Today is Leo’s birthday! Somehow he is already two years old. For his birthday we decided to take a trip to Leiria castle. It’s about time- we always see the castle in the background. It sits up on a hill and is visible from most of the city. It has a really cool elevator that goes up and down the hill to the castle. Unfortunately, it was broken when we tried to take it up. There was a guy stuck in there, and Kyle and I were able to pry the doors open and get him out. He was really grateful. He was much calmer than I would have been stuck in an elevator.

We walked up to the castle. It was a lot of steps and hills that we hadn’t counted on, but I got some great pictures I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. We were also reminded, yet again, of how helpful Portuguese people are. Kyle was carrying a stroller and a backpack, and I was carrying a stroller and holding Leo’s hand. A man came up and asked if we needed help, and then held Sofia’s hand as she walked up the stairs. She got a kick out of it.

I’m not sure what I was expecting of the castle, but it was more amazing than I expected. First, it was cheap! 2.10 per adult, and the kids are free. The views were amazing. I feel like that should have been obvious since it sits on top of a hill, but I guess I never imagined what the views would look like. The kids walked around the entire grounds and got pretty tired. Luckily the elevator was working by the time we went back down. It was a really cool ride down. I can’t wait to go again and ride the elevator up the hill.

From there we walked downtown, to our favorite burger place. Leo’s favorite meal is a cheeseburger. The birds there were insane. They would dive down onto the table and steal our food. We would try swatting at them to scare them away, but some of them weren’t scared at all and actually ended up getting swatted. I have never seen birds as courageous and annoying as these ones. It wasn’t just our table either, they were attacking anyone with anything edible on the table.

One bird swooped down and grabbed Leo’s burger. It fell on the ground and they all swarmed and it was over. We just got up and let them win. There were too many of them and they were everywhere. Sofia started crying. We let her chase the birds and she got over it. She loves chasing birds. The restaurant was awesome and cooked us a new burger for Leo and packaged it to go for us. They apologized profusely, which is really sweet, but also so unnecessary because it’s not their fault that the birds there are some kind of weird burger loving kamikaze birds. They make the best burgers and fries in town, and I guess the birds know this. Next time we will eat inside.

Next up was our favorite ice cream place. Sofia loves their boba smoothies, and I love their coffee. They called it an iced coffee, but it’s really a shot of espresso mixed with vanilla ice cream, and topped with candy. It’s amazing. When it heats up I’m going to walk down there all the time for those things. After that we headed home and Leo got to open some presents. It was a great day and the weather was perfect. It was Leo’s birthday, but it ended up being pretty much my ideal day. Maybe I’ll pick all of this stuff for my birthday too 😃