the trail

The trail to the beach is the dreamiest place of all. If only there was anything like this in my 'real world'. The horizon is infinite, the landscape changes from desert to forest, sometimes it has water, sometimes it's dry, there are crabs in the mud and birds fishing. But the best of all is the smell of the dunes that fills the air, the combination of those special plants with the sea breeze. Please someone put that in a bottle.

To make this lack of blogging continuity worse, I'll be taking a short break next week. I'm finding out that you pack as much stuff for one week as you would for two or three. I'm not really one to take my whole wardrobe with me but it still feels like I need a lot of little things on my day-to-day. Oh well...

Wishing you a joyous holiday season,

Apologising for being so bad at card-sending and happiness-wishing,

Hoping I can become a better blogger soon,

Thinking of you.

I told you I would

I'm not sure anyone is still around, maybe you've all escaped to far away exotic holidays...now, there's a thought, right?

Anyway, I'm back and I bring some photos with me.

To start with, the reason everyone goes to the Algarve on holidays. The beaches.

Usually the sea is calmer than how it's pictured here, but waves are better for photographs. Anyway, the water temperature was above 20 C which was refreshing enough but not too cold. The air temperature, on the other hand, was above 30 C every single day and in a couple of days reaching 37, 38. So the only thing to do was to head to the beach hoping it would be cooler there and in the meantime endure the heat in the streets melting your brain relentlessly.

When the temperatures allowed it, it was nice to stroll around during the day, though I strolled mostly at night this week. One late afternoon I managed to get to the castle in Tavira to get some photos. It was only a 5 minute walk from my house but it was a hard task with the heat.

This is the main church seen from inside the castle. The trees helped to freshen it up a bit.

Tavira is completely packed with churches (see that white and yellow one at the end?). I believe it was how the Christians tried to establish their religion in a place that was strongly influenced by the Moors. Brief historical information: Portugal was founded in 1143 but it was only in 1249 that the lands in the South were conquered from the Moors, the whole Algarve region in particular.

Inside the castle there is a really nice garden.

It smelled wonderful, I can tell you.

It seems Tavira was conquered from the Moors in 1249. In 1252 a Spanish King decided to conquer it for himself, claiming it was his. After a few harsh words (I imagine), the Kings settled an agreement that involved their children marrying and the distribution of the lands. Since there was a child from that marriage it was agreed that the whole Algarve region would be portuguese. God bless that child!!

It is not clear when the castle was built but it already existed in 1168, when the Moors were in battles against a traitor called Abdalá ibne Ubaide Alá - I couldn't make this up even if I tried.

Oh I miss these pretty little houses already.

As I mentioned before, strolling at night was more pleasant but you needed to stay close to the river and sometimes it was still too warm.

One time the river was almost empty and there was a heron hanging around.

In the Algarve or anywhere in Portugal, you have to have fish, particularly freshly grilled. Even if you don't like it, because you will like it. The only dinner when I didn't have fish was when I had this vegetarian pasta thing. The tomatoes smelled for miles. I had lots of great fruit, strawberries that really tasted like strawberries and that you didn't have to add sugar to, cherries, apricots, figs. Yum.

This was the view from my balcony, on a very stuffy day. See the castle and the churches?

This part of the fortification was really close-by.

And to finish it, a required sunset photo. Days are so long in June. Happy Summer!

Happy holidays all!

Hope it's a good one. If not, it will be over in a day or two and you'll have the rest of the year to look forward to. Positive thinking, yeah?

Christmas in the city

1. Inside a blue bell.

2. Lights, lights, lights everywhere.

3. A carrousel.

4. Really really bad photo of the illuminated trees. I took all the photos with my mobile.

I saw a Christmas concert in the street. Lots of people all afternoon doing their shopping or taking the kids to see the inflatable snowman, write letters to Santa, ice-skate. I'm hoping this year is less about buying and more about enjoying. Financial crisis is terrible but it makes people think a bit more, at least I hope so.  

not finished yet

I'm still posting holiday photos but it feels like years ago since I was sitting here in this beach.

Tavira is a town of countless churches. If you look at the town from afar all you see is church towers. This is the largest tower.

The watch is really big and quite useful if you've forgotten your watch (and if you're not on holiday of course because then why would you want a watch?)

This is a different church in another neighbourhood and it really made me wonder if those were the priest's clothes.

This is my 2nd favourite photograph. I caught these two instruments from one of the various duos who walked around the town playing music. It was almost dinnertime and they were getting ready to start playing. I love, love, love it!

And these last two photos aren't so bad neither. I think the highlight of my photos this year was the abundance of water reflections.

And so I bid farewell to my photo posts and turn to face Autumn in all its golden splendour (ideally).

second batch

Here's the second batch of pictures. This is the river looking very empty and rocky.

Remember the amphitheatre where I was blogging the other day? This is it. All of this square is blessed with a wireless connection. Free, of course.

An old door and on the top it reads: Geko's Farm. :)

Here's another photo of the lagoon. Sometimes all that's missing is a landscape that never seems to end.

Curvy lagoon.

This is my absolute favourite of all the photos I've taken. It's perfect, in my humble opinion. And it was taken with my phone. That's how it works these days.

There were a bunch of these parapents really close to the water. They were obviously motorised because there was no real wind.

the photos the world has been waiting for....

I've come to the conclusion that I didn't take much photos on my holidays. Or to put it in another way: I took photos but mostly of the same places.

I was in the same places almost every day and since most of them were really beautiful I always found reasons to photograph them, until that day when I said: that's probably enough.

Most of the pictures of the beach I have were taken in this really cloudy day. As you can see the parasols were all closed and there was almost no-one around. The temperature was very pleasant but there was no sun and shortly it started raining.

This way, I came back to land, by train.

It's a small but beautiful journey through varied vegetation and fresh pine trees. It smells wonderfully of dunes :)

This is the little train. You can walk too if you like but taking the train is so much more romantic. lol

After the train you arrive at the lagoon - sometimes it is empty and you see tons of vegetation and animals - crabs, storks and various others with names I can't produce. There's flamingos too, they say, but only at certain times of the year and I've never seen them. Other times, depending on the tide, the lagoons are full and you get this lovely view.

This is the "train station", so to speak and, as you can see behind the fences, the tide was empty and this is the typical vegetation of the lagoon.

Hope you've enjoyed it. I'll be back with more.

Now really here

just landed...

I'm back. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to stay a little bit longer.

You see, my house is a pile of dust on one side and bags on the other. Builders are still threatening to drop by at any given time to fix what they should've done when I wasn't here. I'm wearing sleeves!! Yesterday I didn't need sleeves, I didn't know what sleeves were. I miss walking everywhere, the perfect temperature at the beach and in the sea, the stress-free enviroment around, crossing the river four times a day just to go for a walk.

But there was a great thing about coming back yesterday. I got to meet Kimananda who was here in Porto and she is now the honourable first blogger I've ever met. I'd met several other people in person, after I met them online and it was always an awkward moment. But meeting Kim wasn't strange at all, it felt very familiar, really as if I was meeting a person I'd known for a while (which is true!).

So, I'll be struggling behind laundry and furniture and redecoration in the next few days but I still hope I can check up on what you've been doing. :)

holiday scribblings (or the lack of them) II

Holiday scribblings I

You've probably gathered that the mobile blogging thing isn't really working at the moment, for some reason I can't understand, so I haven't been able to post as much as I expected.
I am now in a central square, it's 10 pm and I'm sitting in some sort of amphytheatre under the night sky and blogging - how strange ...lol
The weather's been great and this place deserves a star for how cosy, varied and pleasant it is.
Hope you're all well. I had written a much more inspired post but it got lost somewhere in the mobile/internet waves.

Here but not here

I'm leaving for my holidays tomorrow. I'll be back in early October. But never fear: I'm lauching mobile blogging. Yes, it should be exciting. Best of both worlds: I will be there, but I'll also be here. I can update you on what I ate for dinner, on the UVA/UVB factor I used that afternoon, the page of the book I'm reading - all the extremely exhilarating details you won't be able to live without.

I'll be able to read your comments and reply to your e-mails so all is well with the World. :) Enjoy yourselves! I intend to.