DAY 12 - 22.6.2006

Damned, we screwed up badly! When you get a ticket as you go to a highway you are supposed to give it back in 12 hours, well, we didn't really know that so it took us almost 13 hours. The result: we had to pay double amount for the highway toll. And it was 65 euros!!! Got damn how it made us pissed off. We're trying to travel as cheap as possible and then this happens. What a great start for the day. We hate those tolls because there are no such things in Finland and it feels very weird to pay for those. And because we're driving a bigger car we belong to the second class which is more expensive.

Anyways, after reading our travel guides, we decided not to go to Lissabon, but to a nearby beach town called Estoril. From there we could go to Lissabon by train quite fast so it felt as a good choice. We had been waiting for to spend a cloudless day in the beach. Estoril was pretty nice, and so was the neighbour town called Cascais. Those were both quite small cities. We parked our car in Casino's parking place. That Casino is said to be the biggest one in Europe and it looked nice. After parking our car we wanted to go straight to the beach!

The beach was great. It was a typical tourist resort. Long beaches with walking avenues and showers behind the beach. And also some tourist shops. We put on our tan lotions and started to burn ourselves.

After getting enough sun and swimming we packed our bags and left to the train station. From the train station it was 30 minute drive to Lissabon city centre. In Lissabon we were in a bit of a hurry because we wanted to catch Brazil's game in Estoril's restaurants. So we explored the city fast. We went to this nice castle to see a nice view over the city. After that we continued walking the narrow streets and small parks before returning to the train station.

Back in Estoril... or actually Cascais we went to this area where there were outdoor restaurants and tvs turned on for the game. The atmosphere was nice as quite many seemed to cheer for Brazil. Luckily Brazil won and made several goals. We watched the whole game while drinking Sangria. Which is GREAT by the way!

After the game there was lots of people celebrating the victory along the streets. We returned to our car next to the Casino. But we were not leaving. We had decided to spend an extra day there because it was just so nice to relax there on those beaches. And because we had been quite fast earlier days we had this one extra day to spend somewhere. I was too tired to go see the Casino, but Arttu went there. It's just a bit frustrating when you can't afford to use your money there:) But at least I could wake up easily tomorrow early for the beach.