“3,000 km journey to the West“ / Serra do Bouro, Portugal – Day 1

by Valérie Wolf Gang
September 6, 2014
Portugal, Serra do Bouro

I moved to Portugal for 6 months and I’ve decided to go there with a car. 3,000 km to the West across the Europe. The journey was long and exhausting, but we are finally here. Urša helped me on my journey and she will stay here for two weeks, then I’m on my own. Before the start everything went wrong (I will write about it in my next blog), but now everything fell back to order and I’m more than happy!

Untitled-1The journey from Slovenia to Portugal.

Our journey began in the rainy and cold Slovenia. This summer was totally weird with lots of rain and very low temperatures. So I was excited to move West, to get some summer temperatures and enjoy the warm weather to get some new inspiration and do new projects.

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Leaving rainy Slovenia (at 13:00) – there was a glimpse of light in the distance which was a good indication that we are heading towards warmer places.

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Car FULLY loaded!

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Lovely message on the bottle.

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Random car pump in Italy with a random cat.

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We reached France after 1,000 km and it was very early in the morning.

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Urša sleeping in the car while I was pumping gas.

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Beautiful sunrise in the middle of south France.

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We stopped by the beautiful river and lake and had a picnic.

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Driving through Spain was beautiful!

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The view through our hotel window in Spain.

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After 2,100 km we had enough sleeping in the car so we decided to go to the highway hotel and we were more then happy with low prices and lots of comfort to give us energy for another 1,000 km.

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Ice-cream in Spain.

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It was hot and we were happy to change back to short and enjoy 30°C.

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Our last stop before entering Portugal to pump some more gas (it’s cheaper in Spain).

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Crossing the Spain-Portugal border (now it’s empty so you don’t have to show any documents or stop).Processed with VSCOcam with c1 preset

We finally reached Portugal!!

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And we became more excited!

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Tired but happy we reached our destination in the evening, where we immediately went to the beach to try the sea and had some fish for dinner in the small beach restaurant. We had to put sand from our shoes (last picture above) and we continued to look for our new house which will become my home for the next 6 months.

Processed with VSCOcam with c1 presetWe found the house and where we were greeted by friendly owners (also with some fresh homegrown fruits and vegetables) and we started to unpack everything. Now we will finish the night with some good Portugal Porto wine and fall in a deep coma.

Tomorrow and through the next days, weeks and months I will keep you updated and hopefully share some insight into my “new life” abroad.

Goodnight,

Valerie

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Multimedia artist from Slovenia.