The Choogal family didn’t have a lot of money. They were poor. It was too expensive for them to live in France or Spain so they started roaming elsewhere to try and find some affordable real estate. They came across a land that had it’s own delicious flavoured chicken and was run by mountain goats. The Choogals were human beings which meant they were a fair bit smarter than the olde mountain goats. The changes that the Choogals enforced on this land made life for the mountain goats more pleasurable. The mountain goats started to worship this family. Out of appreciation for all they had done, the mountain goats decided to name this land after the family. “What should we name it?” asked one mountain goat to another. “Well, we want more people like them to this land. Let’s get all the people who can’t afford to live anywhere else, and bring them here. We can call it ‘Poorchoogal’.” Over time the spelling of the name of this land has changed however the language used by the mountain goats has stayed the same. Portuguese is the native tongue of these people.

A plane drive down from Newcastle to London and an assumption that London Gatwick airport and London Luton airport was less than an hour and a half way, saw a pretty stressed Scallywag. In good time, the Scallywag was checking in with Chad. Chad is a mate from back in Sydney. I can’t quite remember how I met him but he thinks it was from an Australia Day party back in my olden days. For the next five days, we are the Portuguese Pelicans.

Not a great deal to do in Lisbon apart from just the usual touristy things. The Pelicans had a night out in Bairro Alto and got lost amongst the city vibes. They went to the ‘thieves market’ where gypsies were flogging their junk. I’ve seen better garage sales. The only cool thing about it was that some of the crap was so ancient it got me reminiscing on the days of puberty.

A hike and train ride to a little town inland of Lisbon called Sintra. Pretty cute little town that reminded the Pelicans of Italy. Lunch with a view, I asked the waiter if they had any Portuguese chicken. Pretty quickly realised that they just call it chicken. And that got me thinking. Does that mean the Portuguese call our chicken Australian chicken? Or do the Turks call their bread just bread or do they call it Turkish bread? So many difficult questions of life that probably not even Google could figure out.

The next movement is down to Lagos to check out the sun, the waves and the good times!