Funny how you lose track of the day of the week and the date while you are on the road. I am relatively sure that it is Friday, but as to the date, well, I am not positive about that.
It is a gorgeous morning in Porto. Clear, warm but not hot, breezy. We decided to take a train at 12:45 and travel during the warmer afternoon rather than leave in the morning like we usually do. Our train trip, providing everything goes well, will take us in two hours to Valenca do Minho, a small walled city on the Northern Portuguese border with Spain. We had to make reservations for accommodations by phoning a small pensio, as all of the hotels on the website were booked up.
We have enjoyed Porto. Our friend, Jeff said it was his favorite city in Portugal and it is easy to see why. Perched on the edge of a river, the old town is colorful shades of red and gold instead of the whitewashed white of other towns. The old houses are all tall and narrow, reminiscent of a street in Amsterdam. One side of the river specializes in the port wine tasting offices of the major port wine companies. We visited Calem yesterday, and as Mike is not much for any wines, I was the happy recipient of both of our tastings. We sat with two young men from Germany on holiday, the same ages as our sons, who told us about themselves. They have another year of university in Berlin, and are spending their internships working in consulting at jobs the same as I did.
Our guidebook had recommended a restaurant which coincidentally resides on the pedestrian only street that further up, houses our hotel. We strolled down to this beautiful Art Deco decorated restaurant a few times. Mike loved their spaghetti bolognese, a dish he has optimistically ordered a few places during our travels only to be disappointed with a plate of spaghetti covered in "ground cow". The tomato sauce based bolognese at the Majestic was much better. I tried the special of the day night before last, a shellfish stew with rice. It was spectacular, and after taking off the shrimp heads (I hate food that looks at you) it was wonderful.
The Portuguese do not mind knowing where their food comes from. As we walked to the Internet cafe a few minutes ago, we saw a dead, skinned bunny hanging in a butchers window beside a dead naked chicken. Both were fully headed, just without the fur and feathers. If I lived here I might become vegetarian except that as both of us have observed, vegetables are scarce on menus. We have seen them at the open air markets but they don´t appear on menus or as sides to the meat dishes. Last night we tried a Chinese restaurant expecting to be able to eat some stir fried vegetables, and even that was different. Although the food, cooked and served by a Portuguese and English speaking Chinese-born family was delicious, it was largely meat based, with little bits of carrot, onion and mushroom thrown it. Nevertheless, it was a welcome change from the ham and cheese sandwiches that are the mainstay of lunches here, and the meat and fish dinners.
Have we mentioned the hard beds? Some very sadistic mattress salesmen must have made the rounds of every hotel on the lists we have visited. As Mike says, some mornings you wake up feeling bruised from just laying on the bed. One of the reviews of the hotel where we have been for the past three days described the pillows as bags of foam rubber chunks- as apt as a description as I could come up with. Oh well, we aren´t staying at the Ritz, so we have some concessions to make.
Speaking of salesmen that have made the rounds, the Nestle ice cream guy also has been here. Every where you go, there is a freezer with the big, bold, blue Nestle log on the side serving the same frozen ice cream treats. We haven´t tried them, but already we are tired of them. Can you imagine ending a meal at a Chinese restaurant and being offered the Nestle ice cream treat menu for dessert? Whatever happened to fortune cookies?
Well, time to wrap up and hit the road. Will write back as soon as we get to the net Internet cafe and can write. Still experimenting with trying to set my proxy server.....~so I can use the Internet from my own machine.
Love, Deanne
Friday, August 3, 2007
Thursday, August 2, 2007
August 2, 2007
It is 11:00 am on what feels like it will be a very hot day here in Porto. We walked around the city a long way yesterday and decided to take the hop on hop off bus today and see whatever else we could fit in before we head up further north. Before we take in the heavy sight seeing, though, we had to check in at the internet cafe, as it has no air conditioning and will be too warm to visit later.
We heard from Jonny by ~-mail this morning. He and his wonderful girlfriend, Megan, are borrowing her parent´s RV and taking off on a one week camping trip through Eastern Washington with Jonny behind the wheel. We can´t wait to hear how that turns out. They are taking friends with them, so it should be lots of fun.
I spent some time working on the photos this morning to try and post them to the blog. I tried a few different formats, a link to some, a slideshow to others, and a slideshow with captions to others. Please let me know which way works best so I can post them that way in the future. If anyone wants some of these, like the family cruise photos, let me know that too, as I THINK I know how to send a link to the site where you can download them. We´ll see.
Well, we are off to see the sights and sites now. I will check in later.
Deanne
We heard from Jonny by ~-mail this morning. He and his wonderful girlfriend, Megan, are borrowing her parent´s RV and taking off on a one week camping trip through Eastern Washington with Jonny behind the wheel. We can´t wait to hear how that turns out. They are taking friends with them, so it should be lots of fun.
I spent some time working on the photos this morning to try and post them to the blog. I tried a few different formats, a link to some, a slideshow to others, and a slideshow with captions to others. Please let me know which way works best so I can post them that way in the future. If anyone wants some of these, like the family cruise photos, let me know that too, as I THINK I know how to send a link to the site where you can download them. We´ll see.
Well, we are off to see the sights and sites now. I will check in later.
Deanne
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
August 1, 2007 Hanging out in the Internet cafe
I feel technologically jinxed. While working for an hour each at the internet cafe last night I tried to find a new hotel in Porto that had internet wifi and after doing a cool search sorting by the special hotel characteristics i was looking for (namely cheap and internet accessible with air conditioning) i found that the place we were in already had all that. so we trekked back to the hotel and found the specific bar on the first floor (really the second floor but these folks call their ground floor the zero floor) that had wifi. i got on the network okay only to find my internet browser won´t work. it locks up and won´t do anything. if anyone knows what that problem is, please let me know. so, unable to solve that problem, i copied all of my blog writings onto a jumpdrive and here i sit back at the internet cafe cutting and pasting them onto the blog. what a pain in the butt.
our hotel in porto was another rock hard bed. nonetheless, i slept well. mike not as well. he says someones snoring kept him up. i just don´t get it...i didn´t hear any snoring. Well, off to check e-mail before mike wants to leave the internet cafe. i must admit they are not the nicest places in porto. this one is up a rickety flight of stairs across from the train station. as we were walking up the narrow, dark staircase beside the store entrance below, it felt as if we were doing something sleezy. But the indian man that runs the place seems quite pleasant and helpful (we had to try a few machines to find one with microsoft word and a usb drive.
Oh, thanks to those that sent Caitie brithday wishes. we found her last night, safe and sound in her apartment in Spain. An official adult.
Bye, Deanne
our hotel in porto was another rock hard bed. nonetheless, i slept well. mike not as well. he says someones snoring kept him up. i just don´t get it...i didn´t hear any snoring. Well, off to check e-mail before mike wants to leave the internet cafe. i must admit they are not the nicest places in porto. this one is up a rickety flight of stairs across from the train station. as we were walking up the narrow, dark staircase beside the store entrance below, it felt as if we were doing something sleezy. But the indian man that runs the place seems quite pleasant and helpful (we had to try a few machines to find one with microsoft word and a usb drive.
Oh, thanks to those that sent Caitie brithday wishes. we found her last night, safe and sound in her apartment in Spain. An official adult.
Bye, Deanne
Tuesday, July 31, 2007 On the Road Again
It is 11:00 AM and we are sitting in an air-conditioned, but smoke-filled train station in the tiny town of Entroncamento. After a surprisingly sound sleep with the fan aimed at our bed all night we woke at our routine 7:00 AM and had our routine hotel breakfast of crusty white roll accompanied by a slice each of ham and cheese. Our breakfast was sitting on a table in the dining room today rather than served at a buffet table, further confirming our belief that we were virtually the only guests of this hard-to-reach and very warm lodge. We had an tough logistics issue at breakfast: how do you eat the corn flakes that are sitting on the table in a small imitation cut glass jar with a small plastic serving spoon when there are no bowls on the table? Mike opted for pouring some of the warm milk served beside the coffee into the serving bowl and eating it with the yogurt spoon he didn’t need (he is not a yogurt eater). Solved. Three bites later the corn flakes, which may have been meant as a crunchy accompaniment for the yogurt was gone. One breakfast surprise this morning was the fresh orange juice, served in a small 4 oz cup each, but nevertheless a first in Portugal.
After breakfast we checked out and drove over to the train station to figure out our plans for trying to get somewhere closer to the coast and hopefully cooler. Feeling quite proud of our train schedule skills we determined that we had about an hour to return the car and get back to the train station for the 10:10 to Lisbon (the only destination for trains from Tomar) where we could change trains to go northbound instead. Hence, our location in the train station where we await the 12:33 train to Porto, a coastal city and the second largest town in Portugal. We are hoping to beat the heat, which yesterday reached a blazing 42 degrees centigrade in Tomar and made sightseeing virtually impossible. So, we leave behind the castle headquarters of the Knights of Templar sight unseen. Maybe next trip.
Last night, at about 8:00 PM it was cool enough for Mike to take a walk. We strolled over to the internet café only to be told that they close at 8:00 – exactly as we arrived. The young store manager conferred with the three teenage patrons of the store in response to our request for a recommendation on a place to eat and a block away we were sitting in the air conditioned PIC NIC restaurant eating a grilled cheese sandwich (Deanne) and a ham and cheese served on two six inch baguettes (Mike). Our waitress, a sweet young girl with strong English skills took great care in making sure we had a perfect meal…. Coming out from the kitchen several times to ask about various ingredients…tomato? Butter? Salad (lettuce)? We made that meal last an hour and a half as we enjoyed a multi-course meal (counting drinks, coffee, dessert, etc.) and relished every minute of the cool air. We were sitting below the flat screen TV tuned, without sound, to Portuguese news which we watched as diligently as someone who knew what it was telling us. Walking back to our hotel confirmed our previous observation that the people hide out during the afternoons, but come alive at night. The streets were filled with families out dining and window shopping at the closed store windows.
Mike is reading and I am working on the blog, hoping that in the large city of Porto we will have: 1) cooler weather, 2) a bookstore, 3) internet access. Susan, thank you again for the cool neck scarves. They rank right up there on our list of travel necessities along with our Osprey bags. If any of you ever try a trip like this in hot weather you must have these neck bands that cool you off when you get them wet. I haven’t taken mine off since I got it wet yesterday except to get it wet over again.
Deanne
After breakfast we checked out and drove over to the train station to figure out our plans for trying to get somewhere closer to the coast and hopefully cooler. Feeling quite proud of our train schedule skills we determined that we had about an hour to return the car and get back to the train station for the 10:10 to Lisbon (the only destination for trains from Tomar) where we could change trains to go northbound instead. Hence, our location in the train station where we await the 12:33 train to Porto, a coastal city and the second largest town in Portugal. We are hoping to beat the heat, which yesterday reached a blazing 42 degrees centigrade in Tomar and made sightseeing virtually impossible. So, we leave behind the castle headquarters of the Knights of Templar sight unseen. Maybe next trip.
Last night, at about 8:00 PM it was cool enough for Mike to take a walk. We strolled over to the internet café only to be told that they close at 8:00 – exactly as we arrived. The young store manager conferred with the three teenage patrons of the store in response to our request for a recommendation on a place to eat and a block away we were sitting in the air conditioned PIC NIC restaurant eating a grilled cheese sandwich (Deanne) and a ham and cheese served on two six inch baguettes (Mike). Our waitress, a sweet young girl with strong English skills took great care in making sure we had a perfect meal…. Coming out from the kitchen several times to ask about various ingredients…tomato? Butter? Salad (lettuce)? We made that meal last an hour and a half as we enjoyed a multi-course meal (counting drinks, coffee, dessert, etc.) and relished every minute of the cool air. We were sitting below the flat screen TV tuned, without sound, to Portuguese news which we watched as diligently as someone who knew what it was telling us. Walking back to our hotel confirmed our previous observation that the people hide out during the afternoons, but come alive at night. The streets were filled with families out dining and window shopping at the closed store windows.
Mike is reading and I am working on the blog, hoping that in the large city of Porto we will have: 1) cooler weather, 2) a bookstore, 3) internet access. Susan, thank you again for the cool neck scarves. They rank right up there on our list of travel necessities along with our Osprey bags. If any of you ever try a trip like this in hot weather you must have these neck bands that cool you off when you get them wet. I haven’t taken mine off since I got it wet yesterday except to get it wet over again.
Deanne
Blog Etiquette
Susan asked about blog etiquette, specifically where to comment so that others can read your comments. We are amateur bloggers so we can only suggest that if you are commenting on something someone else has said, put it in the string of blog comments that relate to what you are talking about. If you are just commenting in general, put it somewhere current. After the page gets full the previous postings go away and no one will likely page backward to find them, so the best thing to do is put them near the top where people will see that something new is posted. Does that help? ……..Back to FreeCell now.
Monday, July 30, 2007 Hot & Bothered
Well, today the heat wave of Europe found us. It is 40 degrees Celsius where we are, and although we have no internet access to check out how hot that is, our irritable tempers are enough to know it is too hot for comfort. We were so hot this morning we decided against the train and the hours of waiting at the train stations for connections. We caught a taxi into the next town over and rented a small car from a local agency to drive to Tomar. After a few minutes of getting used to the stick shift we were off on our next adventure. The rental agency had no maps so our first stop was the liveraria, or newspaper/magazine shop where we bought a map. Our friendly English speaking clerk at the rental agency had provided us with a list of freeway connections we were supposed to take, but without a map we were hopelessly confused as to what freeway to take where. With a map we were prepared, and after missing the very first connection, we knew right away it was wrong and could turn ourselves around and follow her freeway numbers.
The Portuguese freeways are wonderful. Two lanes in each direction with lots of room for expansion. The slow lane was adequate for us most of the time, as our little Kia did not take the uphill slopes well at all. The countryside was largely agricultural; beautiful rolling hills planted with grapes interspersed with olive trees. We made one stop on the way to empty our bladders of the Diet Coke we were using to remain hydrated. Like rest stops the world over, the public restrooms were not something you would want to touch. The ladies room did have an interesting approach to toilets, though. Rather than a toilet without a seat over which you squat as in most public restrooms here, these toilets were porcelain- lined holes in the ground over which you squatted.
We were feeling so confident with our driving and navigation abilities that we decided to change our itinerary to take in the holy city of Fatima. It was really quite amazing to see how the town accommodates the huge numbers of people wanting to visit the site. There are Disneyland-like parking lots in front of the cathedral and a huge paved field with a raised, glass-covered alter for outside mass, very similar to the Vatican. Huge masses of people would be able to attend mass. We were not there during mass, yet the crowds visiting while we were there were the largest crowds we have seen anywhere in Portugal so far.
After Fatima, country roads took us the last 35 km to Tomar. We had booked a room in a small inn while we were in Obidos, so we set about trying to find this place. The town is split down the center by a river, with the old town and castle ruins, headquarters for the Knights of the Templar, on one side and the new town on the other. Our inn resides on an island in the river, right in the middle of town. One would think that would be easy, however the only visible bridge across the river onto the island was closed for construction. We drove around the island several times, winding our way around these one way streets. Each pass of the inn frustrated Mike more and the swearing was escalating at each pass. Finally we stopped and called the hotel using our new Portuguese telephone. Mike explained our situation to whomever answered and was put on hold, apparently to search for English speaking help. After the phone was switched to someone else, Mike, whose blood pressure was near explosion by now, handed the phone to me and I tried to explain where we were to her while he “helped” by talking to me at the same time as I tried to listen to her. Finally we reached some mutual understanding, and while it took parking, then moving the car again to finally locate the hidden bridge on the back of the island, we made it. Someone from the hotel met us at the bridge with a cart and helped to get the luggage across the bridge and into the hotel.
By the time we got in the door, Mike was close to passing out from the heat and frustration and he was begging for water. As in every place we visit, water is always provided at a price in a bottle, but it was cold and we took it. The helpful English speaking clerk apologized for the close-ed (a two syllable version of closed) bridge, but such is life. She did promise a ventilator in our room to help with the heat. Turns out that means a fan in a very stuffy close-ed room. We arrived about 2:30 in the afternoon and lay down with the fan blowing on us for several hours.
In case you think that I was not also crabby, let me assure you that I was also feeling the heat. When I asked about the advertised internet access (I have been several days without the ability to post anything) she sheepishly told me that I could arrange with her to use her front desk computer when she was not, as that was the only access available. That, combined with the fact that I have been without anything to read except travel guides for days led me to my own version of irritability. To work it off, I put the neckband on that Susan had given me to help with the heat and took off at 4:15 in search of a bookstore. My friendly English speaking desk clerk was summoned by the well meaning but totally non-English speaking desk clerk and they spent fifteen minutes drawing me a map of three potential sites of English language reading material. I walked off the island into the old town and the streets were deserted on this hot as Hades afternoon. I made it to the first potential spot, a promising looking bookstore, but it had close-ed early, or else my reading of the “Horario” on the door was wrong, but in any event it was a wash out. So, I hiked back through the old town and into the new town for the second and third sites which both turned out to be magazine shops where I could have purchased a Cosmo in English for an outrageous sum of $12 if I was that desperate, but I chose not to. I found a grocery store and bought a few tangerines and some water and trudged back to the island.
So, after reading another few chapters on the history and geography of Protugal in my guidebook until the dark room was too dark to read any more and playing fifteen games of FreeCell I decided to write this knowing it would be another day or two until I can post it. Another travel day. This time with car, but no less frustrating. We have decided to tour the castle early tomorrow when it opens at the relatively cool hour of 9:00 am, then split this town in search of cooler accommodations, perhaps further north and closer to the ocean. Mike has promised to break away from his dumb mystery (another sore spot- he has SOMEthing to read, be it something I have already read) to walk around with me tonight. I found an internet café in the new town while I was out today with posted hours til 10:00. Let’s hope they are really the hours, as I would love to check e-mail. I have retyped my blog entries in the past, but I think I will pass and post this at the next wifi spot we find.
Tomorrow is Caitie’s birthday, and we are hoping to reach her. We got an e-mail when she arrived in Poland but have not been able to reach her by phone since. We hear almost daily from daughter-in-law Dana which helps us stay connected and worry-free. We know that the rest of the family would get word to each other if something was wrong, so connecting with her frequently assures us that all is well. Thanks also to the rest of you that comment on the blog. It is great to hear from you, even if it is jabs from my sister. We have heard from the folks renting our houseboat and they are loving life there, so we are happy that the arrangement with them is working well.
Love to everyone on a very hot and irritable Portugal evening,
Deanne
The Portuguese freeways are wonderful. Two lanes in each direction with lots of room for expansion. The slow lane was adequate for us most of the time, as our little Kia did not take the uphill slopes well at all. The countryside was largely agricultural; beautiful rolling hills planted with grapes interspersed with olive trees. We made one stop on the way to empty our bladders of the Diet Coke we were using to remain hydrated. Like rest stops the world over, the public restrooms were not something you would want to touch. The ladies room did have an interesting approach to toilets, though. Rather than a toilet without a seat over which you squat as in most public restrooms here, these toilets were porcelain- lined holes in the ground over which you squatted.
We were feeling so confident with our driving and navigation abilities that we decided to change our itinerary to take in the holy city of Fatima. It was really quite amazing to see how the town accommodates the huge numbers of people wanting to visit the site. There are Disneyland-like parking lots in front of the cathedral and a huge paved field with a raised, glass-covered alter for outside mass, very similar to the Vatican. Huge masses of people would be able to attend mass. We were not there during mass, yet the crowds visiting while we were there were the largest crowds we have seen anywhere in Portugal so far.
After Fatima, country roads took us the last 35 km to Tomar. We had booked a room in a small inn while we were in Obidos, so we set about trying to find this place. The town is split down the center by a river, with the old town and castle ruins, headquarters for the Knights of the Templar, on one side and the new town on the other. Our inn resides on an island in the river, right in the middle of town. One would think that would be easy, however the only visible bridge across the river onto the island was closed for construction. We drove around the island several times, winding our way around these one way streets. Each pass of the inn frustrated Mike more and the swearing was escalating at each pass. Finally we stopped and called the hotel using our new Portuguese telephone. Mike explained our situation to whomever answered and was put on hold, apparently to search for English speaking help. After the phone was switched to someone else, Mike, whose blood pressure was near explosion by now, handed the phone to me and I tried to explain where we were to her while he “helped” by talking to me at the same time as I tried to listen to her. Finally we reached some mutual understanding, and while it took parking, then moving the car again to finally locate the hidden bridge on the back of the island, we made it. Someone from the hotel met us at the bridge with a cart and helped to get the luggage across the bridge and into the hotel.
By the time we got in the door, Mike was close to passing out from the heat and frustration and he was begging for water. As in every place we visit, water is always provided at a price in a bottle, but it was cold and we took it. The helpful English speaking clerk apologized for the close-ed (a two syllable version of closed) bridge, but such is life. She did promise a ventilator in our room to help with the heat. Turns out that means a fan in a very stuffy close-ed room. We arrived about 2:30 in the afternoon and lay down with the fan blowing on us for several hours.
In case you think that I was not also crabby, let me assure you that I was also feeling the heat. When I asked about the advertised internet access (I have been several days without the ability to post anything) she sheepishly told me that I could arrange with her to use her front desk computer when she was not, as that was the only access available. That, combined with the fact that I have been without anything to read except travel guides for days led me to my own version of irritability. To work it off, I put the neckband on that Susan had given me to help with the heat and took off at 4:15 in search of a bookstore. My friendly English speaking desk clerk was summoned by the well meaning but totally non-English speaking desk clerk and they spent fifteen minutes drawing me a map of three potential sites of English language reading material. I walked off the island into the old town and the streets were deserted on this hot as Hades afternoon. I made it to the first potential spot, a promising looking bookstore, but it had close-ed early, or else my reading of the “Horario” on the door was wrong, but in any event it was a wash out. So, I hiked back through the old town and into the new town for the second and third sites which both turned out to be magazine shops where I could have purchased a Cosmo in English for an outrageous sum of $12 if I was that desperate, but I chose not to. I found a grocery store and bought a few tangerines and some water and trudged back to the island.
So, after reading another few chapters on the history and geography of Protugal in my guidebook until the dark room was too dark to read any more and playing fifteen games of FreeCell I decided to write this knowing it would be another day or two until I can post it. Another travel day. This time with car, but no less frustrating. We have decided to tour the castle early tomorrow when it opens at the relatively cool hour of 9:00 am, then split this town in search of cooler accommodations, perhaps further north and closer to the ocean. Mike has promised to break away from his dumb mystery (another sore spot- he has SOMEthing to read, be it something I have already read) to walk around with me tonight. I found an internet café in the new town while I was out today with posted hours til 10:00. Let’s hope they are really the hours, as I would love to check e-mail. I have retyped my blog entries in the past, but I think I will pass and post this at the next wifi spot we find.
Tomorrow is Caitie’s birthday, and we are hoping to reach her. We got an e-mail when she arrived in Poland but have not been able to reach her by phone since. We hear almost daily from daughter-in-law Dana which helps us stay connected and worry-free. We know that the rest of the family would get word to each other if something was wrong, so connecting with her frequently assures us that all is well. Thanks also to the rest of you that comment on the blog. It is great to hear from you, even if it is jabs from my sister. We have heard from the folks renting our houseboat and they are loving life there, so we are happy that the arrangement with them is working well.
Love to everyone on a very hot and irritable Portugal evening,
Deanne
Sunday, July 29, 2007 Another beautiful (but really hot) day in Obidos
We decided to stay three nights in this beautiful town. Our two night plan, combined with the long travel days has turned out to feel like travel one whole day, sightsee the next, then repeat. Adding an extra night here gives us the chance to rest up a bit before we hit the road again. After our previous experience with long travel days we have checked into alternatives like renting a car for a day. We enjoy the small towns of Portugal that are not well served by the trains which probably means we take a bus to a big city then out again to the next small town we have decided to visit. We are heading north and want to visit Tomar next, the town recommended so highly by the Mormon kid we met on the train. Our guide book says that it is the home for the Nights of Templar and is in close range to Fatima, the Catholic pilgrimage site. It looks like a small Portuguese car rental agency has offices in the next town over from here and in Tomar, so we may rent a small car for the day, drive it up to Tomar then turn it back in. To paraphrase that great philosopher, Scarlett O’Hara, “ I’ll worry about that tomorrow”. As for today, it is too hot here to worry or do much of anything.
Se started out this morning with our full spread breakfast. This is definitely Mike’s favorite spot for breakfast, where the buffet table is spread with a variety of homemade pastries, both Portuguese (of the custard/flan and fruit tart variety) and French (croissants and chocolate croissants). Like all of the other places we have been, there is always a basket of white rolls, a platter of ham and cheese and lots of yogurt. For whatever reason, they are big on Tang rather than real juice so we forgo juice. Morning coffee is consistently served side by side with warm milk and we have come to enjoy our couple of cups each morning. We have become friendly with the waiter, Antonio after meeting him yesterday at breakfast. He spent two years as a waiter on Princess cruises to the Caribbean and Alaska, so he has great multi-lingual skills and is very outgoing. He encouraged us to return to the hotel dining room (a lavish room all decorated in velvet draperies, coats of arms, candelabras and white linens) for dinner last night, where he again served and entertained us. While eating a good dinner of local cod (Deanne) and a horrible dinner of black grouper covered in cheese (Mike) accompanied by wonderful “rural” soup (vegetable bean) and delicious mint sorbet he talked to us about his life on the cruise ships and here in his hometown of Obidos. He invited us to a free community Fado concert being held tonight in the town square. He says that one of the townspeople is a musician who put this show together for the town. The concert, complete with Sangria supported audience participation sounds like lots of fun so we plan on going. Consistent with the late dinner hour (7:30 is the earliest you can be seated for dinner) the concert starts at 10:00 PM and ends at midnight, so it will require a stretch on our part to be awake for it. We will have to nap first (this is when our children laugh).
We have been enjoying siesta time in the early afternoon when the sun is hottest and the cooling breezes of the morning and afternoon are gone. It is early afternoon as I write this and we are sitting in our darkened hotel room with a fan on. Mike is reading a mediocre mystery that I have passed along while I work on this. In a while we will eat our lunch of fresh peaches (we eat these every day and love them), tiny local apples and bananas. The light lunch helps to let us feel less guilty about the sweet breakfast and the late, heavy dinners (which we only indulge in probably every third night). Yesterday we went out again about 3:30 and it was starting to cool down.
Internet access is not as widely available as our guidebooks had suggested, so we have taken to working on the blog off-line, then cutting and pasting our new input when we do have access. The hotel where we are staying now has nothing available so we went to the town square earlier today and used wifi sitting in front of the 16th century church. Similar to using wifi in an airport or a Starbucks there is a charge, in this case 2 Eurors ($2.70) for ½ hour, so we downloaded e-mail, updated the blog with yesterday’s writing, sent a quick message to Dana who is handling our financial affairs at home, reserved a hotel in Tomar for a couple of nights then logged off.
Before we left Seattle, I had mapped out an itinerary using the Rick Steves guide to Portugal and Spain. After we got here, we decided to spend more time in Portugal than originally planned so we went back to planning on the fly. Some Australian kids on the train gave us their Lonely Planet guide to Spain as they were leaving the country, and we bought a similar guide to Portugal for the outrageous sum of 25 Euros ($32), but that has been quite helpful in locating hotels. Booking.com continues to be a great way to see photos of the hotels and reviews by previous guests, so when we have access to the internet that is where we tend to look. Twice we have seen that the prices quoted on the website are exactly the same as the price quoted directly by the hotel, so we are confident that it is a good source.
Portugal and Spain both have a network of hotels that are built inside of historical landmarks. The pousadas of Portugal and the paradors of Spain are similarly high end accommodations (200-400 Euros per night) that are built in old convents or castles. We have a few Spanish parador reservations that we are deciding whether to keep or not (depending on our schedule) but we did not make any reservations in the pousadas. As I mapped out our itinerary prior to arriving in Portugal they seemed to be in small towns that were difficult to access by train, which turned out to be the exact places we decided to visit. Yesterday while we were wandering around Obidos we stopped in to look around the pousada here, a hotel built in the 900 year old castle at the highest point within the walled town. After walking up the hill toward the castle, you enter the castle walls and a stone courtyard. Up some shallow, broad steps to the front door which opens to a small room overtaken with a desk. The woman manning the desk was part of a music convention/piano masterclass taking place in town. She offered us the chance to look around. Unlike modern hotels with huge lobbies, this place was a series of smallish rooms leading one to another. The first room was a lounge complete with chairs and a couch, and at one end, a suit of armor. Decorating the wall was a beautiful tapestry. Magazines (none in English) covered the table top. At the far end of the room, the doorway opened up to the next room, a bar, which opened up to the next doorway leading up some stairs. As we wandered around, a couple came down the stairs to depart the hotel. It turns out that they were seated next to us the previous night at dinner in town and we had spent some time talking to Philip and Ziggy from England. Ziggy invited us up to see their 300 Euro per night room in the pousada while Philip went outside to sit in the courtyard. We hiked up the stairs with Ziggy and across a horribly decorated lounge (purple velvet couch and a light-up coffee table), through a door out onto the castle wall, across the wall making up one wall of the courtyard, into a castle tower and into their suite. It was very tiny and narrow, with a red velvet sofa and a formica desk downstairs with a ladder leading upstairs to a bed. The bathroom was downstairs behind the couch. All in all, the room had none of the charm of our converted convent. Our room, at one third the price, has a charming private patio that we use for drying our laundry in private. Our furnishings are less modern, with wrought iron bedframes and beautiful old tiles in the bathroom. So, we aren’t in a castle but we are happy with our choice, especially now that we have seen the alternative.
Because we have chosen hotels at the 50 Euro or so per night minimum, all of them have en-suite bathrooms and televisions. Most have air conditioning, although we don’t have it here. The televisions have all been unable to access CNN so what news we get either comes from the little time we get on the internet to access news or the BBC. We have seen lots of coverage of the flooding in mid-England and the heat wave though Italy and Greece. We have seen a little about the US, but for the most part the European news stations don’t seem to follow our news any more than we follow theirs. When we worked with Europeans we found them quite well informed about our political situation and news, so it must either be the difference between the big cities and the countryside or between the printed newspapers and the television coverage.
Se started out this morning with our full spread breakfast. This is definitely Mike’s favorite spot for breakfast, where the buffet table is spread with a variety of homemade pastries, both Portuguese (of the custard/flan and fruit tart variety) and French (croissants and chocolate croissants). Like all of the other places we have been, there is always a basket of white rolls, a platter of ham and cheese and lots of yogurt. For whatever reason, they are big on Tang rather than real juice so we forgo juice. Morning coffee is consistently served side by side with warm milk and we have come to enjoy our couple of cups each morning. We have become friendly with the waiter, Antonio after meeting him yesterday at breakfast. He spent two years as a waiter on Princess cruises to the Caribbean and Alaska, so he has great multi-lingual skills and is very outgoing. He encouraged us to return to the hotel dining room (a lavish room all decorated in velvet draperies, coats of arms, candelabras and white linens) for dinner last night, where he again served and entertained us. While eating a good dinner of local cod (Deanne) and a horrible dinner of black grouper covered in cheese (Mike) accompanied by wonderful “rural” soup (vegetable bean) and delicious mint sorbet he talked to us about his life on the cruise ships and here in his hometown of Obidos. He invited us to a free community Fado concert being held tonight in the town square. He says that one of the townspeople is a musician who put this show together for the town. The concert, complete with Sangria supported audience participation sounds like lots of fun so we plan on going. Consistent with the late dinner hour (7:30 is the earliest you can be seated for dinner) the concert starts at 10:00 PM and ends at midnight, so it will require a stretch on our part to be awake for it. We will have to nap first (this is when our children laugh).
We have been enjoying siesta time in the early afternoon when the sun is hottest and the cooling breezes of the morning and afternoon are gone. It is early afternoon as I write this and we are sitting in our darkened hotel room with a fan on. Mike is reading a mediocre mystery that I have passed along while I work on this. In a while we will eat our lunch of fresh peaches (we eat these every day and love them), tiny local apples and bananas. The light lunch helps to let us feel less guilty about the sweet breakfast and the late, heavy dinners (which we only indulge in probably every third night). Yesterday we went out again about 3:30 and it was starting to cool down.
Internet access is not as widely available as our guidebooks had suggested, so we have taken to working on the blog off-line, then cutting and pasting our new input when we do have access. The hotel where we are staying now has nothing available so we went to the town square earlier today and used wifi sitting in front of the 16th century church. Similar to using wifi in an airport or a Starbucks there is a charge, in this case 2 Eurors ($2.70) for ½ hour, so we downloaded e-mail, updated the blog with yesterday’s writing, sent a quick message to Dana who is handling our financial affairs at home, reserved a hotel in Tomar for a couple of nights then logged off.
Before we left Seattle, I had mapped out an itinerary using the Rick Steves guide to Portugal and Spain. After we got here, we decided to spend more time in Portugal than originally planned so we went back to planning on the fly. Some Australian kids on the train gave us their Lonely Planet guide to Spain as they were leaving the country, and we bought a similar guide to Portugal for the outrageous sum of 25 Euros ($32), but that has been quite helpful in locating hotels. Booking.com continues to be a great way to see photos of the hotels and reviews by previous guests, so when we have access to the internet that is where we tend to look. Twice we have seen that the prices quoted on the website are exactly the same as the price quoted directly by the hotel, so we are confident that it is a good source.
Portugal and Spain both have a network of hotels that are built inside of historical landmarks. The pousadas of Portugal and the paradors of Spain are similarly high end accommodations (200-400 Euros per night) that are built in old convents or castles. We have a few Spanish parador reservations that we are deciding whether to keep or not (depending on our schedule) but we did not make any reservations in the pousadas. As I mapped out our itinerary prior to arriving in Portugal they seemed to be in small towns that were difficult to access by train, which turned out to be the exact places we decided to visit. Yesterday while we were wandering around Obidos we stopped in to look around the pousada here, a hotel built in the 900 year old castle at the highest point within the walled town. After walking up the hill toward the castle, you enter the castle walls and a stone courtyard. Up some shallow, broad steps to the front door which opens to a small room overtaken with a desk. The woman manning the desk was part of a music convention/piano masterclass taking place in town. She offered us the chance to look around. Unlike modern hotels with huge lobbies, this place was a series of smallish rooms leading one to another. The first room was a lounge complete with chairs and a couch, and at one end, a suit of armor. Decorating the wall was a beautiful tapestry. Magazines (none in English) covered the table top. At the far end of the room, the doorway opened up to the next room, a bar, which opened up to the next doorway leading up some stairs. As we wandered around, a couple came down the stairs to depart the hotel. It turns out that they were seated next to us the previous night at dinner in town and we had spent some time talking to Philip and Ziggy from England. Ziggy invited us up to see their 300 Euro per night room in the pousada while Philip went outside to sit in the courtyard. We hiked up the stairs with Ziggy and across a horribly decorated lounge (purple velvet couch and a light-up coffee table), through a door out onto the castle wall, across the wall making up one wall of the courtyard, into a castle tower and into their suite. It was very tiny and narrow, with a red velvet sofa and a formica desk downstairs with a ladder leading upstairs to a bed. The bathroom was downstairs behind the couch. All in all, the room had none of the charm of our converted convent. Our room, at one third the price, has a charming private patio that we use for drying our laundry in private. Our furnishings are less modern, with wrought iron bedframes and beautiful old tiles in the bathroom. So, we aren’t in a castle but we are happy with our choice, especially now that we have seen the alternative.
Because we have chosen hotels at the 50 Euro or so per night minimum, all of them have en-suite bathrooms and televisions. Most have air conditioning, although we don’t have it here. The televisions have all been unable to access CNN so what news we get either comes from the little time we get on the internet to access news or the BBC. We have seen lots of coverage of the flooding in mid-England and the heat wave though Italy and Greece. We have seen a little about the US, but for the most part the European news stations don’t seem to follow our news any more than we follow theirs. When we worked with Europeans we found them quite well informed about our political situation and news, so it must either be the difference between the big cities and the countryside or between the printed newspapers and the television coverage.
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