We could avoid the winter the whole way, but in northern Spain we found snow (high on the mountains though...)brrrr-rrrrr!

Picos de Europa

Driving in the clouds

After Lisbon we saw still some places before our arriving Porto. Fatima was one of them. We heard about this place first time in Morocco from another tourist, and we were told that it is similar as the Lourdes in France, even bigger. Of course the name Fatima catched us, since it is in Morocco a very popular women name and we found it great that there is a village in Europe who carries this same name. So of course we needed to check this place out. At the end it was nothing as big as Lourdes. It had a quite big park with one older church and with one big modern church.

The story goes back to 10 May 1917. Three children were amusing themselves by building a little house of stones and suddenly they saw a brilliant light and they thought it was a lightning and decided to go back home. They started to walk and another flash lit up the place. They saw “a lady more brilliant than the sun”, from whose hands hung a white rosary. The Lady told the three little shepherds that it was necessary to pray much, and she invited them to return to this place five consecutive months, on the 13^th day at that hour. The children did so and the 13^th day of June, July, August, September and October, the Lady appeared to them again. At the last apparition on October 13, with a 70.000 people present, the Lady said to them that she was the “Lady of the Rosary” and that a chapel was to be built there on her honour and that is where the church is today and its 15 altars are dedicated to the 15 mysteries of the Rosary.

We were in Fatima just the week before Pope was coming there and they were expecting 300.000 people to come!

In Porto we stayed couple of days - which was enough. Not so nice city as Lissabon, but good to see once and learn something from Port wines (of course!). We visited one port- house and sampled their products, to learn the difference between them and naturally bought some with for later purpose, hah!

From Porto we drew at once in the border of Spain, spent few nights in North-Spain, visited the Picos of Europa, which is the big natural park surrounded with beautiful mountains. The route was about 150 km and lovely to see! From Spain we drew to France and drew everyday about 400 km to reach Holland and that is where we are now, staying with big boss parents and their pets, of course!

And the plan is to be back in Finland after few weeks…