Our lives have been filled with organizing, planning, and sorting out. We have approved the design and quote for the fold-down bed and storage in one guest room, and are working out solutions for other furniture.
Gerrit had a lesion on his left hand which was a little concerning. Our English-speaking medical appointment service set up a dermatologist appointment within days, and Gerrit headed to the nearby city of
Braga on Wednesday Aug 5 for it. Backing into the parking space Gerrit hit an elevated box and shattered the rear window. It was really not his day. But as Garp would put it,
Pérola our intrepid little car is now pre-disastered.
The dermatologist thought the lesion might be a carcinoma, so we decided she should cut it out right there after the appointment. Gerrit is getting tired of these cancer scares. She did a great job, and in a couple weeks he should be all healed up.
Pat's new Cuisinart substitute showed up less than a week from ordering, and it's a beauty. It's just as powerful and capable as her old one, built like a brick, and much simpler to use and set up. Here's the main workhorse, and she has some sets of accessories, too. Our first test? Grating some home-grown potatoes and onion for hash browns. Worked great, and it was a tasty maiden voyage for the MagiMix. Next Pat made a big batch of pesto with home-grown basil and froze ice cube trays full of it to enjoy when we want, and a nice batch of fresh salsa. She is definitely bonding with her new food processor.
Starting on Wednesday Aug 5 we had tradespeople crawling all over the place for days. Our skylights are being replaced, our garden project is wrapping up, and we are clearing out the spare room in the garage for a storage room. Privacy was a fond memory from the past around here for a while. But as Pat points out, it's better to get it all done at once.
On Saturday Aug 8 we took a trip to Vila Praia de Âncora, the small seaside town we visited some time ago for an expats lunch. This time we wanted to look around the town a little more and visit a used and antique furniture store we'd heard about. The furniture was nice, and some of it was gorgeous, but we couldn't visualize a place for it here. We wandered around the three stories of merchandise though, admiring and considering, and then had a little drive-around.
Both Praia de Âncora and Moledo, its neighbor beach town to the north, were packed with beach-goers on this Saturday in August. Every parking place was taken, and the wide beautiful beaches were filled with colorful umbrellas and swimmers. We snooped around much of the area and found a central historical area of Praia de Âncora. It was anchored by a nice church, a town square, and a cobbled main street lined with hanging flower baskets. We strolled the street a little and settled for lunch in Hotel Meira, a shrine to the Beatles of all things. The lobby and halls were filled with Beatles memorabilia, posters, pictures, album covers, drawings, and souvenirs. Lunch was great: bacalhau (cod) in cream sauce for Pat and lasagne Bolognese for Gerrit. Then the drive home was as beautiful as the drive there.
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Beautiful scenery on the way
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Bovine bliss on the road
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Town square in Praia de Âncora
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Street scene
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Pat's bacalhau
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Gerrit's lasagne
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A total eclipse of the sun is coming to Europe on Wednesday Aug 12. The path of totality will cross part of Spain and even a tiny bit of Portugal, but we will travel to the heart of the path in western Spain to see a whole minute and a half of totality. Stay tuned for the next blog post to hear all about it.
(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.)
