I do believe one of the major rules of blogging is to not just disappear, without word or warning. Well, that seems to be precisely what I do. I have apologized for this behavior in the past and at other times, I have refused to apologize. Well, this time, hmm, maybe not an apology exactly but a sort of promise that when I think I will be taking a bit of a leave, I will let you know. The only problem I can forsee in this is that most of the time I have no idea there's going to be a break until I am in the middle of it and one day I realize amidst all the noise, busyness and sometimes confusion of my days, that I haven't actually blogged for a while. We'll see what happens.
I will say something about my long absence, though. I had last blogged about our summer vacation and if vacations lasted as long as the time between my posts, we'd all be very happy, rested up people indeed. Wouldn't get much done, but maybe that is highly overrated.
The last post was entitled Waterford Part 1. Well, it seems that as I am posting this, I am out and about with the little netbook and I don't have Waterford Part 2 photos on this. So I am going to finally post about Portugal, which was the second part of our trip. Asbjorn's sister NIna had rented an apartment in the little town of Fuseta, on the southern coast of Portugal.
The weather reminded me quite a bit of the weather here in Southern California so I can report that the weather was absolutely beautiful.
I always enjoy exploring a new city. For the three days (or was if four?), we were there, I tried to document as much of my experience as I could.
The architecture of Fuseta was different than any place I had been. The streets are narrow and as you can see, in some places, the sidewalks are quite narrow, too.
Front doors open right up onto the narrow walks. Some streets are paved, others have brick.
There is a worn quality to this city that makes me feel at ease, makes me even more curious to explore and wander around.
I am mesmerized by all the tiles covering some of the houses. They are beautiful, a leftover from the times when the Moors ruled Portugal.
I had hoped to include some tile photos with this post, but I have to tell you, I took about 150 photos of tile alone. I haven't gone through them yet, but will post a few of them when I do. They are quite wonderful.
I really enjoyed walking some of these streets, their curves hding surprises just out of sight.
There are buildings no longer being lived in and these intrigue me as well. These places have a story. I wanted to venture inside this place and thought there might be some great photos inside. Alas, the noises I heard coming from inside, either from man or beast told me this probably wasn't a good idea. One must rely on intelligence when in a new country but mostly it was probably intuition.
But that's ok. I had plenty of opportunity wandering the streets to get photos of the weathered and worn.
Oh, the wonderful colors and peeling paint on this one:
Or this one:
This newer door was quite wonderful, too.
Doors and tiles were a pretty large focus while wandering around Fuseta. But a trip to a city like this would not be complete without going to the cemetary.
Asbjorn was with me on this walk. Ah, a church up ahead, let's check it out.
A beautiful church. We could hear the bell from the apartment.
But what I really can't resist when there is a church like this, is the cemetary. I have loved cemetaries since I was a kid. This one was especially interesting. You walked through the gate and it was like entering another city, smaller, quiet, a city of the dead or departed, whichever term suits it best.
There was a part that was open with regular type graves and stones along the ground.
And then I came upon the Painted Ladies of the Necropolis.
Walking back to the apartment, I stopped by the fish and farmer's market. What a place to behold. If you like fish like I do and I'm not quite sure there's anyone out there that likes fish as much as I do, then Portugal is the place for some fine eats.
There's all sorts of fish and I imagine this must be where the local restaurants come to get their offerings for the day:
And not just fish, but some very strange creatures:
Not sure what exactly those are or what to do with them. Just add butter.
And then I saw this curious fish:
Is it a fish? An eel of some sort? A belt or slippery rope? What do you do with that one?
But as I said earlier, there was also a farmer's market with vegetable and fruit. Textured green orbs of cabbage.
Jewels of peppers and tomatoes:
Well! All that exploring and then the wonderful fish market makes a woman ravenous for some good vittles. There's all sorts of restaurants and most of them have outdoor seating.
But I chose this place. It was right by the apartment, had great food and also a rather interesting name.
Were they fans of Battlestar Galactica when it was on?
So you go up to the window and pick out which fish you would like to eat. Sometimes, if you showed a lot of enthusiasm, which I usually did, they would pick out a fish or two, put it on a plate and bring it to your table to tell you all about it and let you pick out which one you would like for your dinner.
They get a nice bed of coals on an outdoor grill.
You selection chosen, the grill master commences to work, grilling your fish to perfection.
And I do mean perfection.
Ah, wonderful time. I have enjoyed looking back on this experience and I hope you have enjoyed the journey as well.
I will have to go through the tile photos soon. They are really fascinating to me and how beautiful they were on the sides of the houses.
I hope everyone is having a fantastic week. As far as I can tell, I am back. And it feels great to be back. I did miss my blog and hope to continue posting at a regular pace.