Our Portuguese friends organised a very varied and wide programme for us. We e.g. visited an agricultural school, spent a day on the beach in Figueira da Foz (even cloudy and rainy weather did not avoid some of us getting sunburnt!), made a day trip to the capital Lisbon (with a trip to the pilgrimage town of Fátima on the way back), visited the Roman ruins in Conimbriga and finally also made a day trip to Porto.

Needless to say that we had a detailed city tour in Coimbra where we visited the marvellous university, had a glance at the botanical garden, made a trip to "Portugal dos Pequenitos" and also did a boat trip on the river Mondego.

The way of carrying out the programme was very southern - a kind of doing things we had to get used to...the bottom line is that everything worked out well in the end! Also the weather gods meant well with us - we escaped the heat-wave and had enjoyable temperatures.

As it was a dancing journey there were also some performances scheduled.

The first one was in a nursing home, the second one on the main square in Coimbra (with some unintentional interruptions due to rainfalls) and the last one was in "Portugal dos Pequenitos".

The icing on the cake of our performances and also of our week in Coimbra was the folk dancing festival in Fala where we performed as one of six folk dancing groups. This performance could be seen as a "breaking-through success" - even the joint of a leather trousers broke through!

"Schuhplatteln" like in "The Matrix"

Actually we made a lot of good friends and therefore saying goodbye was very sad and tearful. Altogether the journey was gorgeous and will stay in our minds forever!

You can find photos of the journey in our Gallery.