You must pay the toll in order to pass

Salamanca (Spain) to Viseu (Portugal)

We didn't get much of a chance to explore Salamanca but we did get to swing by the cathedrals (old and new) as we had to push on to be in Viseu by lunchtime to meet Jessica and family who had travelled there from Ponte de Lima to meet us.

Once again the roads were very quiet, where is everyone? Not long after crossing the border into Portugal we were faced with the dreaded tolls issue. This comes up time and time again when we hire cars and drive across borders i.e. how do we pay the tolls, do we even have to pay them, what happens if we don't? We pulled in to a service station just before the first tolling point to get on our phones and search to find out how to work out the system. We found that there are four places in Portugal where you can register your car for "Easy Toll", fortunately this was one of them! We tapped our credit card, received a registration receipt and drove on with fingers crossed that we had done it correctly.

We arrived at the centre of Viseu at 12.30pm on Portugal Day, their national day, and the first people we saw crossing the road were Jessica, Ricardo and children. We had last seen them five years ago in 2019 when they had no children, now we were introduced to Daniel and Sofia.

They had booked a traditional Portuguese restaurant for lunch which included blood sausage (morcilla) and roast goat (cabrito asado). The children were kept entertained with the kangaroo jack-in-the-box and koala toys that K had brought. 

After lunch we walked through the park and had ice-cream before it was time to say goodbye to our gracious hosts as they had a 2 hour drive to get home for work the next day.

We found a nice bar near in the old town centre for a couple of drinks before a meal at a nice Italian restaurant nearby.