Our First Impressions of Vanlife in Portugal

I am so excited. For the next week we are doing van life here in Portugal actually with my parents all the way from Canada. We are here in Douro Valley so let's give you a tour of the van first. Okay so now let's show you the van. We've got these vans from Indy Campers and these are in the Nomad category which for us two people per van works out perfectly. You can have four people in it but I think two fits most comfortably. My mom's there. Hello! So in the van the first thing to note is the two captain chairs they actually swivel around so you can have four people at the table and I would advise while you're working in the back or parking for the night that you turn them around because there's a lot more space that opens up. Inside we have so much space. We have three drawers here. We've got storage here. We have our stove and our sink. Again storage here. Fridge. More storage in there but in here we have our bathroom so we have a toilet here plus a shower as well. Multiple windows that are fitted with screens. We have even the skylights that you can do screens so we can have the fresh air overnight and I have to say we'll see how it is when it's actually night time but the blackout situation of the windows seems to be very good. And then for our bed we have I would say about a double size bed here. We even have storage down below and since we're traveling we rented the sheets from them so we didn't have to worry about anything. Blackout curtains again and a skylight here as well. Because we're staying in a winery tonight of course let's go do a wine tasting. So the estate here was built back in 1896 so all the buildings that you see are well over 100 years old but the winery started back in 1930 by a family who still owns it to this day. We are at the fourth generation of winemaker here. Here are a couple fun facts about this place. First of all they produce over 50,000 bottles of wine every single year which is a lot but second they still make some of their wine like the authentic way by by feet. Yeah so I think one thing that I love the most about this winery is they're not open to like big commercial things so like no big bus tours are coming through like you just come through and they give you a tour or whatever and if you come through at the right time they'll allow you to even stomp on some grapes too. So something else they actually have olive trees on their farm as well and they send off their olives and then they get olive oil in return. So this here is actually part of the tasting as well and I have to tell you it is so good with the bread. Thank you so much Daniel. Thank you so much. Pleasure. Well that was a fantastic wine tour. They have some truly delicious wines here and a big shout out to Daniel who is the winemaker here. They weren't really doing wine tours today but he gave us a private one so big thank you. Now time to start making supper. My stepdad Gilles is making one of his specialties some rice with some sort of sauce and chorizo shrimp. It's gonna be a delight. So tonight we are gonna go have supper to my parents place right here. Gilles what are we having? You're the chef so you gotta tell us. Chorizo and shrimp it's uh you cook the good chorizo good Portuguese chorizo that you you cook and then the oil it releases all the paprika and all that and then you cook your vegetables and shrimp in it. Okay good night. Good night. There's stars? Oh oui. There's the big dipper that we always see in Kenya but it's this way in Kenya. It's not. Well great first day we are slowly getting used to our new vans. Yeah we have like a lot to kind of yeah get used to figuring out. What a great way to see Portugal so far. I think so too. We had a great supper. Yeah. Lots of fun. A little wine tasting. 10 out of 10. Fantastic. And it's starting all over again tomorrow. Yeah. We slept really good and the view this morning is stunning. Oh and butter. I'm missing butter. So for breakfast we have eggs and toast and smoked salmon and fruit. I forgot about my fruit. Got so much fruit. I'm excited. Quite fancy. Yeah oh I have cream cheese, oat milk for this. Oh we have yogurts. Man look at this. Who said van life had to be rough? Smoked salmon? One of the blinds on the driver's side is broken and every time I brake I lose all the visibility of my window because the blind goes all the way down the so we just have to find a way to get it stuck back with a sock you know sometimes you just gotta use your imagination. Fixed. Okay so we just left the winery and honestly I said this so many times last night it is everything I imagined and that I wanted it to be. The fact that you're just camping with the vineyards right there. Amazing wine. We discovered that we love Portugal wine if it's anything like we had last night. So now we are leaving and heading still saying inland to a royal place. Very royal. A special place. You'll see. Yeah we're gonna get more of the story once we're there. But now let's get ready for the most scenic road trip ever. Welcome to the Busaco Palace. It's really nice. This palace was built in 1885 for the last king of Portugal then after the fact in 1917 was actually converted in a beautiful five-star hotel which is still that today. So the palace is located in the middle of a huge forest which back in the days was the king's hunting grounds. Now though it's just a park so there's lots of walking trails and little picnic sites throughout it. There's a sign that says that you can't go in the hotel unless you're a customer but we're gonna see if we can go have lunch there and therefore become a customer. For lunch we are having a delicious Portuguese red wine made for the hotel here and it's from 2015. My stepdad picked it because it's the year that Tracy and I met. A very good year. Well well well that was a delicious lunch. Tracy what do you think? That was fantastic. That was so good. Five services plus a bread service. And the bread service came with like a bottle of sparkling sorry a glass of sparkling wine. I'm pretty sure there was actually snail in the butter but it made it so good. A little salty. Yeah man 10 out of 10 and it costed only 75 euros a person. It's really not that bad. It was good. It was really good. I think it was worth it. Yeah so up to the next spot our camp for the night which is gonna be in a very cool area. You guys will see. We made it. The home for the night. The beach is right there. There's a beautiful little town with mountains in the back and we lost my parents but they're coming. We sent we sent them a pin. They should be should be there in five minutes. Hello. I'm quite excited about this home for the night. It's a little windy and a little chilly right now but all I can hear are the waves and I think it's pretty cute. Let's go explore. Let's go. So since we had a really big lunch for supper tonight we've just got some meat and cheeses and bread. I say that's a light supper but we always end up eating way too much of it that's just the way it is and a good bottle of wine. So we're both settled into our parking spots. Yes our parking spot. Yep. And there's a little boardwalk here that goes along the beach so right now we're gonna go check it out. Okay so if you're wondering kind of like how we found these places, two things that have really helped me plan this van life trip. One, the winery we stayed at was booked through Portugal Easy Camp. Kind of shows you certain quintas that you can stay at park up. Fantastic. And then this one is just a free parking lot and that was through Parks for Night or Park for Night and basically it shows you all the service stations, all the free parkings, if you can park there, if you can't, any campgrounds, motorhome, basically any service thing that you need to know about on that app. So those two things have made this trip so much easier. So it is time for us to call it a night and go to bed because the adventure starts again tomorrow morning but for you guys it's gonna be in the next one!