Portugal-Amsterdam 2022 - #4 - Vila Real de Santo Antonio

 We are in the groove! Today we went to a small town on the very border between Portugal and Spain, Vila Real de Santo Antonio. It is noted as a town that was destroyed by the same earthquake as leveled Lisbon in the 18th century. And it was rebuild following the same plan using the same architect. It supposedly is the Portuguese town most like Lisbon. I don't think it looks like Lisbon at all. When we first arrived, it seemed kind of blah. It took us a while to find the center square. There we found much more of interest which then got the photographic juices flowing.

Can I put in here a little aside...a bit of unadulterated expression of gratitude 🙏🏽 for Wife having nudged me years ago into getting more into photography? Thank you. I will. THANK YOU WIFE! Whether I am a good, bad, or indifferent about where we are visiting, going into any locale can now be an adventure. It makes no difference what the 'books' say are there. It is about what you see in your mind in terms of a picture that can be taken. 

With that in mind, it was another great day wandering around this small Portuguese town

FOTOGRAFIA

What is NOT to like about a street tile lobster?

Sailing School Starts Young Here

Moving toward the Main Square

A head of corks!

The City Square

Street Scenes

House Number

A Fountain

 

A Lighthouse

Trees with editing 

Sunday is Laundry Day

Portugal-Amsterdam 2022 - #3 - Loulé

 Saturday was our first real day of doing our touring thing. The weather is not being very cooperative. We were aiming to go to a town nearby, Loulé, that had number items that sounded cool. And there was a unique church decorated inside with the famous azulejos tiles in a nearby community we wanted to see. 

A main attraction was the Municipal Market that was in an architecturally notable building. As fate would have it, we navigated ourselves to the Gypsy Market that was just a bunch of stalls in a big dirt lot. Not architecturally distinctive. As we were making our way around the stalls, it started to pour. We decided to forgo trying to find anything else. However, I have forgotten to bring a hat on this trip which I really need to keep rain off my glasses and sun out of my damaged eyes. We thought we passed a mall on the way to the market. Getting there we found it was in fact a big supermarket. That was great because there were a number of items we were going to get at the Municipal Market. 

After coming home and making up sandwiches for lunch, the weather cleared and we went back to
Loulé. We found the Market and did our wandering around the town. We went to the church which was every big as cool as advertised...very different from anything else I've seen. Sadly they did not allow pictures inside. We finished the day in our usual fashion with me whipping up a delicious sausage and cabbage dish and working on our pictures and blogs.

Photos

Decorative tiles in all types of forms and applications are a major component of design in Portugal

Coming the the Municipal Market

Inside the Market

Walking around the town

A fountain in the town center

A road marker in the style of the early 20th story

Medieval Castle? Check

Igreja de Sao Lourenco de Almancil

Although this church did not allow pictures inside, there was another church in Loulé that had some walls that were similar just not as extensive. So I've included them here with pictures of the church exterior to give you the feel.

Portugal-Amsterdam 2022 - #2 - Algave Rental

 During this trip we have scheduled three major stays of one-week each at rentals in various parts of Portugal. Our first stop is in the south near the city of Faro. This is a very nice three bedroom home with plenty of comfort in both the public rooms and bedrooms. It is easy to get to and has nice accessibility to the major roads for roaming the region.

Welcome to Casa de-I in Residence Algarve

Come up our decorative driveway (that for a change is NOT the road of death!)

That leads you to the traditional Euro car par that has no known easy means for you to turn your vehicle around

A note on our vehicle - This year we kind of over spent in our lust to break out of the Covid era travel restrictions. So I went with a lesser, more traditional Euro rental vehicle with a manual transmission and very few bells and whistles. But it is serving us well.

Let's enter the kitchen. If you know de-I, you know this is an area where the bitching and moaning will start. But we can call this kitchen the  anti-Ghana rental kitchen.

Truly this is is as well kitted out as any rental property kitchen I've been in. Utensils, pots, pans, dishes, storage items, you name it, it is here.

On to the Living area

The Hallway, One Bedroom and Bath

Next post we get into our touring groove

Portugal-Amsterdam 2022 - #1 - Arrival at Sines

 So here we are again. It was almost like before Covid times. There are still mask mandates here in Portugal. We still had to get the test and fill out some forms. But otherwise we are off and traveling again. We will be spending 5 weeks on this trip. Our flights from Albuquerque to Lisbon had short connections and no problems. We are flying United Airlines this trip. They have the poorest food service in Business Class on the planes or in the lounge of any airline I fly. 

Upon arrival, luggage arrives and we get our rental car. To save money and to lessen the likelihood of difficulty with narrow European roads, we've opted for a smaller car and one with a manual transmission. Our agent suggested a small upgrade that would give us a much more fuel efficient diesel and a bit more room for luggage. She claimed the amount we'd save on fuel would more than make up for the increase in rental cost. Based on the first two days of driving, it is obvious that the fuel economy will be good. We'll see how the savings look at trips end. 

There are certain rituals THAT MUST BE ADHERED TO in our travels.

Ritual One - The Wait Until the Phone GPS Finally Connects. Evidently moving a few thousand miles completely disorients your phones connection to the GPS satellite. We are used to now exiting the rental car parking garage, pulling over to the side and waiting anywhere from ten to twenty minutes until the phone and GPS finally figure where we are.

Ritual Two - The Invisible Hotel Entrance - This can happen at anytime in the trip but especially when you have first come in from overseas and are dead tired. In this case our GPS brings us to the supposed location. We can see a tall building with the hotel's name on wall. But for the life of us we cannot find the entrance. We go around searching three times. We are taken to a road that seems to dead end into construction. We go back. We look at the GPS again. It insists this is the right street. Finally getting out of the car and walking down the street, we go around the corner to see the hotel entrance...on a street completely torn apart and impassable. We have to lug our luggage down the street and into the lobby. 

By this time we are asleep on our feet. We want to get some food to take to the room which has a microwave. GPS says there is supermarket close by. We walk to it. There is no supermarket. Every restaurant we pass is closed. It is not the season. Nothing will open until 7pm. We finally eat then collapse. 

The next day we do a bit of a walk in the old town which we are very close to. There's not a whole lot there. But we start taking pictures. Then it is off to Penchao, our destination for the next week

Photos

A nice sea view from the hotel room

And nice view of the torn up road in front

The first of many a Medieval Town

Portugal is known for its use of decorative tiles for architectural emphasis. You will see a lot of these.

Balconies and Laundry, other reoccurring themes

Castles? Of Course

Sines was known as a town where Vasco da Gama sailed from.

Vasco contemplates his voyage

Wife and Vasco contemplate photo ops

Panorama of the Harbor

 Scenes from around the town

SUCCESS! On The Road

We are in Munich on our way to Portugal. With all the craziness of Covid traveling and past canceled flights, I didn't want to post anything until I knew we were going to be successful. But despite some scares about documents not being accepted, all was cool and we have traveled without incident. I have yet to come up with a catchy name for this trip but will soon.

Safe Haven

 #2 and her three children arrived this afternoon. In the end they had as good an air connection coming her as could be expected. According to her, it was insane trying to get out of China with multiple tests and check points to finally get on one of the only planes that would return someone to the United States. 

Despite a lot of mental agonizing on our part on how we would arrange things in the house to fit everyone in while we were in the midst of trying to arrange our own departure, it all meshed together very well. Hearing my daughter relate the details of what was happening on the ground in Shanghai, I have much more empathy for decision makers in the United States deciding to get their people out.

It looks like #2 and family will be here at least through June. That is kind of nice for Wife and I as we will have family staying in the house for the whole time we are traveling. And in truth, it is probably a lot less stressful for the daughter not having to worry about how they are imposing on our lifestyle. 

And finally it is a joy to see our child and grandchildren (though we miss the son-in-law) even if it is under these trying conditions.

The Storm Before The Calm

 Wife and I hopefully (in our still needing Covid test negative travel world) will be off next week on a five week trip to Portugal and the Netherlands.

Originally, we had planned this trip when we were contemplating an expat relocation. This was to be the research on whether we were game for it. However, as I've related , we decided that dream was no longer going to fit our needs. But we still had the tickets to fly there. We decided we'd just do one of our normal travel trips. We were also supposed to go to the Netherlands last February but that got canceled due to a Covid outbreak with the #3's. With them relocating to Denmark this summer, we realized this might be the last time we would visit Amsterdam. We added a visit there into our itinerary as well. 

It is a matter of normal practice for something to go amiss just before we go on our trips. We just expect it. We've had computer crashes, phones dying, lights falling off the ceiling in the garage, irrigation leaks, and so on. Usually it is on the day or evening before we leave. This time though we seem to be going for earlier and bigger complications.

Complication #1 - Daughter #2 and children forced out of Shanghai, China and having to come here

If you have followed the Shanghai Covid situation, you know that city of 21 million is on complete lock down, meaning no access to food or medical care. Our government decided that was too dangerous for the non-essential people working at the Consulate. So they ordered them home. On a Monday. With the need to be packed up and out on Thursday. With no place for them to go to. Our daughter naturally looked to come here and we naturally want to give her that safe haven. But now we have to figure out getting her family moved into our house right when we are trying to get ready to leave with a ton of Theodora related complications. Not to mention there was great uncertainty on exactly when they might actually show up, the degree of complication dependent on exactly when they will arrive. 

Complication #2 - Mega Bank Account Hack!

We had decided to try a highly recommended different means of wiring money to Ghana called WISE. Going through the normal bank wire route was very expensive. On Wednesday morning, Wife logged in to the new account we had set up. We'd done one wire successfully. Now as soon as she logged on a series of false transfers popped up sucking over 50% of our available funds in a matter of minutes! I was at a doctor's appointment. She immediately called WISE but they needed my authorization. A couple of hours we finally got through and had them start the process of stopping the wires. But later that afternoon, Wife checked the bank account and saw all the transfer debits were pending. So it was calling the bank fraud department and getting stop payments put on. Fortunately through Wife's quick actions, we did everything on the same day as the attempted fraud so the stop payments took effect before accounts settled that evening. We were on pins and needles until we checked the account this morning and saw all the funds back in the account.

While we are happy to be our daughter's safe place, we are also trying to figure out how we are going to get all our packing done since the normal space we use will be occupied.

BUT none of us is dying. We are all healthy and have the means to deal with such issues. However, it will be nice to get on the trans-Atlantic flight and be gone on a trip.