One of the things that kept me in a good mood for a few days were my cobweb chocolate cupcakes. One of my workmates had been asking me for a couple of weeks to bake something. She’s lazy and the biggest gossip around, but I prefer to keep her on her good side... Anyway, I obviously felt like baking, and I had a whole week to plan what I was going to make, find a recipe, and then put it into practice, but I think it was worth it. The recipe came out of the BBC website and, as you can see, the result wasn’t too bad. The only problem is that I definitely need to get a muffin tin so they don’t flatten so much when baking. Other than that, I think the recipe works fine. 
The other thing keeping me busy was our weekend in Sintra. That little devil of a flatmate that I have got a free 2 night hotel stay, so we decided to make the most of it and get away from Porto for 3 days and visit Sintra, a beautiful fairy tale town not too far from Lisbon. The weather was great, and the place exceeded my expectations. It’s set on a hill top, overlooked by a Moor Castle and the extravagantly coloured palace of Pena, and surrounded by shady forests and an incredible amount of villas, most of them built around the turn of the XX century, which make it a World Heritage Site. One of them, Quinta da Regaleira, now turned into a museum, kept us occupied for a whole morning. Of course, we also had to go to Lisbon, but it was more a moral obligation than a pleasure. No offense to all the inhabitants of the Portuguese capital, but we weren’t in the mood for traffic or sticky hot weather; I’m sure it’s worth visiting at a different time in the year.
And then there is the countdown for my long awaited holiday in Germany. I can’t tell you how much I want to visit the south of Germany for the first time, and later go on my own little adventure of my German course in Hamburg. Only 9 days to gooooo!!!!!!
