Surf School in Peniche, Portugal

So after finishing working for the foreseeable future, I decided that the best course of action was to pursue another great ambition... learning to surf ... so I packed my bag for a week's surf school in Portugal. And why Portugal? Well, my thinking was that it wasn't too far (and too expensive) to get to and that the weather would be decidedly warmer than the UK "summer" plus I have never been to Portugal.

I have to say I LOVED Portugal - the friendly portuguese, the language, the tall, dark, handsome men...(well, dark anyways!!!). The weather (yes, I am British and will mention it) was not as warm as I thought it would be at the coast, but I resisted temptation to buy another jumper.

I was staying in quite a lovely apartment with 5 other girls, 1 a friend I went with, and 2 others in my surf class. I met some lovely people and had a great time in the waves for about 4 hours or so a day. I would love to say that I am now able to surf well, but really, I just had quite good fun in the water with a surf board! I couldn't even really carry the board in that cool surfer chick way, but at least I could pose!


The evenings were good fun too, and one night where we crashed the surf instructors bbq, turned out to be great fun ... here we are with our surf instructors Felipe and Jaime:

Another highlight of the holiday was teaching 2 lovely Dutch girls in my class (and apartment) British chav slang...something ala Catherine Tate, but the one with actions too was particularly great..."Whatever minga, what's your mother still doing working at McDonalds?...keep walking"

The last afternoon of surfing saw the surf competition. I was quite nervous with people on the beach actually watching me, especially as the standing up had only really happened that morning, but there were lots of categories going including 'Best Wipeout'. I managed to get a prize with another girl for 'Best Style' as I basically ploughed into the back of her as she caught a wave and got my board under her board and we rode the wave to the beach together...would have been even better if I had been standing too, but, hey, I am still the proud owner of a Peniche Surf Camp T-shirt!!! Here's some of our class after our last surf:

On the Saturday, my friend and I escaped the drizzle of the coast and headed to Lisbon to explore and with the help of iphone maps (c/o my friend) and a flat to stay in (c/o a friend of my friend), we soaked up the sunshine and explored some of the delights of Lisbon. Here I am checking out some random art in one of the squares in Lisbon (not that you can see the art in the picture!):


Then Sunday, after my friend had left on an earlier flight, I had another little explore and went to some art museums and even did a bit of sketching - not good enough to share here though!

All in all a good active holiday and got back home just in time to plan the next adventure...