Category Archives: portugal

off to the algarve!

16 Sunday Mar 2008

Posted by in holidays, life stuff, portugal, trips

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tavira.jpg
An impromptu holiday trip to Tavira!

When Pipocas and I went out for some much needed cold water after our Japanese luncheon the other day she mentioned that she was going to Tavira during Semana Santa with her husband and 4-year-old daughter and asked if Nog & I would like to come and hang out with them for a couple of days while they were there. And well, I’ve never been to the Algarve and Tavira is very close to the Spanish border (and also accessible by bus) so I started looking into this possibility . . .

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lisbon story – the film

19 Tuesday Jun 2007

Posted by in films, music, portugal

≈ 8 Comments

I’ve been listening to this CD a lot since I got home from Lisbon. This video is a scene from Wim Wender’s film Lisbon Story, featuring Madredeus and Teresa Salgueiro (who we saw at the Fado concert at the castle). It’s years since I saw the film – I’ll have to look for it on DVD and visit Lisbon all over again. I remember that the cinematography was fabulous and was in part responsible for my desire to go there myself.

lisbon story

11 Monday Jun 2007

Posted by in holidays, life stuff, photos, portugal, trips

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I am in love with Lisbon!

Some general impressions include: the wonderful pavements, the amazing ‘churrasco’ restaurants, custard tarts, films & television programmes shown in the original language with Portuguese subtitles, hardly any souvenir shops but lots of sunglass and hashish street hawkers, cream coloured Mercedes sedan taxis, the trams, the HILLS …

I found the best way to communicate was to start off by speaking Spanish. If the person knew English they would automatically switch to that, if not it turned out quite easy to converse using Spanish and Portuguese. I picked up a few phrases while I was there and noticed that people quite liked it when I made an attempt at speaking their language.

The Lisbon photo albums are mostly up and somewhat organised, but still haven’t been properly edited and labelled.

And this is what we did . . .
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