HANNAH
From Cascais we walked to Estoril but it was only me and dad because Gabriel’s trousers were hurting him and Dawn had two stay on the boat with the men that were fixing the auto pilot.

           We walked along the sea front it was a really nice sunny day.

           We were walking too Estoril because Peter and Elizabeth stayed there for a couple of month’s during the war and they went back for their honey moon.

             When we got there we were taking pictures like crazy. There was a big casino at the side of it which we thought would have been there during the war so we took pictures of that as well.

             When we got there we realised that this was no ordinary hotel, it was a very posh 5 star. Everyone there was in top hats with white gloves. It was £500 a night!!!!!. But in the 40s it would have been quite cheep because the pound was so high. The staff there were very helpful they let us take pictures as much as we wanted and they gave us a leaflet and they pointed us to a museum just round the corner.

          The museum was about Jewish refugees over the war. And there was a big library about it as well but unfortunately it was all in Portuguese.

          After that we went two a news agents across the road and we were looking for some Estoril postcards to send to Peter and Elizabeth and then out of nowhere we found some palacio hotel postcards to send them.

          On the way back we stopped of on a warm heated bench by the sun and had some sandwiches I made along with some biscuits and then we had a really nice walk back.

ADAM

Finally some relief we got the manufacturers of the autopilot to come visit the boat who immeadialtly identified that we have had the wrong autopilot fitted. We now have a brand new one that fingers crossed will work. Anyhow Dawn stayed to oversee or overseer their work and Hannah Gabriel and I  headed for Estoril. At present we are in Cascais and estoril is about two miles along a promenade. The weather was beautiful just like a hot English summer day. Gabriel though only lasted a couple of hundred yards and headed back to the boat (with his sandwich). However he did have to walk through back through town and find the boat which he did. Anyhow We managed to find the hotel which is very posh, doormen in livery white gloves. It was nice to think that I was in the same place as my parents had been sixty years ago. The hotel staff were really friendly when we told them why we were visiting. My parents had spent some time during the war years, they were trying to get to Canada and Portugal was a stop on the way. The hotel had been filled with German and British intelligence officers and Elizabeth had always told us how she and Cynthia and Diane had hidden the German officers boots when they had left them out to be cleaned. Also in Estoril there was a exhibition on jews in Estoril during the war there were loads of pictures although the literature was in Portuguese. A local non Jewish Estoril man whose last name was Mendes saved many Jews by getting them Portugese passports. A story that I will research further. Anyhow thank god Germany is not on the Mediterranean so I don’t have to visit it. Anyhow it was a bit of family history… and in a cool place.