Weeding, caulk and window film updates, water filter cleaning, grocery shopping, haircuts, obtaining real estate documentation, picking up shipments, reworking ugly clock shelves: these are a few of our less-favorite things.
Lift installation project late and stalled about a month, our residency appointments changed from May 2 to July 4 with no explanation, the wrong paint color on our custom handrails requiring stripping and repainting, the cloud data server for this blog changing URLs which requires updating URLs in the entire blog: these are a few of our least-favorite things.
We had Alex, our British in-home hairdresser, come for a trim for both of us. Pat looks cute as a button and Gerrit, uh, has shorter hair. And it only cost 15 € for her and 5 € for him for in-home hairdressing -- amazing!
(Where to put that € sign? We know where to put the $, but people go both ways on the €. We're thinking we like it better after the number, with a space between them. That's how you say it, anyway.)
Bernardo, our Portuguese friend and real estate agent, sent us this picture of the Portuguese Survival Kit. All strapped onto a little portable tabletop and ready to go! (And the way things are going in the world, we may all need something like this...)
On Thursday 4/3 the weather was due to turn rainy in the next few days so we took off for a little drive in the afternoon. We wanted to take another look at
Arcos de Valdevez, where we had gone for the Carnival parade a couple weeks ago. The first thing we went to was the castle of
Paço de Giela, a medieval castle which is the hub for many festivals and gatherings around town, just to see where it was. There will be a big Easter festival there in a couple weeks which we may want to take the grandkids to on their upcoming visit.
Next we found a nice waterfront park along the
Rio Vez (Vez river) which passes through town, went for a bit of a stroll, and found that it was part of a worldwide biological preserve. There is an eco park all along the Vez river. We saw a sign for another part of it further north in the town of
Sistelo which looked interesting, so after returning to the car we headed north along the Vez.
The drive was beautiful, with fields of flowers and much natural countryside, and the town of Sistelo itself was a little jewel. We wandered around a little and bought some wine and an embroidered apron at a gift shop, getting back to the car just as the rain began. On the way back home we noticed some large burned areas, the result of some unseasonal wildfires in the region just a few weeks ago.
Vez river, clear and clean
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Terraced hillside outside Sistelo
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In the town of Sistelo
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Sistelo town square
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Sistelo farm
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(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done. Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)
