Bem-vindo or ‘welcome’ in Portuguese. Our latest blog post showcases some of the beauty in the North of Portugal, an hour or so from where we were staying with friends in Santar. I wanted to highlight this walk in my post because it was exactly the type of place, I like to spend my time. This walk, totalling 16km is below the 516 Arouca Bridge, a UNESCO site that offers exquisite views into the valley. Near the end of the path, we chose to stop by the waterfall below.

We had our lunch here and enjoyed the spray from the waterfall as well as a visit from an elderly furry friend who was introducing himself to everyone! As is becoming my favourite form of photography, I chose to do some macro work and enjoyed capturing different plants, flowers and creatures. If you check out our Instagram (@alassandalad), I managed to get a spider spinning its web!

Since I have been focusing on the smaller parts of our world, I am thoroughly enjoying the different plants and flowers. The colours were incredibly vibrant, the deeper we went into the valley. In fact, we stopped so many times to take photos that we actually missed our time slot for the bridge, twice! Fortunately, the 516 Arouca Bridge team kindly slotted us in at the end of the day (worth it!).

We only had two full days in Santar and we left much unexplored. It is a cosy little village where fruit trees offer delightful snacks and the alleyways are quiet at night: photographer’s dream for capturing the essence of traditional Portuguese culture. We will return. There weren’t any fruit trees down the pathway but many other kinds of trees, some blossoming, some evergreen, that cooled you as you walked and created that fairy tale mood. If I had more hours there, there would be so many more photos, however, a select few for you here.

I have no doubt that C will share his version of the walk and his trip in a future post, so do look out for that! If any of you are spider experts, please do get in touch with us if you can identify the species on our Instagram as we think the morphology is unique (and we are none the wiser after a quick Google)! I will leave you with a few pictures and thank you for visiting our blog. T x.