Flights & Festivals

Huge news: on Thursday Sep 11 we heard that our overseas shipment and customs paperwork is finally all in order, and the date is set to load from our Seattle storage unit to the shipping container!  Finally!  We'll fly back to Seattle a week or so beforehand, do some visiting, observe the loading process, and then stick around town for a couple weeks after that.  It's liable to take 6 - 8 weeks (optimistically) for the shipment to arrive in Portugal, then the shippers will deliver all our stuff to our house.  About 110 big boxes full!  We'll be busy for a while after that, unpacking and putting it all away.

Pat tried a language exchange session with friends Maayan and Luna (a native of Colombia).  The three of them spent an hour or so speaking as much Portuguese as they could to one another and playing word games.  It was fun and educational and they will get together again.

The biggest festival of all here in Ponte de Lima (already the Queen of Festivals) is Feiras Novas ("new trade fairs").  They last for about a week, starting each year in September, and were instituted by royal decree in 1826.  They started as livestock and agricultural fairs but they have evolved into a celebration of "culture, tradition, and joy", with parades, a carnival, millions of sparkling lights, music, open-air markets, food, performances, fireworks, and even a parade of prize bulls.  People flock from miles around, day and night, and it is a huge tourist attraction.

Friday night Sep 12 Pat wasn't up to it so Gerrit ventured into town alone.  Parking was difficult, so he had a little walking to do.  Below are some photos and video, just a little taste of the whole celebration after nightfall.  He watched a group of young men singing a traditional song on stage and realized that one of them was a familiar clerk from a local store.  That's one of the great things about living in a small town: how you see people in different roles, how it fills out their personality.

On the way back, about 11 PM, there were even more people flooding into town.  Parking had gotten unbelievably bad, with people walking in from 1.5 km (a mile) out of town.  We heard music coming from town even as late as 3 AM too.  Portugal, land of the late-night revelers!

   

(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.)

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