(The post you are about to read is part 3 of my Trips ’23 series that started with this post here. In essence, it’s a celebration of all my 2023 trips that took place following the relaxation of Covid restrictions).

Trip #03: Portugal II

In a way, I sort of covered this second trip of mine to Portugal here in this post. In September I spent 2 weeks in Portugal with my other half and it was the most pleasant experience. We rented a car and travelled around, staying in different places every 3 days. I brought a Leica Q2 with me and, while the image quality was superb as expected, I just couldn’t connect to the camera for a number of reasons. Care to know why, you can find out here.

Dubai came first

Flying Emirates, departing from Hong Kong on our way to Lisbon we had to make a stop in Dubai for our connecting flight. We would be in transit for less than 2 hours, but when planning this trip we thought we could take another connecting flight and stay longer in Dubai – 12 hours – to allow a quick visit to the city. Some photos below, taken with the Leica Q2:

We arrived quite early in the morning and decided to take a walk. Only that when the sun started climbing, so did the temperature. Soon I realized the obvious, that Dubai is not really a city for walks. I felt I was in an oven.

We had a half day trip to the desert that was booked beforehand. But somehow the tour guide failed to show up at the scheduled time. He texted me twice, and twice he informed he was late and postponed the tour start time. We were waiting at this hotel lobby and it got me really frustrated. I was told by someone this actually happens quite often in Dubai. We decided to cancel the desert trip, took a taxi and told the driver to take us to these random places instead.

I’m sure you know Dubai is a place where money is quite abundant and from my taxi this seemed obvious to me. Luxury cars were everywhere.

As expected, the infrastructure is superb. Highways, high-rise buildings, the elevated rail system, just to name a few. It’s all high standard, you can easily see the foreign expertise and money involved. After a few drives around the place, we ended up stopping in this venue I trust you had seen it somewhere else: the Palm Jumeirah.

I had to take some photos with the Leica Q2 as well, right?.. Below.

It was after visiting the Palm Jumeirah that both myself and my girlfriend we started sharing this same feeling: that Dubai is not that interesting at all. It felt like a rich boys theme park to us, like when you have all the cash to do whatever you want and so let’s splash it and create the most crazy attractions you can think of. This, of course, coming from someone who spent just a few hours in the city, so this comment is as superficial as you can get.

But please understand I come from a place where casino money is abundant and in the last two decades I’ve seen similar low ball attractions landing in my city. Vegas-style attractions like a 1/2 scale Eiffel Tower or a Venice replica with canals, gondolas and opera singing gondoliers. Call me arrogant, but I’m knowledgeable and this type of stuff does not necessarily trigger my interest.

I’m sure there are more interesting things to see in Dubai, like the desert, the old town or other places which are more genuine, historically and culturally more significant than those toys from the big boys. Anyway. We headed back to the airport and put Dubai to the back. We were going to Portugal, after all.

Portugal

As a matter of routine, first thing I do when I go to Portugal is to visit Boca do Inferno. This is a beautiful coastal spot where you can feel the power of the sea. Getting there from my place I take the marginal, a very pleasant seaside drive.

The Leica Q2 handles everything with ease. Cameras nowadays are so good that you can literally throw anything at them and they will deliver. Yes, of course, this is a Leica. But any other camera – a Fuji, a Sony, an Olympus, whatever – will deliver as well. Some are better than others, but most are good enough for our needs.

For a wide angle view, my iPhone 12 Mini with its 14mm lens is very useful. Below a nice example, capturing the feel of that place.

Back to the Q2, there is this feature where you press a button and the camera will digitally step-zoom from 28mm to 35mm, 50mm and 75mm. It takes advantage of the high-res 47MP sensor. Obviously, the more you zoom in, the more you lose in resolution because you are just cropping in from the camera’s native 28mm field of view. I used this feature to take the photos below. Not bad at all.

Yes, I could have done this at home, cropping from the native 28mm to zoom in at the bird. But doing this with the camera felt more deliberate. And fun.

Guincho

A couple of days later we went to Guincho and stayed in this stunning place called Fortaleza do Guincho. It’s a small fortress converted to a boutique hotel. Our suite had this magnificent balcony overlooking the sea. Initially we planned to check-in and then go out to visit the surroundings. But eventually we decided just to stay at our suite and enjoy the view. With some good wine and food…

At different times of the day, we observed all these strong colours changing in front of us. Same sky and sea, but different colors. It was amazing. This was in the afternoon:

Sunset:

Early in the morning, a misty one. I like the pink / purple tint of the setting:

And below, this was later in the morning with sun light at full power. The colours were amazing and the Leica Q2 did an excellent job capturing this. In fact, these were perfect conditions for any camera.

But is any camera capable of getting such deep and rich colours? Not the iPhone, for this I’m sure. The iPhone would give you a flat, over saturated sky. But how about Micro 4/3 or APS-C? That’s a good question.

Serra da Estrela

We then headed to Serra da Estrela and stayed in this farmhouse. I’ve never stayed in a place like this and it was quite an experience. I mean, you wake up, open the windows and see all these animals walking around. A horse, a sheep, a chicken… Open the door and there are rabbits running away from you. One day when we were back after a day out, there was this donkey walking around our parking spot. This place is called Villa Silene, in case you are interested. It’s very peaceful and quiet.

Serra da Estrela is a nature park and we spent time hiking and enjoying the quietness of the mountains. In some places it was so quiet that I could hear my own breath. Both my girlfriend and myself we are very sensitive to noise, so living in Macau is very stressful for us at times. People talk loud here, which is awful.

Up in the mountains, weather was excellent and, again, the Leica Q2 was able to reproduce the richness of the colours in front of us. The 28mm lens is perfect to document the beautiful landscape. Most of my photos were captured at f/8 or f/5.6. Shutter speed and ISO set to auto, I let the camera take care of the rest. Occasionally I would set a lower EV to avoid overexposure. I like dark lit photos anyway.

All images below are straight out of camera RAWs.

Guimarães

This was our next stop. Guimarães is a small town worth visiting, among others because of its well preserved historical town center with many medieval buildings and urban fabric left intact. In fact, it’s listed as UNESCO world heritage site.

Cars don’t circulate in the old areas of the city, making it pleasant for walks and al fresco wine and dine. How best to document this? Well, I guess it was time for my Insta 360 One X to shine. I made this short video below to show how it feels to walk around Guimarães:

I’m not a video man, but the Insta360 One X is very easy to use. Files can be uploaded to your smartphone and through the app you can quickly edit your footage. The one above was edited during a doctor’s appointment while I was in the waiting room… Another one below just for the fun, from the balcony of our hotel room overlooking this nice plaza:

If, like me, you are not a video guy but feel that your iPhone videos are not good enough to document your trips, I truly recommend Insta360 cameras for their ease of use. Bear in mind they are not cheap though.

Back to the Leica Q2…

And, of course, I knew it and you knew it as well… Low light not a problem for this camera:

Next stop?

We actually went to more places, but I believe by now this post is long enough. We actually stopped at Coimbra and Oporto as well. Not to mention Lisbon, where we landed and departed. I have keepers from all those places… A trip like this one with 3 devices – Leica Q2, Insta360 One X and iPhone… – will result in thousands of photos and videos.

So I’m putting a stop here to start preparing the next post: Vietnam with Nikon Df.

Cheers!