Friday June 13 was the start of the three-day Festival of
Vinho Verde in
Ponte de Lima. Like we said, they take their vinho verde (a crisp, low-alcohol, slightly fizzy white wine) seriously around here. About 5:20 we drove down to the historic city center, where a street party was to have kicked off the celebrations at 5:00, but it was practically deserted. We sat puzzled for a while, then moved to the exposition center parking lot a short distance away where later events were supposed to take place. We found where the judges were announcing the winners of the vinho verde competition in an open plaza in front of a bold new bronze statue. A grand piano had been placed there, and a soprano and pianist in formal classical concert attire performed what sounded like a Schubert lied (pronounced "leed"). The judges were all dressed in formal suits and gowns too, a very formal occasion, and they gave long tributes to the winners. At least we think that's what they were on about.
After a while we meandered over to the equestrian area, still not finding any street party, where dozens of booths had been set up for winemakers and food vendors. We sipped a few and made a little small talk with the winemakers. After a while a large crowd trailing behind the contest judges started coming through, as the judges gave the actual awards to the select few proud winners. We watched as a winemaker whose wine we had just tasted received an award, with congratulations and photographs, and as soon as the crowd thinned we said to each other "we want some of that". To our credit we had thought the taste we'd had there was "really good" (using the official oenophile term), so it was nice to see that the judges agreed.
With two glasses of
Caça Velho in hand (well, actually in these clever little bags around our necks, picked up as we entered the festival grounds), we found some Portuguese street food and sat at a nearby picnic table to enjoy it all. The crowd was building and we ran into a few friends and made some new ones. Finally, well before the band at the huge rock stage started signaling Portuguese party time, we left for home. Night owls we are not. We planned to come back the following night, resolved to stay up till 10 PM if it killed us. Oh my.
Saturday morning was a little drizzly and we went for a drive on the way back from shopping. Here is a picture of a nice little riverside park and fountain in the village of
Arcozelo near us.
We had another great time at the Festival that evening and did in fact manage to almost stay up for the 10 PM show. There was a Brazilian band playing when we arrived (video below), we met many friends again, sampled more wines, and bought a few bottles. We had a cheese and charcuterie platter for dinner this time, and sat with our expat friends Phil and Odette.
And to round out the entire festival we went on Sunday too. The events were earlier in the day that day. We watched a ceremony and performance of several folk dancing and singing groups, in their beautiful traditional costumes. The music and dancing were wonderful, but the solo singers were not so good. They were shouting, shrill and out of tune, and way too loud. They needed a good sound man, Gerrit thinks.
On our way out we visited some of our favorite winemakers and stocked up on a few final bottles. At the last stop a tiny old white-haired man struck up a conversation with Gerrit. We told him we lived in Portugal now, how much we loved it, and he wholeheartedly agreed, holding Gerrit's arm and extolling the beauty of the countryside, the food, the wine, and the girls. We learned the correct pronunciation of our home village Calheiros from several of the bystanders when Gerrit mispronounced it more like "caleiras" (which means "gutters"). The velho (old man) told us he was about to celebrate his 90th birthday. We had a great time visiting with him for a few minutes and left the best of friends.
We see the occasional tiny Portuguese adults, only maybe 1.4 to 1.5 m (4-1/2 to 5 ft) tall. They are all older, like our festival friend. This is a result of poor nutrition when young, and was specifically aggravated by the poverty conditions during the Salazar dictatorship which ended in 1970. (By the way, J. K. Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter series, lived in Portugal for a couple years and did much writing here. She named an evil villain character Salazar Slytherin after the dictator.)
Tuesday June 17 was a busy morning. We had our energetic and hardworking gardeners Rosa and Emília here for the second time, whirling through the rest of the yard they didn't get to last time and taking care of some other things Pat wanted done. We also carefully took down the weathered old tripod which the ipê tree was lashed to, since it is no longer necessary. The ipê is now standing free and pretty. The place is really getting spruced up. Our handyman Andrew came by too, and continued slashing some weed trees which are invading the lower property.
We also had a technician from the pool cover company come by for on-site measurements. Pat and I pulled the old cover off the pool before he arrived, and found greenish hazy water, dirt, and leaves under there. Some cleanup will be required. The pool cover tech had flown in from Spain and spoke only Spanish, so we made good use of our phone translators along with our pidgin. He described a way of installing the cover mechanism and bench so we could access the skimmer filter baskets, and also the wiring installation we would need to complete before the cover could be installed. The pool will probably take most of the summer to whip into shape.
(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.)
